[BiteCode_dev]

Not to mention we don't need it. We don't have a problem with producing food, but with distributing it.

The result here would be only more profit for some players, it's not going to help with world hunger. It's not going to take prices down (potatoes/rice price is not a blocker, but margin is nice). But it certainly will have a systemic cost that we will all share for a gain we will not.

Problems we do have but that they are making worst:

- poorer and poorer soils;

- big companies making it hard for small player to even exist;

- weak nutritional content of our food;

- food chain dependency on a few players;

[pharke]

If this process is simple to scale then we absolutely do need it. There is little chance of us fixing our food waste problem and increasing the efficiency of foreign aid in a timely manner. If more and larger crops could be grown on even more marginal land closer to where people desperately need the food then it is a solution we should use. I'm assuming that we'd aim for making these modified plants easily available to any farmer that wishes to grow them.

[BiteCode_dev]

> If more and larger crops could be grown on even more marginal land closer to where people desperately need the food then it is a solution we should use.

That's not going to happen. People that desperately need the food don't have a problem of not growing enough rice or potatoes because of the nature of the crop. It's not why they are hungry. It's any other reason, politics, weather, logistics, economics, you name it.

The only things this will do is allow some company to patent this, and then sell it under restricted conditions that will be unfavorable to those who are hungry.

Yield increase is not really a winner if you have no water, if you are at war, if you don't have money/land, or if corporations own your society.

We reached a state in humanity development where any improvement in agricultural yield for basic food is not only unnecessary, but will lead to more problems than solution.

[db48x]

I agree that patents on this are likely to stifle most of the advantages, but not that this would create more problems than solutions.

For one thing, it greatly changes the calculus of a Mars mission. A long–term Mars mission needs food, and growing that food on Mars seems like an obvious choice at first glance. But reliably growing food on Mars requires some fairly sophisticated technology: LED lighting, fine automatic control of atmospheric gasses (otherwise the O₂ from the plants would rapidly become a huge fire risk), similar for the water, refrigeration, and an extra large power plant to run it all. Up until now it looked like it would be cheaper to make regular shipments of food and water from Earth to Mars than it would be to make regular shipments of spare parts to keep all of that machinery working. A 50% increase in calories per square foot means that you only need 67% as much machinery, and therefore only 67% as many spare parts.

Even if this created no other benefits, which I find hard to believe, it would be worth it just for a successful Mars mission.

[BiteCode_dev]

Oh sure, I don't say to toss the tech on the trash. I'm just saying it won't solve world food current problems.

Although I'm skeptical for mars, bigger plants will deplete their substrate very fast, it could be a limiter.

[baybal2]

> Yield increase is not really a winner if you have no water, if you are at war, if you don't have money/land, or if corporations own your society.

Very much true. We eliminate the global hunger if we can eliminate food wastage in US supermarkets alone.

US supermarkets literally throw away enough food to feed all of famine struck countries, and probably even twice.

> We reached a state in humanity development where any improvement in agricultural yield for basic food is not only unnecessary, but will lead to more problems than solution.

I push for an idea of unification of the world under a single global democratic government.

The solution to the global problems, must be global.

[tehjoker]

Foreign aid isn't the problem. It's the problem of the market pushing out local production and making countries entirely dependent on imports from hypercapitalist countries. What countries need is industrial and technical support to be more self-sufficient with aid filling the gap rather than replacing their entire economy.

This means trade barriers, tech-transfer, and not bombing the shit out of places.

[baybal2]

> - weak nutritional content of our food;

Today we have the most nutritious foods in history. Don't make things up.

Today's potatoes are 4-6 times bigger than 19th century ones. Tomatoes 3-5 times. Most fruits, got just enormous.

Even "watery" leafy greens are actually getting more meatier, and starchy, and with more folates as everybody seem to be crazy about them.

[ben_w]

“The plants are bigger” isn’t evidence either pro or con, nutrition is about what’s in the plants rather than their raw mass — they might be more nutritious, or less, or even both at the same time because the balance of proteins, sugars, fats, vitamins, and minerals shifted.

[baybal2]

I doubt there is any difference

[postingawayonhn]

It would be great if we could produce the same amount of food on less land. Low quality land can be returned to nature.

[BiteCode_dev]

Unless human nature has changed last week, this is not going to be used to use less land, only to produce more on the same land.

We are already overproducing food, that doesn't prevent us to try to produce more.

[postingawayonhn]

There has to be demand for that produce. The market ultimately decideds how much food we need to grow.

Where I'm from (New Zealand) there are various schemes in place to encourage farmers to retire low productivity land and fence/plant buffer zones around waterways.

[necovek]

Humans are pretty good at creating excessive demand (it's what lots of marketing is about).

With food: "oh, this apple has scratch marks from insects, throw it in the bin" — this is just one of them. "Best before" dates in the past results in lot of untasted food go to waste too. Etc.

[BiteCode_dev]

Again, we are already producing more than the demand, we just don't distribute it to all the demand.

The market, at this point, has produced concentration of power and hasn't sold distribution problem.

Creating something that can produce even more is not gonna help.