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Comment by basch | Hacker News Reader

It seems short sighted? Sure soil is abundant and water plentiful at the moment. Isn't part of the allure of perfecting indoor farming to be resilient to a future world hostile to agriculture. I would think of any big discoveries or inventions being worth it as a long term risk investment.

This movement will resprout when society is relegated to caves and submarines. Maybe fiber optic light instead of solar panels, or maybe a panel that captures the full spectrum of light and converting it to a subspectrum, thereby multiplying the available energy.

These kinds of trials would imho be better suited as large scale research projects ala Manhattan/Nasa type stuff than pure venture capital, 'recoup your investment in a decade' funded.

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We're close to peak population.

The idea we're going to run out of water is a James Bond movie, not reality.

Look at how productive China is compared to the US in growing calories. Then consider how little of China's land is fertile (12.6% arable vs 17.2% in the US).

China produces nearly 5x as many calories on 66% the arable land - nearly 6.7x more productive.

Then consider that India is FAR better suited for agriculture than the US, but is not considerably more productive.

We're not running out of food or water or solar radiation in our lifetimes.

Sure we won't run out of water, the challenge is gonna come when weather patterns shift in a way that cause droughts on crop-bearing land or abnormal temperatures in key parts of the growing season. Some parts of the world may be in for some considerable pain in those scenarios.

Others are likely in for considerable gain.

We're not going to run out of water as in "there doesn't exist enough water on the planet to sustain the total population", but we're already running out of water in the sense of "there are places where the ground water is not replenished as quickly as it is being depleted by local industrial and consumer usage, and reservoirs are critically low". That there's plenty of water 5,000 miles away is only so helpful.

We have a ton of easier to pick fruit between here and indoor hydroponic farming.

Indoor hydroponic farms also tend to focus on non-staple foods. If this was about surviving we'd be studying legumes and grains not cruciferous vegetables. It's just easier to overcharge for a cabbage than a bean.

Where I live it isn't. I live in a high mountain desert. We have rivers, but they have to be dammed. We have land, but not much soil -- it was washed away 12,000 years ago, then covered by volcanos (check out Craters of the Moon). Anyway, welcome to southern Idaho, our best crop is cows and milk.

What we do have is cheap electricity (dams, wind, and solar). I'm still not sure the economics work out, but large swaths of our land doesn't work for farming either.

But Water is not plentiful; the U.S. 2nd largest reservoir is at its lowest level.

And Soil (at least top soil) is not abundant.

Even currently used land is decreased with the warn in Ukraine.

Ideal soil and water locations may move. Running out at current farms is different from running out on earth.

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