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?

    • Blake [he/him]
      4·
      1 year ago

      Aeroponics is really vulnerable to power outages and disease is still a concern, it’s a lot more expensive and vulnerable to supply chain disruption too, and consumes power power than just growing stuff in a polytunnel

        • Blake [he/him]
          1·
          1 year ago

          It’s just clearly worse than growing vegetables in a field, really

          supply chain isn’t really an issue once you’ve got your setup going

          Til you run out of phosphorus, or potassium, or whatever.

            • Blake [he/him]
              1·
              1 year ago

              Obviously it’s not just one field that you use again and again. All you need to do to replenish the nutrients in the field is to just let it hang out and don’t do anything with it for a while, and use some other areas in the meantime.

              Much, much more stable, renewable and reliable than aeroponics. It’s a cool concept but it’s just nowhere near at the level of competing with good ol fashioned dirt yet!

                • Blake [he/him]
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  Absolute nonsense, sorry. Horizontal farming is more than capable of feeding everyone on earth today, and could sustain a population even ten times what we currently have - we’d need to give up meat, of course - which we should be doing anyways.

                  Simply leaving a field alone will not replenish it with all the nutrients a crop needs.

                  I mean, it will eventually - it might take a while, sure, but there’s so much land, and with sustainable farming practices (good crop rotation, organic farming, etc.) then soil erosion and nutrient depletion are significantly reduced anyways. It’s definitely much, much easier and significantly less reliant on synthetic nutrients than hydroponics or aeroponics. A lot less work, too!

    • Fizz@lemmy.nz
      1·
      1 year ago

      You can’t really generate much calories with aeroponics. I thought they could only grow saladlike foods.