Why Our Produce Could Soon Be Grown in Total Darkness

While we need to continue to increase our output of food production to serve the growing global population, there may be a way to save a whole lot of land while growing even more food, and it involves some seriously cool science known as "electric farming."

https://www.foodandwine.com/electro-agr ... ng-8738299

Wonder why everyone thinks that "saving land" by not farming is a good thing. Studies show that the U.S. Corn Belt is one of Earth's primary producers of oxygen. Plus plants, in producing oxygen, use carbon. So win-win. Oh -- plus it feeds us, too.

Yeah, Cyn, I don't get it either. I remember when I first started in the produce business, early '80s, I would visit growers in SoCal south of L.A., and saw thousands of beautiful, striking acres of tomatoes, strawberries, cauliflower, broccoli, avocadoes in the Oceanside, San Clemente &Vista district.

Now...much of that prime farmland is gone to apartment complexes, some currently half-full or dilapidated or abandoned. AirBnB's take up a good percentage of the occupants. Sad state of affairs.

Indeed. Plus the comments about growing population always interest me, given that we're on the brink of population collapse in most countries--especially China, thanks to the "one child" policy, but in at least a dozen other countries. There is no good reason to get rid of farms.

It promises to be quite a jolt when the prospective new tariffs hit all the Mexican produce that is routinely sold year-round in the U.S. There's just no way that amount of supply can be replaced domestically. Much of the land on which it used to be grown here has long since been repurposed by enterprises that offer less risk, a steadier & faster return, stronger cash flow and higher profitability.

Can you imagine commercial property owners tearing down their malls and apartment complexes to put in farmland (big wave to David Byrne )? Obviously, that's not going to happen because it makes no financial sense. It seems we're forever dependent on our neighbors to the south. As such, the way it looks now, prices for many (food) staples are likely to rise significantly in the not-too-distant future. Who needs that pesky farmland?!

=R=

I don't know that it's the land itself, it's the water to irrigate the vegetables (where do they get that in Mexico?) and the labor for all the steps involved. 2/3 of Mexican tomatoes are grown in greenhouses or other structures anyway, so it wouldn't take that much land to replace that area. And as the Southwest gets warmer, in a few years Arizona and New Mexico will be the Sinaloa of today. Even the southern Midwest may soon be warm enough for year round production of some vegetables on land that's now used for corn. Need to solve the labor problem, though. Automation?

Tomatoes are easy. There are many crops that cannot be grown in any meaningful scale -- or at all -- indoors.

=R=

Henry Brockman sent out an email today encouraging people to preorder their veggies by midnight tonight so they can pick them up at the indoor farmer's market on Saturday. He went into why he even had to come to the market this weekend. Normally the Thanksgiving market would be his last one, but because of the warmer than average fall we had, some of his root veggies are 4 times their normal size. He says this is caused by global warming. He is against people extending the season by planting tomato plants in February in greenhouses so they have tomatoes in May. He planted some spinach seed this fall hoping that it would overwinter, and he would be able to have spinach in May. With the warmer than average temperatures we had in October, some of his spinach matured in November instead, and he ended up selling it at the Thanksgiving market instead.

I agree about Mexican produce becoming much more expensive this winter if the tariffs get enacted. The majority of the winter veggies come from Mexico in the winter. I have been doing bulk orders with Henry for the Thanksgiving market, and most of the root veggies last for 3-4 months, and I freeze some red peppers too, and so the only veggies I usually purchase at Jewel in the winter are a few potatoes.