I actually agree with you. It's purely a math problem. Where can predictable yield be profitable (including loss calculations) and where can it not.
Vertical as it is today is an excellent nursery solution to feed growable plants into float ponds with little to no loss. As an independent production method, vertical isn't mathematically sustainable.
40% of fresh food is lost before it makes it to the end user (USDA data). The loss comes from a combo of unpredictable weather, timing issues where market prices dip below production costs at harvest time, and supply chain issues.
So it's a complicated math problem but it's important to consider in the suite of food security tools we look to.
Absent regen, we're likely to decimate soils over generations. If we flip totally to regen, we won't have enough land.
I'm mulling whether we have enough land (at 100% regen practices). I almost think we do.
From a system-level, we're over saturated because of ethanol and other things that realistically could disappear and society would be better off. Just need to recalibrate our acres a bit
I don't know the number but I suspect some material % of corn production could go away if we stopped subsidizing that industry for insane things like making gasoline for electoral reasons. :-)
Should we be worried about how many more ruminants this would require, and their impact on the climate? I just saw some estimates of 90 million acres used to grow corn in the U.S., and a cow calf pair needs 1.5-2 acres to feed itself. I know we probably wouldn't maximize cows to the area for the type of growing we're talking about, but that's 45 million cows (with calfs) at the low end if we were, and I'm seeing reports we currently have ~95 million head of cattle in the U.S.
Those are all napkin numbers, or poorly sourced, and worst case, but I would love to see some good numbers on what it means to the climate to have a lot more ruminants in the farming process. (If much of current beef cattle production was moved to be dispersed along these lands, that seems like it might be a good idea for all involved though).
I think these numbers are from the more traditional way of farming.
At least one practitioner of regenerative agriculture, Gabe Brown, uses super dense grazing and frequent movement of the cattle to actually restore his soil health.
Vertical as it is today is an excellent nursery solution to feed growable plants into float ponds with little to no loss. As an independent production method, vertical isn't mathematically sustainable.
40% of fresh food is lost before it makes it to the end user (USDA data). The loss comes from a combo of unpredictable weather, timing issues where market prices dip below production costs at harvest time, and supply chain issues.
So it's a complicated math problem but it's important to consider in the suite of food security tools we look to.
Absent regen, we're likely to decimate soils over generations. If we flip totally to regen, we won't have enough land.
So a host of solutions is required.