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Science

Growing Food With Air and Solar Power Is More Efficient Than Planting Crops (phys.org) 247

Posted by BeauHD from the food-from-air dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, the University of Naples Federico II, the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Porter School of the Environment and Earth Sciences has found that making food from air would be far more efficient than growing crops. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their analysis and comparison of the efficiency of growing crops (soybeans) and using a food-from-air technique. [...] To make their comparisons, the researchers used a food-from-air system that uses solar energy panels to make electricity, which is combined with carbon dioxide from the air to produce food for microbes grown in a bioreactor. The protein the microbes produce is then treated to remove nucleic acids and then dried to produce a powder suitable for consumption by humans and animals.

They compared the efficiency of the system with a 10-square-kilometer soybean field. Their analysis showed that growing food from air was 10 times as efficient as growing soybeans in the ground. Put another way, they suggested that a 10-square-kilometer piece of land in the Amazon used to grow soybeans could be converted to a one-square-kilometer piece of land for growing food from the air, with the other nine square kilometers turned back to wild forest growth. They also note that the protein produced using the food-from-air approach had twice the caloric value as most other crops such as corn, wheat and rice.
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Growing Food With Air and Solar Power Is More Efficient Than Planting Crops More

Growing Food With Air and Solar Power Is More Efficient Than Planting Crops

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  • Evoloution (Score:4, Insightful)

    by theshowmecanuck ( 703852 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @10:38PM (#61511916) Journal
    I think I will stick to food I have evolved over a few hundred thousand years to eat.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Cool. But we could feed this food to that food and then the vegans could stop whining about it.

      And we can feed this stuff to people in space.

      • Re:Evoloution (Score:5, Insightful)

        by fermion ( 181285 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @10:57PM (#61511954) Homepage Journal
        Of course if we ate food we evolved to eat we would not cultivate anything. Agriculture is only 10,000 years old and flies in the face of a half million years of Homo Sapien evolution. I have squirrels and raccoons and possums and fruit in my backyard in the city. It is only the prissy snowflakes that require sanitized store bought food that causes our problems. Idiots like those on the paleo diet who eat fish when they are no where near a lake or ocean or chicken shipped half way around the country. Do they think cavemen had interstate highways?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Cederic ( 9623 )

          I have squirrels and raccoons and possums and fruit in my backyard in the city. It is only the prissy snowflakes that require sanitized store bought food that causes our problems.

          Shut all the shops. Stop selling all the sanitised food.

          Tell me, what are you eating next week, when all the squirrels, raccoons, possums and fruit have been consumed by hungry neighbours?

        • Most of humanity lived near rivers, ponds, or lakes until they learned to dig wells.

        • Do they think cavemen had interstate highways?

          Probably.

          And most of them probably believe that if they were dropped into the world 50K years back, they'd be able to run it to suit them....

        • Of course they did! Ancient aliens built them for Atlantis, everyone knows that!

        • Most agriculture grows food we were already eating. Fruit, grains, meat and fish were already common in the human diet. Dairy, not so much, though there is evidence that it was consumed by adults over 6000 years ago, even though most humans had no lactase to handle the lactose in milk. Lactase is a relatively recently evolved ability for our species.

      • Yeah, feed for livestock is the only place I see this having a chance to shine. I don't want to eat powdered bacteria, but if cows like it I'll still eat them.

        • Re:Evoloution (Score:4, Interesting)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2021 @08:18AM (#61512686)

          People consume quite a lot of protein powder in pure form, and algae is already an ingredient in many, many foods. I don't think we're going to start eating bacterial slurry three meals a day anytime soon, but the food industry has lots of demand for basic food additives with particular properties.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Daina.0 ( 7328506 )

      It appears to be true soylent color-of-some-sort. It's not green since that's people. Maybe it's red or yellow.

      OT, yet Soylent: I had a co-worker who was an extra in the film Soylent Green. He was in the scoop of a front end loader that was scooping up people to haul them off. In the movie they were screaming. He told me they were laughing but the sound editor put in screams. So if you ever see that movie, notice that they are laughing.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        People really fail to grasp algae. It grows fast, it has a simple genetic structure and it can be genetically modified to produce anything.

        So basically you can have in your kitchen, an aquarium that grows the ingredients for ham and egg and lettuce salad. Algae plants modified until the leaves form a square of algae bacon, just engineered over time, peel the skin and the sandwich sized slab of algae ham, grown to taste like ham with a texture similar to ham, another leaf, a slice of bread needing to be pee

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ichijo ( 607641 )

      Or we could feed it to cows and then eat the new, guilt-free eco-cows!

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Cederic ( 9623 )

        I don't mind whether a cow feels guilty, I care whether it tastes good.

        (Spoiler: It does.)

    • there is very little of that available. The majority of what you buy fruit/veg and meat are all genetic variants that are mostly from the last hundred years or so. This is really no different.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      I think I will stick to food I have evolved over a few hundred thousand years to eat.

      While that sounds nice, unless and until the world population is significantly reduced, that is not long-term viable. But don't worry, there will be a huge die-off of the species that drastically grew beyond sustainable levels in the not too distant future. After that, we will likely not be able to make things like that powder anyways.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ghoul ( 157158 )
        Or the species expands to new breeding grounds.Poor Mars

      • It's only not viable because of the asshole patrol of greedy fucks lined up to take a piece out of everything.

        We can live sustainably on existing crops but that's not the choice we're making.

    • Oh yes, evolution has finely tuned your biology to thrive on Arby's and diet coke.

    • I think I will stick to food I have evolved over a few hundred thousand years to eat.

      Agree. There's so much that we don't yet understand about our biomes, microbiomes & nutrition. Plus, the USA has effectively banned research into the nutritional efficacy of dietary supplements at the behest of the food industry so that they can continue to make unsupported, outlandish claims.

      I can see this having niche applications, like some of the examples others have posted on this thread. I can't see it as a broad replacement for dietary protein for most people. I suspect we'd see all kinds of diet

    • I'll stick with food, period. Soybeans don't really qualify.

    • I think I will stick to food I have evolved over a few hundred thousand years to eat.

      And to think you've developed the ability to form sentences in such a brief time.

  • Proposal to call this product "McFood" (Score:3)

    by FeltLion ( 1289024 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @10:55PM (#61511948) Journal
    M as in Micro and C as in Crop, Ergo McFood. Microbe Food. I'm lovin' it!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Honestly if someone could invent a meal pill that gives me all the nutrition I need and makes me feel full I'd switch to those for most meals.

      • I don't think I'm ready to switch to a pill. I'd still want flavor, and having a meal over 10 or 15 minutes is an opportunity for me to take a break from what I'm doing, which I need for my own mental health.

        I could imagine this turning into yet another class division - cheap protein pills given to the lower classes while the upper classes eat their burgers and fresh salads.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          I'd take the pill and use the time to go for a walk.

          I imagine at first it would be expensive like those meal-replacement shakes (Huel and Syolent) but eventually you are probably right, real food would become pricey in comparison.

  • Efficiency, not cost (Score:5, Informative)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @10:55PM (#61511950) Journal

    This is more energy efficient (based on solar input), but according to the paper, it is also more expensive than traditional alternatives.

  • Dozer said it best (Score:3)

    by TWX ( 665546 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @11:15PM (#61511992)

    "It's a single-celled protein combined with synthetic aminos, vitamins, and minerals. Everything the body needs."

    • yea yea Matrix quote. Only problem of course is the body can't survive on protein alone. Our bodies run on Fat, or un-ideally on carbs.

      If all you eat is protein you will get hungrier and hungrier because your body isn't getting the fat it needs to create the energy it runs on. It's a bad way to lose fat deposits as your body consumes the body fat to supply what's missing but after awhile your body will start digesting your own muscles to reduce caloric demand, long before your fat deposits are gone and the

      • Time for an update of your food science. You'll be shocked to discover high carb, low protein diets are now the new "best" diet. But the carbs need to be non-soluble or you get the worst diet.

  • I hear it tastes a bit like pork. Just think of how good a SLT (that a Soylent lettuce tomato) will taste after a hard day's work.

    And its renewable, combined with the future population controls it will be fully self-sustaining.

  • the researchers used a food-from-air system that uses solar energy panels to make electricity, which is combined with carbon dioxide from the air to produce food for microbes grown in a bioreactor. The protein the microbes produce is then treated to remove nucleic acids and then dried to produce a powder suitable for consumption by humans and animals.

    They say they're doing all that.

    But they've been hiding the truth all along: It turns out their process didn't actually work.

    In reality, that powder they've been selling you is made out of PEOPLE!

  • Protein is protein (Score:3)

    by WoodstockJeff ( 568111 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2021 @11:22PM (#61512004) Homepage

    They also note that the protein produced using the food-from-air approach had twice the caloric value as most other crops such as corn, wheat and rice.

    Generally speaking, different types of nutrients have the same caloric value per gram. Looking at a nutrition label in front of me, that's 4 food calories for protein.

    If the "protein" of this proposed food has "twice the caloric value" of regular protein, that puts it in the category of fat (9 calories per gram).

  • Who knew that making soylent green was so efficient.

  • Soylent Green is people. ...I MEAN food from air!!

  • Growing crops IS a food from air system

    The majority of the non-water mass of the plant is carbon, virtually all of which comes from the atmosphere

    • Speaking of carbon; cute meme I saw yesterday had a cartoon of Bugs Bunny holding up a sign saying "You are the carbon they want to reduce."

  • Nope (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sudonim2 ( 2073156 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2021 @12:09AM (#61512062)
    As someone who has actually eaten (and paid money to do so) protein grown in a vat from microbes, I can tell you that they're deeply unappetizing. During WWII, the US produced 40% of its fruits and vegetables from domestic gardens. We'd be better off banning the growing of grass for decorative purposes and instituting municipal farming service, installing geodesic greenhouses, and solar-LED grow lights for night. These people read about people eating tank-grown food in sci-fi an didn't realize it was meant as dystopic, not aspirational. It's like these people don't understand that good food is a necessity. Just because your mother didn't know how to cook doesn't mean you get to take it out on the rest of us!
    • Most crops are not grown for direct human consumption, but as food for animals, that are for human consumption. Cattle farming takes roughly 10 times the space of crop farming for the same amount of calories, so this technology has the potential to keep meat production viable, as meat consumption inevitably grows worldwide.

    • A lot of crops nowadays are grown for animal not human consumption. Maybe we could feed this microbe stuff to our cows and chickens?

  • But not as simple.
    Many things can be efficient if they get complex enough.
    Bio-reactors, microbe colonies (wanna bet THAT requires a VERY clean environment?)

    And while they compare to a soybean crop, it's not soybeans or much of anything we'd recognize as food.

  • Did they include the costs of the solar panels, and the effort to mine the rare earth materials that go into solar power? Solar power systems crap out after a few years; did they include the costs to replace them?

    And I'm damned if I'm going to be eating soybeans and tofu for any significant fraction of my caloric intake.

    • The question isn't about costs, it's about efficiency.

      • Efficiency isn't a deciding factor in most cases unless costs are pretty much equivalent. Just because a method is fractionally more efficient, that doesn't mean this way is the best way.

  • "10-square-kilometer piece of land in the Amazon used to grow soybeans could be converted to a one-square-kilometer piece of land for growing food from the air, with the other nine square kilometers turned back to wild forest growth."

    That is a very optimistic summary. Why wouldn't they just have ten square kilometers of solar powered soybeans and then try and put the competition out of business so they can control the market? Right up there with computers saving you time I would say.

  • Calories vs Nutrients (Score:3)

    by stikves ( 127823 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2021 @01:17AM (#61512108) Homepage

    Our bodies need calories as fuel, however nutrients as building blocks and "grease" to make things happen. For example, without B vitamins, particularly B12, your brain will not function.

    Yes, if you go vegan, without taking supplements, or eating the right veggies, you can function well for a while. The body will use existing B12 stores for a few years, but then will fail in a very bad way.

    (Not against being vegetarian, or vegan. I too enjoy the occasional salad. However these diets require significant care).

    Same with this bacteria meal. Yes, this will give you the ATPs, and probably *many* of the nutrients you need (the paper lists them), yet real "food" can still not be replaced.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by phsdv ( 596873 )
      Other sources of B12 deficiency: Atrophic gastritis, in which your stomach lining has thinned. Pernicious anemia, which makes it hard for your body to absorb vitamin B12. Conditions that affect your small intestine, such as Crohn's disease, celiac disease, bacterial growth, or a parasite. Alcohol misuse or heavy drinking can make it harder for your body to absorb nutrients or prevent you from eating enough calories. One sign that you lack enough B12 may be glossitis, or a swollen, inflamed tongue. Immune sy
    • It is because most people just forget history and move on to the next big thing. We take so much for granted as a varied diet almost falls in our laps. But ask sailors in the 18th century about scurvy. What is funny to me is you get these ideas from the same people who are probably drinking Italian bottled water that is anything but energy efficient.

  • You go live in a country where the politicians mandate this fine nutritive paste, and I'll move somewhere free.

  • How about we use a MSR nuclear power plant to generate the electricity and restore ALL of the rain forest. It could also desalinate water for consumption and agriculture.

    And before people start scream about nuclear power I would suggest you actually do some independent research into the subject and not just let the talking heads on TV tell you what to think. There are methods of extracting energy from fissile elements that are cleaner and have less of an impact on the environment than covering the world w

    • Why should I ask myself leading questions obviously biased against solar and wind and towards nuclear? Should I not ask myself how uranium mine tailings can be recycled, or why, if there exist more efficient methods of using nuclear fuel, how come they're not in use?

      • Why should I ask myself leading questions obviously biased against solar and wind and towards nuclear?

        Because you might learn something new that could broaden your view of the world?

        I also can't help but notice that you didn't challenge the validity of any of the questions I posed, only that they had a bias, just as yours do. Perhaps because you know as well as I that they raise valid points about the issues with solar and wind power being as "green" as people want to believe.

        I don't know about the tailings issue, I haven't looked into the side environmental impact of Uranium mining before (I prefer Thoriu

  • Try the primordial soup and cicada poppers combo meal.

  • Best is to in vitro synthesis food. Even growing plants is stupid, we should just eat synthetic food. We can synthesize all the proteins we need. Add whatever minerals. Let plants live free in the forests where they can be eaten by animals.

  • but you know.. manganese, zinc, iron, chromium, the various vitamins and other trace elements....

    They are kind of required.

  • Why do Western scientists have such a hardon for preventing farming in the Amazon. Just once I would like to see a scientific paper which couches the benefits of whatever its touting in terms of how many acres of the Midwest could be turned back into Arboreal forest due to their discovery. North America is the worst example of environmental degradation where the entire midwest has been changed from old growth forest to cropland. And its not even efficient cropland - it wouldnt survive wthout govt subsidies.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by N1AK ( 864906 )
      Not to diminish the potential importance of the Midwest, and the politically driven insanity of the subsidies system, but there's quite a lot of evidence that rainforests are incredibly important for carbon capture, bio-diversity, and even climate within a large region and it's still there (though reaching a tipping point towards decline even without deforestation).

    • I live in New England, and it is a perfect example of how much of North America really wants to be covered in forest. Precolonial Massachusetts was nearly all forest. Then for 200 years it was deforested and farmed. As farming moved Midwest it slowly recovered back to a forest. It's fun to walk through forests in central MA and randomly come across a farmers stone wall.

    • Yeah, too bad about all those forests on prairies, steppes and grasslands of the Great Plains.

      Oh, wait, all those words mean "place without trees", which is what we found when we got there. Never mind.

  • This term is bandied about a lot. For example Private sector is more efficient. Efficiency is defined here as the ability to generate profits for its owners. If providing value for money, improving service, is the only way to make more profits, the private sector would do so. Like they do with plain staple foods in the grocery store. But if they can make more profits by sacrificing service, they will do it instantly, as they do in internet service in areas where they have monopoly.

    Here efficiency is defin

  • Growing Food Mushrooms is known to be significantly more efficient, use significantly less resources and be significantly less labour intensive and it's basically the same thing what these guys are doing. The problem is, of course, turning mushrooms into something other than mushrooms. Because just eating those is not really the pinnacle of food variety.

    Microorganisms producing our food is a very neat thing, especially if you can turn their output into simulated meat that is indistinguishable from dead mamm

  • Farming is... (Score:3)

    by JoeRobe ( 207552 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2021 @06:32AM (#61512452) Homepage

    Farming *is* growing food from air and solar power. This is such a cool aspect of crop growth - almost all of that carbon in the plant is derived from CO2. The plant is literally made out of thin air, and powered by solar energy. The we eat it (or we eat the animal that eats it).

    The second aspect to this that I think is worth asking is carbon footprint. When sustainable farming methods are used, many crops are carbon neutral or negative. How carbon negative is this method? The benefit to the Amazon recovery is very real. If this were installed in, say, central Germany, would that efficiency and climate benefit still hold?

  • TFS is misleading (Score:3)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2021 @06:46AM (#61512482) Homepage

    TFS is somewhat misleading. According to the actual paper [pnas.org], their technique produces 10 times as much protein in the same area, and 2 times as many calories. So, really, it's only 2 times as efficient (why? Because the result is mostly protein, with few fats or carbohydrates). That's no criticism of TFA, which does fair accounting. For example, they use real-world efficiency of solar cells, not theoretical efficiency.

    That said, for only a 2-1 advantage, I don't think too many people will be enamored with bacterial protein powder.

  • Good News, Citizen (Score:3)

    by KermodeBear ( 738243 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2021 @07:19AM (#61512546) Homepage

    You will eat the bugs. You will live in the pod. You will own nothing, and you will be happy.

  • I usually arrive to my sleep pod around 7:30pm, I got a good deal on it it's only $30,000 credits per week. When I arrive I really look forward to eating my proti-cracker rations. I get 300g per day, some people say it's too much, but I'm glad overseer Trixie Pelosi increased the rations from 280g. Some people call xem a White Capitalist because of that, but xeyr OK in my book. We're not barbarians like the creatures in the Outlands or MegaBaltimore.

    Now excuse my while I cuddle-in with my e-anime pillow whi

  • Hydroponics works super well for growing stuff as well, except that hydro-vedgies taste like nothing... sure, they're nutritious, but people aren't going to massively switch to a tasteless alternative just to save the planet.

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