Questions tagged [agriculture]
For questions related to the production of certain types of food: plants, nuts and everything else that is edible and cultivated.
122
questions
4
votes
2answers
172 views
Why would a spaceship rely on hydroponics instead of algae for food?
Currently, NASA is investigating the use of hydroponics, aeroponics, and other low soil techniques to grow regular plants for consumption and oxygen generation/CO2 removal on long voyages in space. ...
7
votes
3answers
961 views
Can an animal produce milk all the time?
So as most of you probably know, cows don't produce milk all year round for no reason, they need to be pregnant and then you gotta do something with the calves…
Now in my story that has an ecosystem ...
15
votes
3answers
546 views
Medieval Crop Yields
I'm the DM for a D&D campaign, set in a sort of "realistic-fantasy" setting. There's monsters and magic and stuff, but there's not enough of that for the average medieval community to see much ...
2
votes
2answers
133 views
GMO Agriculture - Medieval farming with modern day seeds and advanced robots, how hard or how easy could it be to be rich using them?
Let's just say that you are stuck in a different world. You found a biological research and production starship wreck...
You decided to have GMO plants/seeds agriculture on your land that you bought ...
3
votes
0answers
157 views
How much agricultural land per person in medieval society? [closed]
In medieval society corresponding to approximately year 1200 in Holy Roman Empire, how much agricultural land would there be on average per person? What would be typical composition of the land? (...
7
votes
3answers
378 views
Fertilizing desert in magical medieval world
Suppose there exists a magic-based civilization. Their mining techniques are medieval and their understanding of organic chemistry and biology are on the Enlightenment era level. However, they are ...
7
votes
1answer
147 views
What's the minimal space/mass required to feed a human indefinitely with advanced technology?
I know there are similar questions on here already, yet this is different because I don't care about traditional farming in this question.
Environment
This meant for food production on ...
9
votes
4answers
506 views
Crop production in mountains?
Would potato- or grain-like crops be able to flourish in northern alpine regions? There's a lot to be said about the Andeans, but the have the benefit of living near the equator that other ...
20
votes
7answers
7k views
How large would a mega structure have to be to host 1 billion people indefinitely?
Ruins of buildings, abandoned cities and suburbs dot the coasts of Earth's landmasses, inhabited by wild animals and the pieces of a once vibrant civilization. The oceans are relatively empty, the ...
-1
votes
1answer
104 views
What is the number of square kilometers of crops necessary to feed a population of 100,000? [duplicate]
Yo. I have a city. Pop. 100,000. They need to eat. Due to pantheism as their government-enforced religion, they do not eat meat. I need to know how much space in square kilometers would be needed in ...
16
votes
10answers
7k views
Is a world with one country feeding everyone possible?
I imagine a world with the size of Europe and the Middle-East. In this world, with lands and seas that are comparable to Europe and the Middle East for its geography, farming is not developed. In fact,...
12
votes
8answers
3k views
Keeping the dodos out of the field
About 100 people settled in a tropical area near a seashore five years ago. They've been feeding themselves by hunting and fishing, but now they're also trying to grow crops, including hemp and corn. ...
30
votes
17answers
5k views
What food production methods would allow a metropolis like New York to become self sufficient
In my overcrowded future setting the Hegemony (government of the Earth) wants to make the metropolises of the world self sufficient when it comes to food production. What farming/food production ...
8
votes
4answers
215 views
Could a planet evolve to have jungles, woodlands, savannas and meadows - but no animal bigger than an insect?
I want to have a group of space colonists get stranded on a planet where the only way they can get enough nourishment is to gather or cultivate edible plants.
3
votes
5answers
389 views
What farming practices would allow the Earth to support a population as high as 200 billion
Welcome to the year 2170, the predictions of our grandparents were so wrong: The human population didn't cap at 20 billion, it went far past that. The global population is now roughly 200 billion.
...
4
votes
2answers
84 views
Growing seaweeds on lakes and seas in tundra-like biome
Ok so I was thinking about a Viking-like civilization living in a tundra biome. So, other than raiding villages southwards or hunting wild beasts in the forest, could they cultivate seaweed for ...
10
votes
4answers
226 views
What sort of animals would a civilization of small feline omnivore humanoids domesticate
I'm playing around with the idea of making a world heavily based on one of my favorite childhood book series. (basically a fanmade rewrite of sorts). The series is called Warriors, and is about ...
5
votes
3answers
774 views
Gaining more land by draining wetlands
I’m building a country located in today’s Argentina. It is as developed as Canada or Australia, and has several times bigger population than today’s Argentina.
Which brings us to the problem:
...
11
votes
3answers
699 views
The effect of fishing on total land area needed to feed an island settlement
I am trying to create an island with a large settlement on it, the people of this settlement need to be able to sustain themselves and according to Medieval demographics made easy (MDME)
A square ...
1
vote
3answers
222 views
Can a civilization arise around insect cultivation
Unnecessary Setup
In my story, a race of gods arrive in our solar system from the far flung colonies of a Type III civilization. When they arrive at Earth and see the rise of hominids, they split ...
13
votes
11answers
4k views
At great altitude, what conditions are needed to support a human community?
In my part of this (Earth-like) world, there is a stable community of completely isolated pre-industrial humans, numbering perhaps 1,800.
They live at an altitude of (at least) 25,000 feet (7620 ...
-2
votes
3answers
118 views
Interplanetary Agriculture
What would be a good way to set up farms and trade among planets to ensure that the people of each planet are well fed?
11
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3answers
2k views
Can a gorse plant be used as a source of food?
I have a fantasy kingdom set up where the landscape is mostly mountainous with rock and pine forests, like the picture below. As such, it is quite difficult to have agriculture. One plant which can ...
5
votes
2answers
220 views
How would climate be affected on a plateau 10 km above sea level?
I am curious as to what physical geographic features would be present on a plateau 10km above sea level. The Tibetan plateau is only 4km above sea level, so would more than doubling the height ...
7
votes
3answers
192 views
Technology to produce food without land, what will happen with the land next?
Let's say we have the technology to produce all of the human food in factories without the need for land (i.e. Solarfood, Memphis Meats). Right now, there is about 50% of all habitable land use for ...
10
votes
4answers
503 views
Best Foods/Plants to Grow in Generational Spaceship?
Hopefully this isn't a duplicate; I wasn't able to find another question which addressed this, at any rate.
Let's say I have a generational spaceship going off to another solar system to establish a ...
9
votes
6answers
600 views
How could an agricultural revolution develop in medieval societies inhabiting a tropical environment work?
I'm trying to work on a chapter in my lore but I'm stumped on how agricultural developments could work in tropical settings, and real world examples so far mostly include temperate places, I.e. ...
4
votes
1answer
106 views
How much land to keep a sauropod in captivity?
How large of an area in acres would a large sauropod (Apatosaurus) need to maintain itself while also not eating all of the vegetation within the area.
So basically how large of a forested area would ...
3
votes
1answer
194 views
Underwater Farming
In my colonizing business, some colonists build a underwater base on a all-about nice planet. They are using food storage right now; but now they need to start farming. Ive looked up some farming ...
7
votes
7answers
226 views
How do I fit multiple food crop species into close proximity?
In the setting I'm building now, then there's supposed to be a location where the natives had found three food staple crops within close proximity with one another, near a handful of rivers. Naturally,...
3
votes
0answers
105 views
What Would Be The Most Common Food Staples For A Tilted Earth [closed]
On this planet, which resembles Earth but tilted so that Africa is now the north pole and the middle of the Pacific is the South pole (the geography are quite similar to the world of Jaredia over on ...
34
votes
12answers
8k views
Why would the tribes choose herding instead of agriculture in the Great Plains?
So, in my story, the entire world has just gone to absolute crap. The largest war in human history, WW3 in October 1962, has just caused destruction in most of the United States, the Soviet Union, ...
11
votes
5answers
1k views
Can sustainable farming be done in the suburbs in this supernatural post-apocalyptic scenario?
So, here's my situation: my first book revolves around an unknown entity giving modern day humanity an assortment of supernatural powers. Every week a new power is given to everyone on Earth over the ...
22
votes
10answers
6k views
Really, really hard wood - how is it cut and formed?
In the County of the Isles, on Ironwood Island, there grow the Ironwood Trees. Ironwood is close to steel in strength, doesn't take an edge well, and is lighter than steel. The technology level of ...
5
votes
3answers
259 views
Could Ice Age vikings practice large-scale domestication?
So in this book series I'm writing (link here if you want to know more about that), there is this planet called Ryu 108. The planet is made up of two continents. The southern continent is heavily ...
6
votes
4answers
170 views
Practicality of lighter-than-air aircraft for temporary agricultural irrigation?
I'm building a colony that is an unintended eclectic museum of simultaneous, anachronistic stages of industry: Industrial, Machine Age, and Atomic+ (onward into more esoteric, advanced technologies ...
1
vote
4answers
269 views
Crops to grow on a badly supplied planet
A few hundred people are colonists on an erratically-supplied (temperate zone) "earthlike" planet. The company which put them there wanted to keep them alive and growing basic foodstuffs, in case it ...
34
votes
6answers
5k views
What's the smallest patch of land a single person could be food-sufficient on indefinitely, in a temperate climate?
One person lives alone with access to a small patch of useful land. They have to grow all their own food and survive indefinitely.
This small patch of fertile soil is the only useful land. No grazing,...
8
votes
5answers
411 views
The Diet of Space Dwellers
I've looked around the forum but didn't find an answer to this particular question. In short, what food could realistically be produced in a space station assuming current (or near future) ...
15
votes
10answers
2k views
How do forest-worshipping Indigenous Peoples engage in Agriculture?
I am writing a book set in a world that is a fleshed out version of a myth told by Central African Hunter Gatherers (Congo Pygmies) and the African groups north of them, generally going as follows:
...
2
votes
2answers
172 views
The flying state, estimating an “ideal” size
The in-universe solution to the Infinite Sea problem, crossing millions of kilometers of landless ocean, is actually "create a flying island of X acres and take the trip in style" because there is ...
10
votes
2answers
547 views
Mobile hydroponics vehicle
I had an idea for a group of nomads/travellers who sustain themselves with mobile hydroponics system and whatever they can grow on the move.
How feasible would it be to have a mobile hydroponic farm ...
1
vote
3answers
1k views
How spread apart were cities, towns, etc. in the Middle Ages given food production capabilities [closed]
There is a video about why certain cities are a specific distance apart and how it has to do with travel capabilities of the time and other economic reasons.
I was wondering how this applied to ...
3
votes
1answer
181 views
Agricultural population reality check
I am designing a fictional world (no magic, real-world technologies). I have an unexplained anomaly in my world: There is a natural "bold spot" in the jungle (in the thousands of square kilometers), ...
24
votes
5answers
3k views
Practicality of Heated Crop Fields
I've been trying to design a world and I have been running into some issues with a certain application for a piece of magic.
Basically, it is the use of "heat rocks" to warm up fields so that crops ...
-1
votes
3answers
236 views
Is this farming strategy viable?
Consider a society that doesn't have modern fertilizer and practices crop rotation. This society is concerned with the short-term issues with crop rotation and is considering a modified method they ...
1
vote
5answers
159 views
Could sweet and hot peppers come from the same plant?
One of the veggies that my Keplerians grow is peppers. I have heard of some sweet peppers cross pollinating with hot peppers making the sweet peppers hotter and the hot peppers sweeter. However that ...
7
votes
1answer
239 views
Feasibility Check- Is aquaculture a possible food source for my civilization
Inspired (loosely) by societies like the Gunditjmara and natives of the Pacific Northwest, I always have envisioned a system of aquaculture for one of my concultures, though agricultural studies are ...
26
votes
7answers
6k views
How can I make manure without cows?
Background
There is a world with flora and fauna based on the life forms that evolved on Gondwana (see here for previous questions). Humans colonized this continent from a distant one some thousands ...
6
votes
1answer
216 views
Only Three Books: Kickstarting grain production after civilization collapses
Global plagues have dropped the population to 1 billion and global civilization has collapsed. In an effort to save future civilization some time, you want to provide some information to kick start ...
