Hacker News Reader

Comment by screye | Hacker News Reader

One meta question is whether this problem is worth solving at all ? There are places where forests are much easier to grow, and we are cutting them down by the thousands on a daily basis.

For carbon capture, it is much easier to densify regions with already suitable conditions than trying to plant a few trees in inhospitable regions.

Food is a solved problem in the modern era. High cost agriculture is unsustainable in a global market. If non-mechanized farmers in highly arable places (India) are being priced out, then what hope does harsh desert agriculture have ?

Given other 'low hanging fruit' solutions, is the opportunity cost of pursuing such a solution too high ?

View on HN

> Food is a solved problem in the modern era.

Solved problem? We've hardly even identified the actual problem.

As it it stands now farming is an open loop system and input supplies are becoming constrained and expensive. We have killed our soils and the dirt that is left behind requires external inputs to produce current crop numbers.

In addition to this, we grow a large portion of our food in the United States in areas with active droughts and impending water shortages.

Fortunately there are better ways to do things, I just don't know that we can change fast enough.

To address the greater point of your comment though, I agree.

For about six thousand years (at least), turning deserts and other marginal terrain into croplands is what tends to distinguish civilizations from non-civilizations: cities being a byproduct of the scale of agriculture activities water movement processes make possible.

Which is not me saying it is good or bad.

Just me saying ‘it is.’

With the point being it is worth deciding if there is a baby in the bath water. Or irrigation canal so to speak before deciding which moral high ground is rocky and which is silty.

>Food is a solved problem in the modern era.

It's "solved" if you can produce synthetic fertilizers from fossil fuels indefinitely.

Ammonia can be created from sunlight, water, and air. It's the really energy expensive part.

Not that we should be continuing current farming practises as they're incredibly destructive in many other ways.

Trees are good not only for carbon capture, but for soil protection, water capture, and biodiversity.

It makes sense to plant trees where they will make the most good, not where it is the easiest. Otherwise you propose to look for the keys under the lamp and not in the dark alley where they fell.

That said, planting trees the wrong place could be counterproductive as well.

The idea is to enlarge the arable/growth area or all those people will die or move and transfer the crowding to another area - which might then get depleted...

We are in such great danger that we need to do many positive moves in parallel to save our collective asses... This stupidity in Ukraine endangers millions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com