The hydroponic revolution

... is here. The NYT is looking at the pros and cons; I got this from DNYUZ.

The pros are - it works anywhere you got the land, including bad land. This article was filed from Kentucky where, indeed, are plenty of hilltops nobody wants to live on (some scraped by bad mining-practices). It uses (much) less land than a flat plain of dirt. Much less water too since it is all in-house whence they recapture the transpiration. That means - it can grow next to you; which lowers shipping-costs too, and the rigs on the road. The boosters say it should even work on Antarctica or the Moon. I'd add Venus.

The main con (which I'll concede): it uses energy. They don't always have solar on the Moon. (Antarctica is a special case where they do always have solar... until they don't. So: grow a LOT and store it.)

I hope energy shouldn't be too hard to get.

As for the Real Organic Project so-called: they are worried about their (literal) rice-bowl. I hear a lot of muh-safety from them: no one yet knows what kind of long-term health impact fruits and vegetables grown without soil will have. Ayn Rand had their number.

ODD BEDFELLOWS 7/7: Consider fake meat. Expect the soil-only "organic" people to make common cause with the "It's What's For Dinner" crew. (I'd like fake meat to compete with real meat someday, but that day is not today. I get the feeling that the day of hydroponic vegetables is today, by contrast...)

ODDER BEDFELLOWS 7/8: I've my differences with Buck Throckmorton over at Ace's, but he does at least know what the "supply chain" is. Jayne Cobb would say it's the chain your supplier goes and beats you with when you don't have an alternative supplier on hand. Makes Buck more internally-consistent than the average Tennessee lawyer, anyway (do hydroponics work, or don't they, Professor?).