this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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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?

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[โ€“] [email protected] 87 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Diversity of food sources.

[โ€“] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is the right response, along with proper crop rotation. No magic single correct answer here will work.

[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Not to be contrary, but... Soylent Green would fit the bill.

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I know youโ€™re not really being serious, but it doesnโ€™t really. I considered the logistics of this for an RP I was running and it doesnโ€™t add up. You need way way way way more food to grow a human being than the human being provides in food when theyโ€™re dead. At most, being very very generous, you could meet 1% of a societyโ€™s food needs with cannibalism. And thatโ€™s a really high estimate. Itโ€™s really more of a special treat than a daily diet!

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

thats assuming you want to maintain the population size.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Itโ€™s so inefficient you may as well just leave the population to starve, nearly the same effect for much less work!

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[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They're making our food out of people, next thing they'll be breeding us like cattle! for food!

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[โ€“] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (4 children)

This reads like a Rimworld post.

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. ๐Ÿ‘‹

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

~~[email protected]~~

~~@[email protected]~~

Yeah idk how to link it. Here: https://lemmy.world/c/rimworld

My first thought when seeing the title was also Rimworld. Glad to know others are fans of the corn monopoly.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

[email protected] was the correct answer, you nailed it the first try

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[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Diversity is the most stable plan. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Get food from multiple sources.

[โ€“] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Chicken eggs

Fish eggs

Duck eggs

Goose eggs

Quail eggs

Platypus eggs

??

Profit

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Monotremes: the only animals that could make their own custard.

[โ€“] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago

Likely Algae. Good luck intentionally getting less

[โ€“] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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:

  1. Water Efficiency: Uses up to 98% less water compared to traditional farming.
  2. Space Efficiency: Can be used in vertical farming setups, making it ideal for urban areas.
  3. Growth Speed: Crops can grow faster due to higher oxygen levels and nutrient delivery.
  4. 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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I think the answer is potatoes. Other root vegetables might be equally reliable.

[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

the answer is potatoes

Aha! Poland will survive in the post-apocalyptic world.

[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Not what I heard from an Irishman....

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Kinda hard to have a stable food system when an imperial power is stealing most of your food in a rather genocidal fashion!

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[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Jerusalem artichokes > potatoes

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[โ€“] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Cockroaches. They can survive nuclear events and will eat almost anything. They multiply faster than plants too.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Crops, but not unbelievably large monocrop farms. Diverse, rotated soil in reasonably sized fields, widely distributed. A variety of different crops mitigates blights, and theyโ€™re 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!

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

That's not going to be as much land as you think it is, relative to the food needs of the maybe billion people living in lawn-growing places.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

The things that cause famines are lack of diversity.

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