[raptorraver]

We already produce food out of thin air using plants. It’s called photosynthesis. If you don’t want to eat those plants yourself you can feed them to ruminants and they’ll turn them to meat and fertilizer for you to grow more food out of thin air. It’s more nutritious and tastes much better than these weird inventions.

[DennisP]

The problem is land area.

> Today, almost half the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture. Of that, an astounding 80% is dedicated to livestock grazing and animal feed.

> We need more forests...they are home to many billions of plants, animals, bacteria and fungi whose complex metabolic interactions make up the biosphere with its crucial role in stabilizing the climate.

The article also mentions that photosynthesis is "surprisingly inefficient," which is why there's room to drastically reduce the area we need to feed our livestock.

[tuatoru]

Bannning biofuels would go a long way to reducing agriculture's use of land.

Trying to improve the efficiency of photosynthesis is one of those "what could possibly go wrong?" ideas.

[DennisP]

Sure but the idea at the link is more like fermenting our food in vats. (Or at least our livestock's food.)

[ranger_danger]

what about hydroponics? that doesn't need vast amounts of horizontal land

[apeescape]

Yep, and also takes up a lot of area, requires a lot of water, and produces CO2 (the ruminants, that is). In other words, it's not sustainable after a certain point. But you probably knew this already and wanted to give a provocative take in the vein of: "eww, mommmm, that thing is yucky I don't want it where are my nuggets??"

[jollyllama]

And then there's the fact that killing all those countless bacteria just for food is pretty cruel. Not vegan!