[ExI] Zuckerberg just bought 26 days of world peace?

[Adrian Tymes]

On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 11:02 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki <
rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 3:28 PM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Dec 7, 2015 11:33 AM, "Tara Maya" <tara at taramayastales.com> wrote:
>> > We might not need it for mining at all, as mining might be done in
>> space; farming seems a much more likely use of a planet.
>>
>> That depends on how cheaply greenhouses on non-planetside colonies can be
>> set up.  Farming on Earth benefits a lot from vast areas of farmable lands
>> having already been set up for free - so far as human effort is concerned -
>> but the price is wildly varying climate and soil conditions.  Ask any
>> farmer what they would give to be able to control the weather on their
>> farm, timing the storms to the minute and setting the temperature to within
>> a tenth of a degree Celsius, things that would be trivial (so long as they
>> don't use more power and water than available) in an orbital greenhouse.
>>
>
> ### In the not-too-distant future farming could rely on a standard
> bioprocessing organism and a diverse array of energy transducers.
> Basically, you design an organism capable of taking in a standard source of
> chemical energy (e.g. glucose), and some minerals, and output
> human-optimized feed with all vitamins, energy sources, palatants,
> texturizers and whatever else you might need to sell it to eaters.
>

Doesn't work in practice.  Existing crop types have a variety of textures,
flavors, nutrients, and other particulars; some people like (or need)
certain types of crops, while others eat other kinds.  A one-crop-fits-all,
no matter how well engineered, seems impossible given the array of
sometimes contradicting demands to feed an entire populace.

Which isn't to say you can't supplement existing crops with this, just that
it's only a supplement, not a replacement.
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