I am currently making my project for my fucking liberal arts class pertaining to Abundance and Need. I decided to tackle the topic of the world's food shortage and the solution I came up with is "The use of Artificial Islands for agriculture and it's effect on the world." A bit wordy, I know. I also have to do this myself because two of my teams members can barely speak English (Still love 'em though), and some girl that never responds to my texts or comes to class.
Instead of getting into specifics in the OP, just ask me about anything specific.
The thing I was wondering is, is there a set equation about a farm's area and yield of crops in relation to it's impact on the world's food....stash? And if this is the wrong board for this, could you direct me to the correct one?
>some girl that never responds to my texts or comes to class
I fucking hate this type of girl, and then whenever she does show up she "has to leave early". Fuck you.
Mason Peterson
Okay, what kind of islands? Like those airports in Asia / China but for farming? Floating things as in a frame and then soil on top?
How feasable is this? I suppose such an islands incurs huge investments.
What about maintenance? Water and nutrient recycling, soil conservation..
Nicholas Parker
Yeah, last thing she said to me was "I can't meet, I have a meeting." Never said if she did the worksheet and she never sent me any sources that she was supposed to research and summarize. I was thinking along the Dubai mindset. Redistribute sediment onto coastlines or raised areas in the sea to support the island. Feasibility? Probably fucking non. I'm estimating 6 billion in costs for the project. But hey, hypothetical solutions. Didn't think about maintenance. Care to elaborate?
Justin Sanchez
spoken like a true virgin
Ethan Bailey
I'm fucking stupid, I meant to say "a shit-ton over 6billion" at least. I have not slept in a while.
Dominic Richardson
>Didn't think about maintenance. Care to elaborate?
I think where are you gonna get the water from, carbon/nitrogen cycle, etc
Caleb Walker
>impact on the world's food... stash? Doubtful. But there are (apparently) equations that have satisfied that America alone can produce enough food to feed the world three times over. It's probably thinking in literal terms using the number of people in the world, and the caloric value of food produced.
Economic (we would destroy foreign agricultural industries), political (warlords), and logistical errors (food rots big surprise) get in the way of that, which is why your liberal arts class is dumb as fuck.
Elijah Parker
Hopefully my Prof. doesn't ask because I have no damn clue. This is what happens when Freshmen get Senior level projects. >which is why your liberal arts class is dumb as fuck. Never has a truer thing been spoken. Fuck the Gen. Eds., I just wana be a chef damnit.
Zachary Young
It is also very fucking difficult to find a regular ass chart showing the percentage of crimes committed by the unemployed in the US.
Robert Rogers
If you're gonna do farms in the water just farm seaweed goddamn are you stupid?
Jayden Cook
Alright, I laughed. I needed that.
Christopher Phillips
What's so funny?
Jace Garcia
So nothing that I could use to get numbers and statistics?
Fuuuuuuck, I'll just BS my way through it. It's getting my Cs and Bs so far.
Asher Mitchell
go to reddit r math and ask there, autists here like to think they know maths but as you can see they're full of it
godspeed, user
Evan Williams
>Godspeed right into the shithole that is a double major in fields I don't want in the first place. Yaaaaaa. College sucks ass, but I'll try. Thanks m8.
Easton Miller
Run rail somewhere and do it on land, far more practical than at sea
Sea is only for some hippie sea steading shit
Ain't it fucking great how liberals are destroying the schools along with our countries
Nathaniel James
Well, to late to change topic now, but yeah, island idea is fucking retarded. I don't know what I was thinking [spoiler]I was thinking "This is cool and might be easy to bull-shit my way through.[/spoiler] [spoiler]It's not....[/spoiler]
Elijah Reyes
Fucking agric-islands, retarded. Next u will tell me people will make dyes and reclaim land from the sea (Dutch). Or rich middle-eastern gentlemen will make make habitable islands for no good reason. Retards.
Gabriel Fisher
What would be used on an island like that would most likely be aquaponik systems >Fresh water with fish inside >Bacteria to make the N plant available >Cycle water through plant beds, that take up the nutrients
Research existing systems and research about them, you will find the data you need: yields, area, inputs, costs...
You can add domestic animals like chickens and rabbits, worm compost, composting toilet systems and other things, to help close nutrient cycles and diversify yields.
Another system to use would be marine aquaculture: fish and algea.
IMO the island part is mainly futuristic gimmick if you see it as projects to "create systems for sustainable agriculture" There is enough land. You can literally put up systems like that in useless wastelands much easier. Therefore, these systems would have no substantial impact on the world food supply.
The interesting aspect of floating island would be that it could be a self sustaining, mobile habitat.
If you got any specific questions, ask.
Jack Thompson
Why in Cthulhu's holy name do we need more agriculture?
By maintenance I meant primarily keeping the island being an island. I'm from Germany and an island called Sylt, off the coast in the North Sea and pretty much off Denmark's cost needs regular sand 'restocking' because it's being washed away. So a location would also need to fit while keeping sun and weather conditions in mind. I guess the currents aren't very taxing on the Dubai things, or they just dump money at the problem to conserve them.
Rising sea levels might also be a factor as well as climate change in regards to currents, sun, rain etc.
Sebastian Parker
Fertilizers can be obtained from poo. Water can be obtained from dew nets extracting moisture from the air. It is a real thing, look it up.
>impact The shadow cast by your island is possibly limiting photosynthesis in algae (which makes most of the oxygen we breathe) unless you move your island to parts of the ocean where nutrients are lacking, near equator. Here you can also use heat for desalination.
Luke Robinson
>Fuck the Gen. Eds., I just wana be a chef damnit.
I just spent ten years in that industry. If that's what you're going to school for, you're making an enormous mistake.
You'll be competing for jobs against people (like me) who didn't go to culinary school, and you'll be losing to them because they have more experience than you.
Meaning you're going into eternal debt for no reason.
Also, I'd honestly estimate that 80% of the culinary school grads I worked with had no idea what they were in for, as far as the actual working conditions.
You're studying to become servant-class, user. Trust me, you don't want this.
Julian Young
is OP still here?
There is a pdf analysis on vertical farms.
Also floating artificial islands are retarded. They would be far more valuable as human real estate than growing plants, plus the shipping costs.
You seem low IQ, what is your IQ?
Evan Flores
The floating idea is pretty retarded, I would drop it, but here are the closest farms/endeavors going on in the world that are similar to floating farms minus the floating stupidity..
This company is doing the largest indoor farm in USA. aerofarms.com/
Spread Co. in Japan does large scale highly automated indoor farming. spread.co.jp/en/
Here is a study on vertical farms that you can cite for various figures. Vertical Farm + Floating costs is basically what you would be looking at.
macrothink.org/journal/index.php/jas/article/viewFile/4526/3952 With rising population and purchasing power, demand for food and changing consumer preferences are building pressure on our resources. Vertical Farming, which means growing food in skyscrapers, might help to solve many of these pr oblems. The purpose of this study was to construct a Vertical Farm and thereof investigate the economic feasibility of it. In a concurrent Engineering Study initiated by DLR Bremen, a farm, 37 floors high, was designed and simulated in Berlin to estimate t he cost of production and market potential of this technology. It yields about 3,500 tons of fruits and vegetables and ca. 140 tons of tilapia fillets, 516 times more than expected from a footprint area of 0.25 ha due to stacking and multiple harvests. The investment costs add up to € 200 million, and it requires 80 million litres of water and 3.5 GWh of power per year. The produced food costs between € 3.50 and € 4.00 per kilogram. In view of its feasibility, we estimate a market for about 50 farms in the short term and almost 3000 f arms in the long term. To tap the economic, environmental and social benefits of this technology, extensive research is required to optimise the production process
Mason Thompson
It will never work, but I think you can bullshit it. Equations? Just bullshit it, it's liberal arts, no one will care!
Fuck I bet the equations won't even work.
>>Redistribute sediment That is hella expensive user. With agriculture you need food to be cheap or people fucking riot.
Not everyone in the world can afford to eat at whole foods
Leo Ward
Indoor farms are stupid for the same reason as artificial island farms.
Colton Hernandez
They aren't though. There are actual advantages to contained farms.
Ian Thompson
>I decided to tackle the topic of the world's food shortage
Easy: "There isn't one."
Artificial islands is a solution in search of a problem, they're not what anybody would invent after actually researching the problem.
The primary drivers of starvation are:
>Poverty - If your starving village is too poor to buy food from elsewhere in the country when your harvest fails, it is too poor to get it imported from an island.
>Armed conflict - If your starving village doesn't get food shipments because nobody wants to drive a truck through a war zone, it doesn't matter whether they refuse to drive it from a peaceful neighboring country or a peaceful neighboring island
>Agricultural policy - If local food prices are rising because people are switching from foodstuffs to cash crops, it doesn't matter whether they're switching on your neighbors farm or on the nearest island farm.
>Climate change - If coastal farms are flooding after a change to heavier weather, it doesn't matter whether they're on the coastal land of your continent or on the all-coastal land of an island.
Jayden Wright
NOTE: This doesn't mean your project has failed, it just means your project ends up looking like this:
[ Problem: People starve - will islands work? ]
[ Analysis: Sure seems like "no food" isn't the real problem ]
[ Conclusion: No, islands will not work. ]
Then, depending on how long your project needs to be, you make the analysis longer or shorter.
Charles Gutierrez
Basically, you are trading land area, pest control, and slightly higher efficiency through improved micromanagement, for the cost of maintaining automatic lighting and probably hydroponic systems as well.
It's the kind of tradeoff that only makes sense in really crowded places like Europe or Japan. Not that you can't get economically feasible vegetable yields in places like the US, just, it's considerably easier to get comparable yields in a field or greenhouse.
