Comment on 3D-printed carrot does not rely on large areas of land or maintenance costs, can be cheaper
AdmiralShat@programming.dev 11 months ago
I feel like it would actually just be easier to make vertical growing factories for vegetables than do the same thing but worse by still growing the material, and then making them vegetable shaped.
Like, those cells will require the same nutrients and same growing conditions, and they naturally 3D print themselves into the shape of themselves.
Kerfuffle@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
They’ll also naturally use the nutrients and energy to 3D print stuff that’s not useful to humans, like leaves, roots, flowers, etc. Basically this is how vat grown vegetables, meat, etc, can potentially be more efficient than the typical approach.
MysticKetchup@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Do we need to be more efficient? We have the resources to feed everyone on Earth and have leftovers we just aren’t allocating it correctly.
We could also increase efficiency even further by reducing meat/dairy consumption. Lab grown stuff feels like an over-engineered tech bro solution to a societal problem
Kerfuffle@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
I mean, it’s usually a beneficial thing. Using less resources (including land) to produce the same amount of food is probably going to mean less environmental damage. In the case of switching to vat grown meat it also means not torturing billions of animals every year.
Sure. No one starves because the food just isn’t on this planet, they starve because the people who have it won’t give it to them. That said, we’re also not using resources very sustainably so saying we produce enough food currently isn’t the same as saying we can continue this way.
I don’t eat any animal products so you can probably guess this is something I’m strongly in favor of as well!
Anyway, I was just responding to what I quoted not specifically arguing for 3d-printed foods. Depending on how it’s implemented, it may or may not be better environmentally than the status quo
frezik@midwest.social 11 months ago
That logistical problem is something this could potentially fix. You don’t ship individual carrots/cucumbers/lettuce/whatever to stores in the city. You ship the base nutrients in giant amounts, grow what you want, and bring them over to the store down the block.
Logistics is boring, but it rules everything.
SeaJ@lemm.ee 11 months ago
We do not sustainably have the resources to feed everyone. Even if things were allocated more evenly, we would still be looking at water shortfalls and over usage of land.
stown@lemmy.world 11 months ago
So let’s continue to allow some people to have more than enough while others have none. No sense in trying since @SeaJ@lemm.ee said it could not happen.
dustyData@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Chain of production. Ask, where do the materials to “mimic the soil in the lab” are coming from? What are the required materials to manufacture the nutrients and substrate for plant cell reproduction? Contrary to our usual perception, lab materials aren’t magically put on shelves by lab faeries.
You’ll usually find that it is fossil fuels. Since we currently don’t have a way to mass produce nutrients with sustainable sources (specially ammonia as the source of nitrogen). They’re distilled from oil. Other nutrients are taken from other agricultural produce, that still need land and maintenance to be grown then processed into the materials to make the growth mediums. They’ll say that they will recycle and use produce refuse, but usually this is thrown away by industrialists because the thing is expensive and difficult to recycle from bad materials.
At the end, the cost reduce is usually just the product of pushing costs to atmospheric pollution. At a large scale with mass production, the net cost surges up again to the cost of just growing the damn carrot on the ground. Everything looks cheaper on the lab.