What if cities grew their own food?

[banquo's_bumble_puppy]

What if cities grew their own food? Is such a thing even possible? Hydroponics? Roof top gardens? Small scale might be doable.

[The Supreme Canuck]

They do. It's called "the surrounding farmland."

[Maha Vailo]

It's also called "suburban vegetable gardens", "inner-city plots" and "greenhouses".

- Maha (I'm a horticulturist, I should know) Vailo

[NEOWatcher]

Even Oliver Douglas gave up on his terrace farm.

Seriously though; I think any space saving methods available in an urban setting are going to be very cost prohibitive.

[banquo's_bumble_puppy]

It's also called "suburban vegetable gardens", "inner-city plots" and "greenhouses".

- Maha (I'm a horticulturist, I should know) Vailo

you're the perfect person for this question (sorta)....how about large scale???? I'm not talking about hobby gardens....

[The Supreme Canuck]

See, but property in urban areas is expensive - prohibitively so for agriculture.

[Noclevername]

Each building could alternate one story for living, one for growing high-output foods. (And instead of sewers, there'd be composting centers underground to save space.)

Probably cost massively, and require a total rebuild of infrastructure, but the OP asked if it was possible, not practical. ;)

[weatherc]

See, but property in urban areas is expensive - prohibitively so for agriculture.Yes. Consider that to purchase a parking space in New York City can cost well over $100,000. For a single parking space.

Now try to buy enough space to grow some food. Those would be some really pricey vegetables.

[NEOWatcher]

...Probably cost massively, and require a total rebuild of infrastructure, but the OP asked if it was possible, not practical. ;)
I've seen conceptual views and discussions like that and it does sound possible. Contiguous floors instead of alternating would be better. There wouldn't be as much weatherproofing protection to consider.

Water would need to be pumped in. Even if you could trap the rain from the footprint of the building, it would be insufficient by a factor of the number of levels that are being fed.

Same goes with light. Even if you put light collectors/redirectors up, you will still lose intensity by dividing it among the floors.

[BigDon]

Banquo, I suspect you are not a bad person. Don't take this as an attack.

But a lot of the seemingly good ideas you have been presenting lately would only work if you had despotic powers and rode roughshod over individual freedoms. Think Pol Pot. He took a lot of ideas that really looked good on paper and tried to force it into reality with the result that literally millions died.

That and you really need a course in mainstream economics. The Dharma and Greg alternative economies *can't* be made to work by someone not well grounded in economy in general.

[RalofTyr]

Pol Pot cared more about the idea than the people. That's where he went wrong.

I've thought about creating an organic produce market in which people grow their own organic food in their backyards, mostly because I like to garden and grow foods.

Medieval towns did grow foods on their small years and plots of lands, however, that was a suppliment and not their whole diet. They still relied on outside food. Much like we do today.

I can see the tops of buildings being transformed into farms in NYNY.

Why live on the land? Why not live underground and grow your food on the land above?

[Abbadon_2008]

IMO, people should be encouraged to grow their own crops, anyway.

Tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, cannabis....whatever.

Plant 'em if you got 'em, fellas.

[JustAFriend]

They do. It's called "the surrounding farmland."

Actually, it's called: Farmer Subsidies

BILLIONS of dollars go to farmers. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy) ($8Billion in 2004)

And that's on top of what they get for the actual goods they sell.
And some of those farmers are paid NOT to grow things.

[The Supreme Canuck]

Okay...

I wasn't trying to get into anything political, here. I was just stating that in a sense, cities do grow their own food... in the area surrounding the cities. That's where the farms send their food.

[KaiYeves]

That's a good idea, Banquo! I think one of Frank Loyd Wright's model cities had farmland for each house.

[HenrikOlsen]

For it to be feasible you'll need a totally planned city from the beginning, with a highly developed public transport system and strict zoning, in a country where people would be willing to park their cars away from home or even do without owning one.

Retrofitting it to a high-rise city would be a disaster, but designing a city for it from the beginning might be possible.

Problem is that it would cost a lot to make the infrastructure that would make it interesting to move there, money you wouldn't get back until people started moving in.

[Ronald Brak]

Sewage, tanks, bacteria, energy souce, food. No problem. Well, no problem apart from convincing people to eat it.

[Fraser]

Once again, if the price for transporting food gets super expensive, it will start to make sense to grow more and more food from a city's local surroundings. People will stop buying food imported from across the country and world, and buy more locally. They'll hate not being able to buy strawberries in winter, but boo hoo.

And the higher transportation costs go, the range of imported food will shrink until most food is grown nearby the city. Cities that don't have fertile lands around them will have a more expensive cost of living. Just like it's expensive to live in Alaska or the desert.

[Ronald Brak]

I'm afraid I don't really see how transporting food long distances can become super expensive. People have mentioned increasing oil prices, but ship and rail transport are extremely energy efficient compared to current road transport, so it would take extraordinary price increases to cause large reductions in the amount of food they ship, and neither rail nor shipping has to depend on oil. For that matter road transport doesn't need to rely on oil either.

[Van Rijn]

I agree, and as mentioned before, the current prices are above the cost of even "unconventional" oil and synthetic fuel from coal production. There can be a period while production catches up with demand, but long term, these are unsupportable prices.

Eventually, of course, we'll move away from fossil fuel use to long term energy sources, but that's not something that will happen real soon.

[banquo's_bumble_puppy]

Banquo, I suspect you are not a bad person. Don't take this as an attack.

But a lot of the seemingly good ideas you have been presenting lately would only work if you had despotic powers and rode roughshod over individual freedoms. Think Pol Pot. He took a lot of ideas that really looked good on paper and tried to force it into reality with the result that literally millions died.

That and you really need a course in mainstream economics. The Dharma and Greg alternative economies *can't* be made to work by someone not well grounded in economy in general.


I don't take this as an attack. Why do you assume that I'm suggesting that this or something like it should be mandated as law? My thread on 1 person, 1 vehicle= waste may have sounded heavy handed....on the other hand. I like to suggest other ways of living with what resources we have. I really like the old idea of the arcology. (ps. hope you are feeling better)

[Noclevername]

That's a good idea, Banquo! I think one of Frank Loyd Wright's model cities had farmland for each house.

Buckminster Fuller did, too.

Edit: Actually, many of his later designs had farm"land" in each building.

[Noclevername]

I can see the tops of buildings being transformed into farms in NYNY.

Why live on the land? Why not live underground and grow your food on the land above?

The minimum amount of land needed to feed one person, using the most efficient growing methods and the highest producing food plants, is something like one half-acre per person (I think). More than the top of a single building in a typical city. Not to mention that everyone would have to give up their day jobs and garden full-time.

[captain swoop]

WW2 Britain turned over all Parkland and sports fieolds to growing food, there was a 'Dig For Victory' campaign and garden 'allootments' were made available to householders without their own gardens (Millions are still in use in most towns and cities, gardening is very big in the UK)
Despite all this and massive effort from farmers millions of tons of food imports a month were still needed to keep us from starving.

[KLIK]

Hi banquo's_bumble_puppy

do a search on "living wall", you might be pleasantly surprised.
A lot of people in Britain grow their own food as a hobby, but generally food is cheaper than than the effort we are willing to put in or the space we would have to give up (we generally have small gardens here)

During summer we are awash with tomatoes and marrows, growing herbs is useful.

There would be major changes required to grow rooftop gardens, but if there was another major war/massive fuel price increase/cutting off of foreign supplies it could happen.

[captain swoop]

We have prime time tv and radio gardening shows although they don't feature as much on vegetables as they used to.

There was a specialised 'Allotment' show back in the 80s that just featured vegetables.

[novaderrik]

if every building in the city had enough land to grow enough food to be self sufficient, the entire USA would be one giant sprawled out city. and no one would have any free time, since they'd spend all their time worrying about their crops so they don't starve.
which would lead, of course, to someone having the revolutionary idea that maybe there should be a certain group of people outside the city with massive tracts of land dedicated to growing all the food...

[Noclevername]

if every building in the city had enough land to grow enough food to be self sufficient, the entire USA would be one giant sprawled out city.

Only if you laid the growing areas side-by-side instead of stacking them up. ;)

[HenrikOlsen]

There's several of you who are apparently assuming that "city grows own food" means each inhabitant grows their own food. Why?

In my mind I can just as well see a spread-out city with blocks zoned for agriculture, worked by fulltime farmers living in the city by selling their produce to the rest of the inhabitants.
One might argue that you do want large scale animal husbandry outside the city due to smells, one might couter that by arguing that the whole point of this exersise is to think smaller scale for the agriculture.

[Larry Jacks]

I was just stating that in a sense, cities do grow their own food... in the area surrounding the cities. That's where the farms send their food.

This is less the case today than in decades past. Today, a good percentage of the food sold in grocery stores is as likely to come from overseas or across the country as it is in the surrounding countryside. That's how we can get fresh fruit and vegatables even in the middle of winter.

There's a lot that's good about city dwellers growing some of their own food. It's a healthy pasttime and the food can be pretty good, too. The kinds of food they can grow depends on the local climate and the amount of land available. A large apartment building can have hundreds of tenants or even more. There simply isn't enough roof space to grow more than a tiny fraction of the tenants food needs for a year.

Throw in climate issues and it gets even more difficult. Some areas have a mild climate that allows you to plant two or more crops in a growing season. Other places have a hard time growing anything. Here in Colorado (where it snowed again this morning), you can't count on plants surviving until the last frost of the season, typically the end of May. The first frost of the fall often comes before the end of September. When we moved here, we tried to have a garden for a few years. After 3 years, we gave up. It was too hard to get things to grow here and to be ripe before frost killed the plants. Even though we had a fairly large yard and a good sized garden, we would've all starved to death pretty quickly if that was our only source of food.

[Gillianren]

I know that there are plenty of things that can't grow on this side of the Cascades because it's just too wet.

[novaderrik]

There's several of you who are apparently assuming that "city grows own food" means each inhabitant grows their own food. Why?

In my mind I can just as well see a spread-out city with blocks zoned for agriculture, worked by fulltime farmers living in the city by selling their produce to the rest of the inhabitants.
One might argue that you do want large scale animal husbandry outside the city due to smells, one might couter that by arguing that the whole point of this exersise is to think smaller scale for the agriculture.
and when a city has a bad year, and the crops fail, then what? or what about people in northern climates that have a taste for healthy things like oranges and bananas? you wind up trucking the stuff in from somewhere else, and we are right where we are today.
the system we have now works, so why screw with it?
from a purely economic standpoint, it's much cheaper to grow millions of acres of things like corn and wheat in one area and transport it tens, hundreds, or even thousands of miles to the end user.
do you also think that every city should have their own small factories to make the goods to make the stuff that makes modern life what it is instead of having things manufactured in larger factories that can make things in greater volumes and transported to the end user for less energy usage per unit?

[Ronald Brak]

Despite all this and massive effort from farmers millions of tons of food imports a month were still needed to keep us from starving.

With a population of something like 46 million, millions of tons of food weren't needed each month in the U.K. during World War II, but food imports were extremely important because it meant people could work in factories instead trying to cultivate every scrap of land. Even with all food imports cut off, it would have been possible, although extremely difficult, to produce enough food in England to prevent starvation. Japan, however, was in a much more precarious position with regards to supplying its own food.

[BigDon]

With a population of something like 46 million, millions of tons of food weren't needed each month in the U.K. during World War II, but food imports were extremely important because it meant people could work in factories instead trying to cultivate every scrap of land. Even with all food imports cut off, it would have been possible, although extremely difficult, to produce enough food in England to prevent starvation. Japan, however, was in a much more precarious position with regards to supplying its own food.

Yeah, at the end of WWII with the US submarine blockage and the destruction of almost all its shipping, according to US military analysis Japan was looking at some 29 million people starving to death before the year's end had not the atom bombs forced the Emperor capitulate.

[captain swoop]

The big mystery is why the US Navy didn't take a leaf from the German book and concentrate the Submarines on the cargo ships instead of wasting them trying to use them in Fleet Actions. Subs played no part in any of the Fleet actions in WW2 despite their best efforts but a concentration on the Japanese shipping lines would have destroyed the Japanese merchant fleet in months.

At the worst point of the Battle of the Atlantic food stocks were down to something like 3 months supply in the UK and in the 1st war, the German U-Boats came within a whisker of starving the UK.

[filrabat]

If...and I well know this is a HUMONGOUS "IF"...we start putting carbon taxes on foods (and everything else for that matter)...then it'd make sense to grow food in suburban yards, if nowhere else. Huge greenhouses would work too, particularly for foods not appropriate for the local climate (i.e. coffee trees in the mountains of Wales or North Carolina) you could have 2 or 3 growing seasons. BUT, that'd mean extra time and effort put into food growing that could be devoted to sharpening job skills, education, or other high value-added activities. Not to mention extra expenses devoted to maintaining the greenhouses and the political (un)reality of meaningful carbon taxes.

The insect population would expand exponentially PDQ (unless you can afford very tightly sealed greenhouses and such; even then, what if you live in a warm climate like Australia or the southern half of the US?).

For that reason, I agree with Henrik. This would only work with a very stringently planned city. My reccommendation is VERY high density housing - equivalent to 20,000 people per square mile [7712 persons km^2]. That's approaching typical urban population densities in Asia. Even then, we should expect the city to have a wide importation radius in terms of distance traveled from farm to market.

[toejam]

What if cities grew their own food? Is such a thing even possible? Hydroponics? Roof top gardens? Small scale might be doable.

It's been done everywhere, & is being done in large areas of the world. Only the cities then are spread out & called villages, their inhabitants peasants, and the farming is subsistence farming. It takes more skill & knowledge than most give it credit for, and is back-breaking labour from sun-up to sun-down, for most of the year.

Civilisations are built on the back of the man with the plough -- Durant
(IMO probably more correct to say "the man with the hoe".)

[Ronald Brak]

If...and I well know this is a HUMONGOUS "IF"...we start putting carbon taxes on foods (and everything else for that matter)...

Well, they wouldn't be carbon taxes then. A carbon tax is only for extra carbon added to the air and food is carbon neutral. Crops absorb carbon from the air as they grow and the same carbon is released when we eat them so it's a wash. Fossil fuels used in the production and transport of food would have a carbon tax on them, but since only a fraction of the price of food today represents the cost of fossil fuel, a carbon tax/credit designed to cut CO2 emissions in half would only have a small impact on its price. A carbon tax provides very little incentive to not transport food long distances and can be avoided entirely by using biofuel and electric powered transportation and machinery.

[mugaliens]

While the idea sounds very attractive, it's actually cheaper to import the food thousands of miles from third world countries.

What most people don't realize is that some 4.2 Billion people are employed in global food production.

Does anyone really want to put that many people out of work?

A lot of people argue against the CO2 production involved with transporting the food, but when you crunch the numbers, it's less than 1/2 of 1% of all human CO2 production.

Besides CO2 is 32 times less effective as a greenhouse gas than methane, and the livestock industry is responsible for a lot of human-produced methane (I believe it's around 30%).

But there's an even bigger culprit (several hundred times more of a greenhouse gas than CO2), and that's also heavily produced by the livestock industry.

So if you're really want to make an impact on greenhouse gases, growing locally has less than 1% of simply going vegan (no meat or milk products).

The next time you visit your local fast food restuarant, just get the salad, instead of the burger.

Again, "growing locally" sounds good, but in all practicality, it really won't amount to a hill of beans of any sort of impact, except to put half the planet out of work.

[mugaliens]

I've thought about creating an organic produce market in which people grow their own organic food in their backyards, mostly because I like to garden and grow foods.

Unfortunately, it would no longer meet the definition of "organic" since it won't meet the distance requirements for separation of crops and sources of pesticides and herbicides.

Also, the vast majority of backyards have been grossly contaminated with pesticides and herbicides over the years. Would you really prefer food that's laden with that?

Not me!

[HenrikOlsen]

Besides CO2 is 32 times less effective as a greenhouse gas than methane, and the livestock industry is responsible for a lot of human-produced methane (I believe it's around 30%).

But there's an even bigger culprit (several hundred times more of a greenhouse gas than CO2), and that's also heavily produced by the livestock industry.
Scientists at DTU in Denmark are working on a solution to that problem, it basically consists of replacing the intestinal bacteria with some that produce acetic acid instead of methane, this is then further digested by the cow.
End result: more energy available to the cow from the same feed and CO2 and water instead of methane.

[Noclevername]

Unfortunately, it would no longer meet the definition of "organic" since it won't meet the distance requirements for separation of crops and sources of pesticides and herbicides.



Which one of the dozens of mutually contradictory definitions does it not meet? :whistle:

[Noclevername]

So let's look at what circumstances might lead to this being a good idea. The only one that I can think of is a city with no access to arable land-- say, one situated on a small island being blockaded. And in that case, there just wouldn't be enough time to grow the crops, let alone convert the entire infrastructure, before people starved.

[toejam]

While the idea sounds very attractive, it's actually cheaper to import the food thousands of miles from third world countries.


But "we", "the West", mostly SEND food to third world countries, because so many of them don't produce enough to feed themselves.

[BigDon]

Dag Nabit!

Will somebody please kill the cattle industry puts out significant methane Red Herring? I remember when this was first coined and it was never meant to be taken seriously!

Is it too much to ask a debunking site like this place not to spread metaphorical cattle excrement?

Does anybody besides myself know that a single swamp, a swamp mind you, wet land, places too muddy to walk, habitat, nature etc, 100 miles on a side, on a warm day, puts out more methane than all the cattle alive?

That's just one 100 mile by 100 mile swamp! The whole artic circle is warming and thawing and the tundra and permafrost will be a swamp again for the first time in tens of millions of years. We are talking planetary atmospheric physics here, not a room in your college dorm after burrito night! Some folks seem to think that putting out a candle in the bedroom somehow mitigates the fire in the attic.

I, for one, suddenly realized I like global warming and no longer feel threatened by it. This realization came when I noticed any terraforming venture I would do to Earth would first involve warming it up to previous temperatures planet wide. Mainly by putting a gigantic dam between the tip of South America and Antartica, reconnecting them and causing the Antartic current to only spin once around Antartica then flow north along the west coast of South America, to the equator. Instead of locked in around it keeping everything cold.

In previous times this kept Antartica in the mid-fifties during the long sunless winter. Has anybody asked the Canadians and the Siberians what they think of global warming? I haven't. It would be nice to see Canadians develope melenin.

[Delvo]

It would be nice to see Canadians develope melenin.It takes a few thousand years for a population's melanin level to adjust to a change (which is usually by migration, not by the climate changing on top of them). And it adjusts not to temperature but to sunlight, which doesn't change due to global warming. And why would you care if they darken up anyway?

I do agree, though, that in the ways that you'd think environmentalists would usually be interested in, global warming would actually be a good thing, and it would also generally help the human condition too, because the main limit on both humans and life in general on this planet right now is that it's too cold, and coldness makes life hard. If global warming is real, then someday people will be sitting around in lands that are nearly uninhabitable right now thanking us for the climate improvement we so wisely and generously gave them, and discussing the correction of the icy weather problem as one of the greatest achievements of civilization and a monuments to our own greatness. The rumor/modern-legend that anyone could ever have been silly/crazy enough to be scared of it, as if it were a bad thing to unfreeze and bring life to frozen wastelands, will be one of those tales people tell each other just for the sense of amazement or humorous irony at how bizarrely alien and backward people in the past could be, but many won't even believe it because it just won't be believable.

[Doodler]

Pol Pot cared more about the idea than the people. That's where he went wrong.

I've thought about creating an organic produce market in which people grow their own organic food in their backyards, mostly because I like to garden and grow foods.

Medieval towns did grow foods on their small years and plots of lands, however, that was a suppliment and not their whole diet. They still relied on outside food. Much like we do today.

I can see the tops of buildings being transformed into farms in NYNY.

Why live on the land? Why not live underground and grow your food on the land above?

Living underground is impractical, part of the reason buildings can get so high is that its relatively easy to evacuate them in the event stuff happens. You're using oversized stairs and you're moving in the direction of gravity. When you come up from below, you're fighting gravity, and its FAR too exhausting to run up more than 3 or 4 floors before the average person is winded, lets not even start on the ill or injured. Plus there's the option of external rescue by ladder in tall buildings, where there's no equivalent option in subterrainean structures. Looks nice on paper, but the life safety considerations make extensive underground buildings tombs waiting to be occupied.

[toejam]

Dag Nabit!

In previous times this kept Antartica in the mid-fifties during the long sunless winter. Has anybody asked the Canadians and the Siberians what they think of global warming? I haven't. It would be nice to see Canadians develope melenin.

Most Canadians prefer to hug the US border as closely as they can & to escape south of it in winter, for as long as they can afford. Few ever see the North.
Where I am, Muskoka, a region most Torontonians think of as THE NORTH, we are at the latitude of Bordeaux, France & Turin, Italy. The sun is plenty strong, even now, and produces lots of melanin in us in summer.
Admittedly this is also the latitude of Minneapolis and just south of Portland, Oregon, so it probably is The North to most Americans.

[novaderrik]

Most Canadians prefer to hug the US border as closely as they can & to escape south of it in winter, for as long as they can afford. Few ever see the North.
Where I am, Muskoka, a region most Torontonians think of as THE NORTH, we are at the latitude of Bordeaux, France & Turin, Italy. The sun is plenty strong, even now, and produces lots of melanin in us in summer.
Admittedly this is also the latitude of Minneapolis and just south of Portland, Oregon, so it probably is The North to most Americans.
you are farther south than i am.
but not by much.

[mugaliens]

Scientists at DTU in Denmark are working on a solution to that problem, it basically consists of replacing the intestinal bacteria with some that produce acetic acid instead of methane, this is then further digested by the cow.
End result: more energy available to the cow from the same feed and CO2 and water instead of methane.

Perhaps as an alternative, we could simply outfit cattle with "methane collection units" (MCUs) and later combust it for energy. Problem solved...

...except for the CO2 it produces...

[mugaliens]

Which one of the dozens of mutually contradictory definitions does it not meet? :whistle:

Either a 10 meter or 15 meter separation/distance from soils/crops on which herbicides or pesticides are applied.

[mugaliens]

Dag Nabit!

Will somebody please kill the cattle industry puts out significant methane Red Herring? I remember when this was first coined and it was never meant to be taken seriously!

Is it too much to ask a debunking site like this place not to spread metaphorical cattle excrement?

Does anybody besides myself know that a single swamp, a swamp mind you, wet land, places too muddy to walk, habitat, nature etc, 100 miles on a side, on a warm day, puts out more methane than all the cattle alive?

Yes. I didn't recall ever seeing that fact meantioned on this site before, and while doing some research, found it, and posted, a month or so ago.

The whole artic circle is warming and thawing and the tundra and permafrost will be a swamp again for the first time in tens of millions of years. We are talking planetary atmospheric physics here, not a room in your college dorm after burrito night! Some folks seem to think that putting out a candle in the bedroom somehow mitigates the fire in the attic.

I, for one, suddenly realized I like global warming and no longer feel threatened by it. This realization came when I noticed any terraforming venture I would do to Earth would first involve warming it up to previous temperatures planet wide. Mainly by putting a gigantic dam between the tip of South America and Antartica, reconnecting them and causing the Antartic current to only spin once around Antartica then flow north along the west coast of South America, to the equator. Instead of locked in around it keeping everything cold.

You're absolutely right! However, despite the fact that it is "thawing tundra" it will take a long time before said tundra becomes warm enough to transform into a Southern swamp. By that time, said Southern swamp will very likely have been transformed into desert.

I really don't worry too much about global warming, as it's occurring so slowly that when one bad thing happens, another good thing happens. The Earth has been around for a very long time (and much warmer than it is today). I believe things will, overall, balance out.

It would be nice to see Canadians develope melenin.

Don't know about the Canadians, but most Siberians and Eskimos have fairly dark skin! (very long days during the summer...)

[Argos]

I´say 'what if people had less children?'

[ASEI]

I´say 'what if people had less children?' Then they'd be overrun and have their cities burned by the fanatics next door who have tons of children.

[Lianachan]

Cities, shmities - what if families grew their own food? I'm looking forward to the next Iron Age !

[Noclevername]

Either a 10 meter or 15 meter separation/distance from soils/crops on which herbicides or pesticides are applied.

Okay, but that doesn't tell me which definition of "organic" that particular method meets. I'm guessing a legal definition; FDA, maybe? It sure doesn't match any scientific definition.

[Mister Earl]

How about culturerd meats? Anyone know any details regarding this? I've heard it can be done, but there's still a significant "Eww!" factor. I for one would give it a shot! I would imagine that cultured meats would be less expensive than meat-on-the-hoof, given ample development times. And who could complain about meat grown in a lab, as opposed to cut from a critter? Sign me up for a lab-steak anyday,

[Delvo]

It presumably can be done, but we don't have a method yet.

[captain swoop]

Soylent Green

[Doodler]

It presumably can be done, but we don't have a method yet.

Has been done, the FDA hasn't approved it for human consumption. Its in a very early stage of actually being put to work, and the results aren't especially stellar.

[Neverfly]

How about culturerd meats? Anyone know any details regarding this? I've heard it can be done, but there's still a significant "Eww!" factor. I for one would give it a shot! I would imagine that cultured meats would be less expensive than meat-on-the-hoof, given ample development times. And who could complain about meat grown in a lab, as opposed to cut from a critter? Sign me up for a lab-steak anyday,

The predatory hunter in me finds that idea appalling.

It's bad enough that we don't kill our own prey, but rather, get it chopped up in neat little packages from Wal-Mart these days. Cultured meat is adding insult to injury.

[Mister Earl]

Hehe. I know what you mean. I've eaten something I've killed before (fish, rabbit, deer), but cultured meats tickle the efficiency geek in me. How many tons of cultured meat can you theoretically crank out a day using how much infrastructure? I know too little about this subject, and it drives me nuts. How is the cultured meat kept "Alive" until it's popped out of the tray-tube-wacky form without an active circulatory system? Does it grow its own? What would it use for blood? Would you have to fire voltage through it to "work out" the muscle? Or would you let it set, and have it come out like veal? What maintenance is required during growth time, if any? What is the timeline needed to grow a cultered meat product?

Anyone happen to be following along with this tech, and have handy links that dig into the meatier details?

(Sorry, couldn't resist)