People are working on growing meat in the lab because growing an entire animal to make meat is incredibly inefficient compared to stringing proteins together in a lab. Here's an article from Popular Science. (The first half is about making mock meat from vegetable products, which has a long way to go yet before getting a palatable product.) And the second half is about using an extruder machine to make meat products from protein.
But this article is closer to making meat from chemicals, using a 3-D printer to manufacture meat layer by layer from the proteins.
Popular science has also had articles about growing vegetables on giant vertical hydroponic farms in buildings close to cities, with advantages of hermetically-sealed insect-free buildings and low transportation costs to market.
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From my Dad -
From my Dad -
I grew up in sheep country - as you travelled through Ulster mountain country you would see hundreds of sheep quietly grazing. Grazing where their forbears had grazed since those mediaeval times when the farmers built those stone walls to contain them. Huge areas amongst the ranges of mountains. And we were a mutton-eating people: every Sunday we had a special dinner with all the family sitting down after Morning Service, to a delicious roast.
Now those vast ranges were obviously covered with soil, and I never heard of the soil being replenished with fertilizer or manure. So the grass could contain, only, elements provided by the soil. And the woolly creatures ate, only, elements provided by the soil.
You recall Shut-In Island near the cottage growing up. The legend is that local farmers, in days gone by, would ferry to it, the sheep and the lambs born in Spring, and would let them graze and fatten there, until market time in the Fall. Graze on grass sprung from soil that had never been replenished since geological times.
So, what I'm leading to is this, Why doesn't an enterprising chemist take some soil, put it in a test-tube and produce, say grass. And then, after thinking about it, by-pass the grass, and make ersatz mutton and feed the world's hungry?
Now those vast ranges were obviously covered with soil, and I never heard of the soil being replenished with fertilizer or manure. So the grass could contain, only, elements provided by the soil. And the woolly creatures ate, only, elements provided by the soil.
You recall Shut-In Island near the cottage growing up. The legend is that local farmers, in days gone by, would ferry to it, the sheep and the lambs born in Spring, and would let them graze and fatten there, until market time in the Fall. Graze on grass sprung from soil that had never been replenished since geological times.
So, what I'm leading to is this, Why doesn't an enterprising chemist take some soil, put it in a test-tube and produce, say grass. And then, after thinking about it, by-pass the grass, and make ersatz mutton and feed the world's hungry?
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