Questions tagged [agriculture]
For questions related to the production of certain types of food: plants, nuts and everything else that is edible and cultivated.
176
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How much would this alien parasite increase crop yields?
It is a bizarre prokaryotic flowering plant parasite which has graphene reinforced cell walls and is so distinct from all other organisms to warrant placement in its own domain of life (indeed it only ...
4
votes
2answers
122 views
Maximizing crop yields
Ladies and gentleman, today we were summoned by the Agro-nerd council with one unique mission: we must take a single acre of land and feed the largest amount of people possible. But this isn't your ...
3
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2answers
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Life on a planet with little axial tilt
As we know Earth has axial tilt and a nearly circular orbit. What if there was a habitable planet with almost no axial tilt? Obviously there wouldn't be seasons induced by tilt, instead the seasons ...
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3answers
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How many calories can a cubic meter produce?
In my Generic Dystopian Setting™, space inside the nuclear shelters is at a premium, and so people have had to come up with creative means of growing food inside them. This often includes thinking ...
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1answer
68 views
Irrigation in ancient societies [duplicate]
In what kinds of environments would the irrigation of crops require authoritarian governments ? This would be about ancient pre industrial societies.
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4answers
217 views
How much could honey-production be scaled up
Worldwide 1,850,868 tonnes of honey is produced per year
There are eight species of bee that produce honey, it's not just apis mellifera.
Supposing honey became a main food source for humans, and ...
17
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5answers
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How plausible would apple-sized raspberries be?
In one of my settings, the people have domesticated the wild raspberry plant, and selectively bred it for larger and larger berries. Would it be plausible for these berries to reach the sizes of ...
11
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6answers
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Would honey work as money?
Would honey be feasible as a kind of money? It seems ideal to me and I'm wondering if I'm missing something.
Honey is:
imperishable (like gold is)
hard to mass-produce or massively scale production ...
4
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5answers
506 views
Is relocating fertile topsoil possible/feasible?
In my world, there are two distinct regions close to each other:
fertile and very densely populated
infertile marshlands and very sparsely populated
During the mid-1900s, the cities in the region #1 ...
4
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3answers
249 views
How many generations does it take to domesticate plants?
Modern crops have diverged significantly from their wild ancestors over thousands of years of selective breeding. Not all of this was deliberate, e.g. an early adaptation of wheat was for seeds that ...
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11answers
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Reasons to settle outside cities on deserts
I need help solving some problems considering civilization living on plains
The World:
there is magic, everyone can perform it, it needs a lot of studying to perform - users need special type of ...
5
votes
2answers
350 views
What sort of weapons manufacturing could be supported by a post-apocalyptic world?
I've just been working on this post-apocalyptic setting and was wondering what level of weapons technology it would be able to support. Essentially a combination of land degradation, global warming (...
5
votes
3answers
188 views
Best real-world location for a self-sufficient villain island?
Villains like to live on private islands, where they have a secret base and can carry out their evil experiments in all privacy.
The Caribbean is popular in fiction, but for my purposes it is just ...
3
votes
5answers
201 views
Are there any crops or agricultural practices well suited for a cool and very wet climate?
I am working on one particular region in a conworld that has a particularly cool, mild, and wet climate, similar to the west coasts of Southern Chile, New Zealand's South Island, or Washington state. ...
8
votes
10answers
933 views
How can I justify that dunes keep drifting and cannot be stabilised?
I have the idea of a fantasy civilization based around shifting dunes. The idea is that the land is largely uninhabitable except for the coasts, but there are large dunes that function as habitable &...
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votes
4answers
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How realistic is an underwater farm in a glass dome?
Say that hypothetically, I wish to grow plants under the ocean. I construct a large glass dome and house the plants in a greenhouse contained in that done. How deep underwater could I plausibly have ...
7
votes
3answers
244 views
How densely populated can a rural area be?
The state of Bihar, in India, has an estimated population density of 1,307 humans per square kilometer even though 89% of the population lives in rural areas. How much more people could inhabit a ...
7
votes
4answers
173 views
Sustainability of a village of giant creatures
Let's say there is a sapient species around the size of an t-rex, they weigh on average 6000-8000 kg and are omnivores whose diet is mostly composed of plant matter, but with some meat. They are ...
4
votes
2answers
172 views
With genetic modification, can we make naturally occurring popcorn?
I thought it would be interesting if someone made naturally occurring popcorn. Like if we made this genetically modified corn reached a certain temperature, the kernels would dry out and explode. but ...
2
votes
2answers
116 views
Pre-Spaceflight Alien agriculture Part II Predators and carnivores [closed]
This is part two of a question (link to Pre-Spaceflight alien agriculture part I: herbivores and grazers) last time I asked what would Agriculture look like for sentient herbivores, trying to figure ...
2
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5answers
261 views
Pre-Spaceflight alien agriculture part I: herbivores and grazers
One of the most important developments in our history as a sentient species was the development of agriculture. When our ancestors decided to grow their food instead of gathering it, it allowed us to ...
4
votes
3answers
206 views
What would the world look like if everone was a wizard? [closed]
In my world everyone has magic powers. They aren't super powerful (no murder on sight spells...) but every single person has limited magic. What political, social, military and agricultural things ...
2
votes
3answers
238 views
Making a world as Agriculturally productive as possible
Basically, God decided to create the perfect world for man to work the land. Even then, he voluntarily decided to follow the laws of physics.
I've investigated about some factors that supposedly ...
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2answers
222 views
Civilization in a giant Flood plain continent?
Basically, in my world, there is a continent bigger than the whole of Eurasia, it is extremely flat (a 50 meter hill would be considered an important landmark), and its whole surface is a flood plain. ...
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1answer
107 views
Which Crops/Other Plants Could be Grown in a "Tropical Mediterranean" Climate?
In my book series, the region around the capital city of one of my planets has a very odd climate: while it has the year-round warm-to-hot weather of a tropical climate, it also has an exaggerated ...
6
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4answers
628 views
Which Crops Could be Grown in a Subpolar Oceanic (CFC) Climate Zone?
In my fantasy series, the area the main protagonist is from is cool and dreary year-round, but never cold and never hot. For example, it never really gets higher than the 60s farenheit at the peak of ...
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11answers
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How can massive forest burning be an entirely terrible thing?
I'm writing a story about a fantasy medieval world where flightless dragons roam vast tropical rainforests (like Vietnam or Borneo) and preys on animals and people alike. These dragons are so powerful ...
5
votes
3answers
333 views
What is the first problem an agrarian civilization try to solve with bio-circuitry?
Imagine an Agrarian civilisation (whose entire economy is based on producing and maintaining crops and farmland.) had developed a way to cultivate something like Cable Bacteria into large basic ...
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4answers
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Can horn be used as a substitute for greenhouse glass?
Setting is in an era when glass would be expensive, in a cold, mountainous region with a lot of goats and horned monsters. I know horn was used in lanterns, but I'm not sure if it would allow through ...
4
votes
1answer
191 views
World of All Sentient Races, No Animals [closed]
In a world that has no form of lower life forms, only "sophonts" how would society evolve? I'd say it applys to all animals: land, sea and air. But not plants. Probably. Maybe? Given the ...
2
votes
2answers
617 views
Best and Worst Koppen Climate Types for Human Civilization?
I've already made a Koppen climate map of (the relevant parts of) my world (see below) and I was wondering where most of the civilization and agricultural development should arise here based on that. ...
14
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14answers
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A wizard is magically engineering the perfect agriculture animal that will replace as many farm animals as possible, what is he making?
So I have this tyrannical wizard with absurd powers who is the emperor of a large and powerful empire.
Part of his success is not simply down to his ability to murder people but also his brilliant ...
9
votes
2answers
637 views
Where would the best cuts of meat be on a giant insect?
Let's say one had a giant insect the size of a sheep or a cow that some sapient species was raising as meat livestock. These animals would have to be butchered to be eaten and cannot simply be eaten ...
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3answers
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Inclinatory Cycles and Seasonbuilding
I was doing some tests in Universe Sandbox a while ago and I noticed a strange behavior shown by giant planets on highly inclined orbits. In the simulation I placed an Earth at 1 AU around the Sun, ...
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1answer
530 views
How much energy is needed to grow an acre of wheat entirely indoors?
I'm building an artificial growing environment for a heavily overpopulated world (because you can always build up, right?). When I started thinking about this, I thought it might be as simple as "...
asked Aug 28 '20 at 16:06
Join JBH on Codidact
85.7k18 gold badges169 silver badges380 bronze badges
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3answers
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Basing a civilization on maize, beans, and squash as staple foods?
In my world, an apocalypse happened, a nuclear war.
Fast forward to the future. In places like Vegas, New Fresno, and Lost Angels (post-apoc LA) I was thinking about agriculture, and after doing a ...
4
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2answers
149 views
Best hydroponic crops to support an underground society?
So, in my world, after WW3, a contingent of American government officials, military officials, scientists, and engineers hid out in a specially constructed bunker, where they'd remain for nearly 200 ...
5
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3answers
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Best crops to grow in the post-apocalyptic wasteland?
A nuclear-WWIII happens, lots of people and animals die.
Surviving humans are afterwards forced to either hide out in small survivalist compounds on the surface, or self-sufficient underground bunkers....
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5answers
245 views
Radio controlled sheep
A worldwide pandemic has killed the world's dogs and their cousins the wolves.
In sheep farming countries, dogs have been and still are an invaluable aid to sheep farmers. Some breeds will herd the ...
asked Jul 12 '20 at 21:28
chasly - supports Monica
46.9k12 gold badges142 silver badges290 bronze badges
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1answer
89 views
What plant crops can grow using only 75% light intensity? [closed]
Are there any plant crops that can grow reliably well at only 75% light illumination?
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How could a world develop where it was necessary to mine all soil for agricultural use
I want to create a world were soil mining is a major industry. Imagine a vaguely Earth sized world where almost the entire surface of the planet is under, ocean, ice caps or is a hot or cold desert ...
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5answers
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How easily can a medieval granary explode?
The villainous gremlins are attempting to cause as much damage to the lands of the Empire as possible with as little effort as practical. They have numerous plans to this end. One such plan is to blow ...
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4answers
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How to teach the Mesoamericans seafaring?
I want to have a powerful Mesoamerican civilisation by the 1100s; one that decides to sail east and discover Europe. Earlier versions of the story had them contacted by Zheng He in the 1400s, but I ...
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Could agriculture still be developed by intelligent species that lack the concept of past and future?
Imagine somewhere in the universe there is an intelligent species that is as intelligent as our stone age fore-brothers and sisters but will never establish the concept of past and future events.
...
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4answers
653 views
Could a regularly erupting volcano create fertile soil for a fantasy empire to thrive?
I have recently learnt about the flooding of the Nile and the irrigation around it, enabling plentiful crops by depositing nutrient rich silt during bronze age Egypt. I have also learnt about volcanic ...
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3answers
102 views
What aquatic life would utterly deplete the soil of a specific nutrient?
In my story an area was formerly beneath an ocean or lake. Some form of life leeched the soil of a specific mineral or substance.
Technology level is that of ~1700 Spain.
Now that the water has ...
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2answers
231 views
Developed, highly advanced metropolis short on exotic foods
I have this setting, about an advanced city state in the middle of a sparsely inhabited wasteland/grassland type area.
This state has the 90's level tech on consumer level, and a wide range from 90's ...
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2answers
230 views
How Large could this Optimized Preindustrial Population Get?
There are a lot of questions on this site about historical population levels and densities, and they have good answers about taking into how hard it was to survive in the past, and how inefficient ...
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2answers
169 views
Feasibility of Giant Rodents as Food
In my setting there is a civilization that has a decisive advantage in a fundamentally agrarian world; it is consistently more efficient in its choices of crops and livestock.
Rodents reproduce ...
3
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1answer
129 views
Could Megapodes be a Superior Food Source than Chicken?
The Megapodes are a family of birds in the galliformes order. They live primarily in Australia and are notable in being extremely precocial and laying more eggs than any other bird. They build large ...