GLOBAL FUTURE ANALYSIS
ENERGY | FOOD
From the 26 barrels of oil each American use each year is 10 barrel used for the persons food production (9 for cars and 7 for home). Our current way of food production is completely based on cheap carbon energy, and as energy prices rise, our food prices will rise along with them. Fertilizer takes a lot of these 10 barrels per person for food. The production of fertilizer is basically capturing N out of the air (there by 78% abundant available) and transform it to a water dissoluble substance, which looks easy when reading this line, but is a very energy intensive process. Replacement of the chemical plant manufactured fertilizer by on the soil working (like yeast in bread) algae/bacteria that captures on location N out of the air and made it water dissoluble. This will reduce the energy demand of food severely. A second huge development will be the local production of vegetables/fruit/herbs/flowers/fish 'off-season' and 'off-location' by Grow|OS in a technological environment that very space/energy/water efficient. Grow|OS facilitates both crop specific profiles (the best artificial settings of all technological facets per hour from seed to harvest) and high tech greenhouse devices. The crop specialists/manufacturers can make just the right crop profiles and port them to Grow|OS in the Grow|OS crop porting tool and the device manufacturers just port their device to Grow|OS in the Grow|OS device porting tool. The result? Any crop can grow anywhere on the world regardless the location and the season. The fertilizer/water/space/energy demand is lowest as possible. By the artificial light (the whole spectrum available and manageable for the crop profile makers) it can be done underground in artificial levies with just houses or commercials property above it. More information on Grow|OS can be found on www.growindus.com. Even in the tropical areas of the world Grow|OS can reduce the water need of agriculture severely.
Author: Gijs Graafland
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