this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
90 points (97.9% liked)

Asklemmy

43966 readers
1248 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Blake@feddit.uk 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Worms are less of an efficient food source than, for example, beans. The sci-fi trope of eating insects is silly. Deus Ex had it right - soy food is the future. (And the present!)

[–] lol3droflxp@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Depends on what you have on hand. Many insects have an almost 90% conversion rate of food to insect biomass and if you have a lot of plant matter or other biological material available that humans can’t consume they are great.

[–] Blake@feddit.uk 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The trope is usually depicted as farming them en-mass for consumption, and that’s much less efficient than just growing soy beans.

Sure, in a survival situation, it might make sense to eat insects. But on a large scale, it doesn’t really.

[–] lol3droflxp@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Farming soy beans also produces waste and stuff still spoils. Turning that into consumable biomass efficiently via insects or other crustaceans is still a viable option. Especially since their droppings make great fertiliser. Including that in a food production cycle is not the worst idea.