Crops can blight, animals can get diseases. I don't know much about hydroponics but I know that bacteria are a concern. What food source is the most reliable, the least likely to produce less food than expected?
I don't think there's a Rimworld community on Lemmy and I'm not going on Reddit anymore so I'll just throw this comment into the void and hope some fans are out there. π
Also in Rimworld terms the answer is corn (if monoculture) and send everyone to harvest at the first sign of blight.
But in both Rimworld and real life, a monoculture strategy isn't sustainable. Diversifying via multiple food sources reduces your risk of disaster leading to starvation.
Rimworld is awesome. But I guess I was thinking in terms of "all crops" being one type of food source. In Rimworld, you can't get multi-year droughts that make growing anything almost impossible. In real life, you can.
I was going to say hydroponic rice. It grows so quick and if anything happens it's back up in 7 days.
The problem with corn is that it takes so long to grow that you get a wealth spike when harvesting it and if anything happens to the harvest you can be at risk of starvation.
The trick is to always keep roughly a year worth of corn stored, and only sell off the excess.
After the initial 'getting the base running' I usually pay merchants that accept it in corn, up to the amount where they end up giving me all their silver on top of what I wanted to buy.
and send everyone to harvest at the first sign of blight
That sounds like a good strategy until blight happens in the middle of a massive invasion.
I still do mostly corn, but with smaller fields with gaps in between. Makes it easier to take fields out of use if I don't need them and they'd just be wasting work time, and I can ignore blight without losing too much if something else is going on.
Aeroponics, under a controlled greenhouse environment, is technically the most stable food production method, assuming you have the ability to maintain the systems supporting it, and of course a good knowledge of a particular plant's requirements and growth habits.
Pros:
Water Efficiency: Uses up to 98% less water compared to traditional farming.
Space Efficiency: Can be used in vertical farming setups, making it ideal for urban areas.
Growth Speed: Crops can grow faster due to higher oxygen levels and nutrient delivery.
Reduced Pesticide Need: Since plants aren't grown in soil, there's a lower risk of soil-borne diseases.
Aeroponics, when done correctly, can yield impressive results in terms of growth speed and resource efficiency compared to traditional farming.
Can vouch. I don't have an aeroponic setup, but I do have a hydroponic setup. Lots of reading has led me to aeroponics, especially high pressure aeroponics (HPA), although I don't have the means to set this up myself at the moment. Reduced water and land use plus higher yield and if you grow indoors or in a greenhouse you get less pests. Seems like the best possible option for growing food sustainably
In spring, I put a few sprouting potatoes in the compost, waited a few month and since July or so I have a huge bucket of homegrown potatoes that I have problems to use up. So very easy food source. Can recommend. There were a few pill bugs/ potato bugs who love the taste of the plants, but their damage had not much effect on the harvest in the end.
But jokes in poor taste aside, yeah. I'd have to agree. A lot of grains can also do really well, but potatoes are hearty, have a lot of what you need to live, and require no attraction work to make into food after you dig them out of the ground. Onions would also be high on the list, but aren't as viable for keeping you alive as long when eating them, nutritionally.
@ColeSloth@IzzyData As I recall, the issue with the potato famine was more that, if you're *only* growing potatoes, while they grow just about anywhere, they'll also get diseases really easily.
Which is why on the Lemmy instance linked to, people mentioned a variety of crops is the trick.
So, potatoes, but *also* onions, and *also* wheat, and *also* corn is the true answer, as I understand.
The problem with the potatoes in Ireland at the time is that they were basically a monoculture and all had the same susceptibility to the same diseases.
If you grow them as they're traditionally grown in Central and South America, you have hundreds (or thousands!) of varieties of potatoes planted in different climate zones by utilizing mountains. You have basically no risk of a total crop failure as long as it rains or you can irrigate them.
Intercropping, preservation of biodiversity, rotation of crops... There is no magic bean, but in the long run basic conservation combined with advancement of plant genetics is the only realistic path forward, in my professional opinion
Probably not the answer you're looking for: Afaik if you store grain properly it can last over 30 years. So as long as you're growing too much to keep your silos full and save, and you store enough, it should be incredibly reliable.
One possibility is breadfruit. We, realistically, can't depend on one though. Even the most robust staple food will still have some sort of vulnerability so it will always be of benefits to have several.
Crops, but not unbelievably large monocrop farms. Diverse, rotated soil in reasonably sized fields, widely distributed. A variety of different crops mitigates blights, and theyβre the most efficient food source, in terms for how much food produced based on the inputs (amount of land, water, energy, etc.) and other considerations (land used, greenhouse gas emissions!
I would sort of expect it to be the stuff we struggle to get rid of, like fungi and weeds. So maybe mushrooms and dandelions? This is just a wild guess, and obviously you couldn't live off them forever.
Anything living can get diseases. I'd still go for crops grown in a controlled, indoor environment.
There's a way to grow bacteria on natural gas if you don't have grow lights, and they used it to make fish feed for at least a while, as well as some lab work on electricity-eating bacteria. If you don't care about your liver I guess this drink is also technically a source of calories with no biological production needed.
Aeroponics is really vulnerable to power outages and disease is still a concern, itβs a lot more expensive and vulnerable to supply chain disruption too, and consumes power power than just growing stuff in a polytunnel
True, but I mentioned oxygen in reference to the roots. While the leaves use CO2 for photosynthesis, roots benefit from oxygen for respiration, which is vital for nutrient uptake and overall health. In aeroponics, plant roots are suspended in air and intermittently misted with a nutrient solution, which allows them to receive ample oxygen, promoting healthy and rapid growth. I'm not aware if deliberately introducing CO2 in this mix would provide any benefits, but that would be a interesting experiment I guess.
Aeroponics is not limited to just salad-like foods. While leafy greens and herbs are common choices due to their relatively fast growth and smaller size, a variety of crops can be grown using aeroponic systems. Here's a breakdown:
Leafy Greens and Herbs: These are among the most popular crops for aeroponic systems. Examples include lettuce, kale, arugula, spinach, basil, cilantro, and mint.
Fruits and Vegetables: Many fruits and vegetables can also be grown aeroponically, such as strawberries, bell peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes. However, the setup might need to account for the additional weight and support these plants require as they grow and bear fruit.
Root Crops: Even though aeroponic systems expose plant roots to air, it's possible to grow root crops like potatoes, carrots, and radishes. The roots develop in the dark environment of the aeroponic chamber.
Grains: While less common, some grains might also be grown in aeroponic systems under controlled conditions. However, the scale and practicality of doing so would be different from traditional soil-based farming.
Medicinal Plants: Some growers use aeroponics to cultivate medicinal plants because the method allows for a high degree of control over nutrient delivery, potentially optimizing the concentration of desired compounds.
Ornamental Plants: While the primary focus of aeroponics is food production, the system can also be used for ornamental plants, especially in research settings where specific growth conditions are required.
That said, the choice of crops for aeroponic systems often depends on the specific goals of the grower, the design of the system, and available resources. While a wide range of plants can be grown aeroponically, the system's setup and management might vary depending on the plant's requirements.
Seize people's grass lawns and tear out 2/3 of roadways and convert the land into community gardens and ponds, grow food where the people are. Probably some form of population control.
Pie in the sky though. We'll probably just start eating bugs by the container ship load and then go extinct instead
No you're right, but it would be one of the more difficult things to convince people to do, so in this pie in the sky scenario where people actually give a crap about anything they'd also be doing a lot of other stuff that together would make a larger whole.
Worms are less of an efficient food source than, for example, beans. The sci-fi trope of eating insects is silly. Deus Ex had it right - soy food is the future. (And the present!)
Depends on what you have on hand. Many insects have an almost 90% conversion rate of food to insect biomass and if you have a lot of plant matter or other biological material available that humans canβt consume they are great.
Every form of production will have defects. The goal of perfecting production is one to be sought, but never achieved. We should always try to make food production more efficient with less loss, but there will always be loss, and always be waste.
Even new means of production like lab grown beef can have waste and loss in batches that donβt βgrowβ properly because they didnβt mix hormones correctly or whatever. I actually donβt know how the science behind that works, but I do know itβs a process. And where thereβs a process thereβs room for error. Thatβs where we get loss from.
Weβll never make something fool proof. Perhaps lab grown meats will be the most efficient form of product in that they have the lowest loss and production can be tweaked fairly quickly so thereβs not a lot of loss and ramped up for shipments to areas with food shortages. Honestly, lab grown in my opinion has the best chances of being a major breakthrough but itβs still too early to be sure.
Vegetables tend to have a lot of "extra" plant that isn't actually the edible part, and that uses resources to grow. A lab-based food, be it plant, animal, or other, could theoretically get near 100% efficiency in terms of edible product from input. I figure maybe a bacteria or algae would be more likely than lab grown meat to be successful, though
To answer your question. When Agriculture was first "discovered" by humans ~20,000 years ago, the most stable production method was diversification. You should have a variety of crops with overlapping growing seasons and overlapping macro nutrients. For even more security, introduce animal husbandry that can graze on your fallow land and if you have enough land make sure to have multiple distinct herds that never interact with each other except for breeding every few years.
Additionally ensure your food production isn't dependent on a single harvest season, nor a single climate. Have fruits/legumes/etc other lower yield crops that can be substituted in case your primary grains are hit with blight, or some other environmental factor.
Now let's introduce some technology. Create several fast growing monocultures that allows you to get multiple harvests in a season that can be used for animal feed, storage and supplementing any deficiencies in the primary human food supply.
tl;dr. Make sure you have multiple methods of food production that are all viable at different times of the year. Ensure that the failure of any one or two of them isn't a problem for overall yearly production, and ensure that they are independent on each other.
Foraging if done in a low density area. Natural food sources grow in an extremely diverse way and any blight or parasite will only ever effect a portion of edibles around you.