Comment by pacbard | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pacbard | Hacker News Reader

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My read of the abstract is that it is about growing food without sunlight or aid the growth of food with sunlight plus their thing. This is the focal sentence in the abstract:

> Here a two-step CO2 electrolyser system was developed to produce a highly concentrated acetate stream with a 57% carbon selectivity (CO2 to acetate), allowing its direct use for the heterotrophic cultivation of yeast, mushroom-producing fungus and a photosynthetic green alga, in the dark without inputs from biological photosynthesis.

My understanding is that they take CO2 from the atmosphere, run it through an electrolyzer to create acetate, then add the acetate to the plants' environment to skip the need of sunlight in and/or aid photosynthesis.

Note that I am not a biologist so this could be completely wrong.

A huge benefit would be to reduce the amount of space we need for farms. These could be turned back into forests or converted to grow crops that are not compatible with the acetate boosting yet. Also, this would enable highly urbanized countries to achieve a greater degree of self-sufficiency, which decreases the need for costly transportation.

I’ve seen lots of people trying to solve the “farms take up too much space” issue, but far less evidence that it is actually an issue in the first place

It's an issue for the areas of the world currently facing food scarcity. Producing on-site is going to be cheaper if there is no distribution set up.

Assuming the reason for the food scarcity is a lack of space. It could also be a lack of funds for efficient farming machines. Or a lack of labor. I wouldn’t assume food scarcity is caused by lack of space in most places experiencing it.

With funds and labor you still cannot reasonably grow food in a desert. Fertile land and compatible climate are actually the limiting factors - I think.

It's not just the lack of space, growing indoors allows you to control the climate. This has a massive impact on efficiency.

The acetate could be used to increase the carbon content of the soil, which should make it possible to bootstrap a richer ecosystem within. The chernozyms of the Eurasian steppe and the terra preta of the Amazon basin are examples of extremely fertile carbon-rich soils.

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