Agriculture in the 22nd century

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NoXion
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Agriculture in the 22nd century

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INTRODUCTION

The state of the art in agriculture in the 22nd century is bound up in the hurricane of innovation that characterised late 21st-century technological and industrial development, which depending on who you ask is variously known as the Industrial Revolution 2.0, the First Singularity, the End of the Old World, the Great Market Shrink or the Big Mistake. Rapidly increasing populations during these eventful times demanded more compact, more efficient methods of producing high-quality foodstuffs. Extraterrestrial colonisation also began taking off in a big way during the late 21st century, providing a further source of innovation which fed into and benefited from Earth-based developments.

So how do the 30 billion-plus people of the Solar system get food on the table?


Robotic labour (robofarms)

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As the Earth's population became increasingly urbanised throughout the 21st century, thus did agriculture correspondingly become increasingly mechanised. This process of automation was also driven by the radical and fast-moving social and political revolutions that were unfolding across the face of most of the Earth at the time. The nascent forms of social and economic organisation demanded a new approach to food production which liberated the masses from drudgery as well as providing food security at a low environmental cost. To this end, advances in the fields of robotics, systems control and artificial intelligence were appropriated by the increasingly confident NeoSocialists as well as the proto-Extropians to create new agricultural technologies to produce maximal quantities of high-quality crops with minimal amounts of unskilled labour. Robofarming technologies have also proven to be an invaluable asset in the colonisation of the Solar system and beyond.


Vertical farms (verticulture)

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As the densities of urban populations massively increased during the 21st century, securing a reliable food supply became an increasingly pressing point of issue for the teeming megapolis-dwelling masses, and vertical farming had long been touted as a solution for just such a kind of eventuality. In other parts of the world, vertical farming was part and parcel of the de-gentrification of cities as well as efforts to reduce the length and complexity of the supply chains for foods eaten by urban residents.


Urban polyculture

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With the proportion of the world's population becoming more urban overall than rural as soon as the early 21st century, urban polyculture has grown from a cheap way of producing extra goodies for an urban dinner plate to a respected and sophisticated branch of applied agriculture. While vertical farms stand out on the landscape as great green towers, the signs of urban polyculture are more subtle, such as small angular transparent domes here and there, like the ones illustrated above. These urban polyculture domes represent in miniature a different approach to agriculture than the vast monocultural fields characteristic of 20th century farming practices. Different crops in urban polyculture are placed so as to complement and support each other, providing a natural barrier against pests, diseases and weeds, in addition to any domes or glass coverings.


Comprehensive aquaculture

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The pressure on the land over the past century or so has stimulated much advancement in the field of aquaculture, which attempts to do for watery environments what agriculture already does for land environments. Perhaps the most visible impact of the rise of comprehensive aquaculture are the vast waterborne fields of seaweed that have become a common sight in many coastal areas and shallower seas. But over the course of the 21st century, what comprehensive aquaculture really became well-known-for is its role in opening up the ocean depths to more in-depth exploration and even colonisation, providing food for the ocean floor miners and their fellow undersea inhabitants. The seaweed is also used to provide food for the fish hives containing spawn, which supply hatcheries with eggs which are fertilised before piped into corrals consisting of steel meshing, bubbles of gas rising up from a network of pipes on the seabed, or a combination of the two. In these corrals the fish are fed with seaweed fodder until they reach full size or maturity, after which they are then harvested or fed to carnivorous seafood organisms reared elsewhere on the underwater farm. Aquaculture was further enriched by the development of pumping arrays that bring nutrient-rich waters to fertilise barren areas By the end of the 21st century, it was possible to provide for the complete nutrition of an undersea settlement of human beings without relying on supplies from dry land.


Hydroponics

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Growing crops in an aqueous medium has been a principle method for growing food in space, being suggested as a solution as far back as the 1950s. In the 22nd century, a hydroponics bay or greenhouse compartment is considered a standard feature for spacecraft rated for long-duration interplanetary travel, although smaller vessels may make do with a set of algae tubes instead (see Algaculture below).


Orbital farms

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Lifting stuff into orbit has always been an energy-intensive affair, and efforts to reduce the per-kilogram energy cost of doing so has consequently been a primary feature of space habitation engineering. One of the fruits of these efforts is the orbital farm, a descendent of early experiments in the mid 21st century into extraterrestrial agriculture. Developments in orbital farms were also pursued as part of the first waves of settlement on the Moon and in the Asteroid Belt, as their greater distances from the Earth demanded that agricultural production take place closer to the point of use.


Orbital mirrors

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While the combustion of fossil hydrocarbons as an energy source was phased out for economical and environmental reasons throughout the 21st century, the effects of the resulting greenhouse gases on the global climate took longer to recover from, with the effect that changes seasonal crop growth patterns and distribution were still being across the world. In order to help ease agricultural transitions by controlling temperature and light levels, nanometre-thick aluminium foil mirrors were placed in orbit and positioned to reflect additional sunlight onto a specific area. Each orbital mirror is comprised of an array of nanometre-thick aluminium foil cells which can be tilted and adjusted to ensure exacting precision in the placement and intensity of the light. Experiments and pilot projects further proved that the humidity in the area could be controlled, generally dependent on whether the extra light fell largely on solid ground or on open water.


Cloudherding

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While orbital mirrors can grant control over the light conditions, temperature, and even humidity of an area of the Earth's surface, cloudherding satellites manipulate local weather and climate conditions using powerful and focused beams of pulsed microwaves in the S band. Through careful aiming of the microwave beams various meteorological effects can be achieved. Powerful, frequent pulses aimed at the top decks of low-lying cloud over a particular region can shift it elsewhere, clearing the skies, while beams aimed at high-altitude cirrus clouds or ice crystals can induce an artificial rainstorm.


Fungiculture

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Fungi of all kinds are relatively simple organisms, with minimal growth requirements, no need for artificial lighting, and are a rich and quickly grown source of dietary protein. As a result, the science of fungiculture has granted a myriad of ways of using fungus in the mass production of protein-rich processed foods that can be eaten by vegetarians and vegans and which are prohibited by no widely-held religious dietary laws. In addition to mushrooms and yeasts which are already established fungal crops, fungiculture also includes the development of genetically modified fungus strains, which are typically designed to mimic traditional meats such as beef, pork and chicken, but a common departure from this pedestrian and conservative approach involves unique fungal strains designed to produce entirely novel textures and flavours, such as the blend of fungi used to produce ProtoPuddings, a brand of creamy desserts popular with older spacers and potheads.


Algaculture

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As well as providing the basis for modern comprehensive aquaculture through seaweed farming, the cultivation of algae provides a flexible and energy-efficient method for producing fodder for livestock, as well as a compact and simple method for supplementing the food stocks of smaller spacecraft undertaking long journeys.


Plankticulture

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The cultivation and harvesting of plankton for the purposes of food production. There are two main approaches - closed and open. Closed plankticulture generally consists of vertical tubes of briny water containing a controlled or otherwise specified mixture of phytoplankton, zooplankton, and bacterioplankton. The tops of the tubes are supplied with (typically artificially generated) source of sunlight, while the water is kept oxygenated and rich in the right nutrients in the right amounts via a system at the bottom of the tube that forces oxygen through layers of sand and sediment. Open plankticulture takes place on the ocean, and typically involves the encouragement of plankton growth through the "seeding" of certain areas of ocean with minerals and nutrients. The resulting blooms are then harvested by fine-netted trawlers before being processed into various snacks, savoury spreads (goes well with seaweed biscuits), or animal feed.


Synthesised foods

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Food synthesis is the art and science of producing entirely artificial yet tasty and nutritious foods, derived not from biological sources but from organic chemicals such as methane and ammonia, compounds which are very commonly found as ices in space, especially in the outer reaches of planetary systems. While bioforges can be readily adapted for the production of synthesised food, most of it is produced through purpose built production plants, which can range from small footlocker-sized units as part of a spacecraft's survival gear, all the way up to industrial-estate sized complexes helping to support an extraterrestrial colony. Typical sub-components include a crusher-grinder, a digester capable of breaking down lignin, cellulose, chitin, cartilage and bone, a combination brewer/fermenter, multi-function distillation equipment, and engineered microbial cultures for each.


Forced-growth tubes & vatmeat

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Also used for medical/reproductive purposes, the use of forced-growth tubes to grow livestock like fleshy plants in a liquid suspension has experienced a degree of initial resistence despite its better record than conventionally reared meat in terms of consumer health and safety, its lower material and energy consumption, quicker growth rates and arguably its ethical superiority. This last comes from the development, made early on in the use of forced-growth tubes in meat production, of growing animals without significant cerebral tissue, in other words, without brains. While the ethical arguments in its favour (and the economics) have won over many fans, some people still experience an instinctive revulsion to the idea. Curiously this resistence has not been as greatly felt for forced-growth techniques in which relatively undifferentiated volumes of muscle tissue are grown in large vats or tanks. Due to its evenly controlled taste, texture and quality, this kind of grown meat is typically minced to make hot dogs, burgers, meatballs and other similar meats.


Stratoculture

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Stratoculture involves the cultivation/harvesting of crops and the rearing of livestock inside the volume of massive specially designed dirigibles. Containing a semi-closed ecosystem and environmental cycles, these "Zeppelin farms" generate lift through the production of hydrogen gas by genetically-engineered strains of seaweed which are harvested and processed into animal feed. These free-floating structures have proven especially popular with colonists inhabiting the cloud decks of a planet, having no requirement to stay in a fixed location.


Compact macronutrients AKA "food pills"

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for at least a century now the facility for compressing all the nutrition necessary for healthy living down into an easily-swallowed pill form has long been the dream of food engineers, dieters and killjoys as well as featuring in the nightmares of chefs, food critics and epicureans. The spartan and joyless nature of taking everything out of the process of eating except taste and nutrition meant that the concept languished in obscurity until the advent of widespread interplanetary travel, when compact macronutrients finally found their place as part of the emergency survival rations that every sensible spacer has stashed on board ship and/or in their spacesuit pocket. Food pills are noticeably more dense than their medicinal equivalents, and they never seem to get the savoury flavours quite right.


Ghellhonian crops & livestock

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Left: breadvine
Right: a gameglider


Since the arrival in 2144 of the first cargo vessel to return from extrasolar space, the people of the Solar system were able to start growing Tolimani crops from the Earth-like extrasolar planet of Ghellhonus, inhabited by the first intelligent extraterrestrial life to be discovered by Terran civilisation. The cargo vessel also contained embryonic livestock which CSA scientists have been diligently working on in order that they can be reproduced on an industrial scale. Popular crops from that alien world include breadvine, a lightly-flavoured carbohydrate rich fruit-bearing cultivar which grows readily around trees and forms the staple crop for many Ghellhonian societies. The gameglider is already proving to be a popular Ghellhonian livestock species, with new aviary-like enclosed farms full of trees springing up across north America.
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