Suppose we didn't need light to grow food

On topic of acetate, and of "dark food" generally: UCR speak of using the former to grow the latter - like, grow your vitamins, not just make carbs. I figured I'd dig out what I supposedly learned in GCSE Chemistry. This was one of my "A" exams. I need to prove that time and expense wasn't wasted, at least to me mum.

Acetate is a family of organic molecules; "acetate" on its own is the ion. Plain hydrogen acetate is the acetic acid - that is, vinegar.

I don't think acid is good for plants. Here, other acetates will be used. When I looked it up on Bing I got a bunch of stuff attached to a radical "R". That R is an organyl group; those diagrams will be esters.

Without light the plants won't be giving off oxygen - but they don't die. They don't need light to live, they need fuel. As for the dirt they grow on, this is also a process we don't need lights-on for.

What has happened here is that the process of creating fuel, for the plant, has given off the oxygen already. Photosynthesis turns carbondioxide and water into glucose. The plants eat that; day or night.

Elizabeth C. Hann, Robert Jinkerson and their crew are making several claims. First, that plants can eat the nonacidic acetates, instead of the sugars. Second, that this team can create acetate(s) (much) cheaper than sugars, and in fact cheaper than any plants create sugars. Just add energy which energy can come from anywhere. The two processes together - creation of alternate plantfood, and the plants' consumption of the plantfood - add up to the savings. Which - they also claim - beats out The Natural Way.

They are teasing Mars, as usual; but we should also consider the Moon or just plain space. For my part, I like that this method should work underground. Under Venus, the energy-supply is a katabasis-driven dynamo which output is effectively infinite.

Yeast can be fed 18x as efficiently through this process; even algae at 4x. UCR are also looking at cowpea, tomato, tobacco, rice, canola, and green pea. Wut? Toe-bah-koe...? I am a Coloradan, tell me more of this strange herb of which you speak.

BOY THIS POST WAS BAD 8/22/23: So I rewrote it.