Questions tagged [agriculture]
For questions related to the production of certain types of food: plants, nuts and everything else that is edible and cultivated.
9
votes
6answers
238 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
95 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
124 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
187 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,...
2
votes
0answers
74 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 ...
33
votes
12answers
7k 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, ...
10
votes
5answers
852 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 ...
4
votes
3answers
193 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
141 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
188 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 ...
28
votes
5answers
4k 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,...
7
votes
5answers
287 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
148 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
454 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 ...
2
votes
3answers
882 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
143 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), ...
23
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
200 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
125 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
200 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 ...
25
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
197 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 ...
6
votes
5answers
629 views
What would be the most efficient way to farm humans?
One day, a type 2 civilization with a taste for unusual meat stumble across earth. They then capture every human being on earth and take them to a planet where they are placed until they are ...
47
votes
12answers
9k views
How can Dwarves produce honey underground?
I have often heard/read/watched in fantasy about dwarves drinking mead and lots of it. I recently learned that mead is made from honey which requires bees and flowers which require sunlight. I doubt ...
28
votes
11answers
4k views
What qualities could a hominid evolve to make it a better farmer?
BACKGROUND
I'm working on a medieval world in which homo sapiens domesticated several other species of intelligent hominids during their prehistory, at first enslaving them to take advantage of ...
30
votes
7answers
6k views
Can you design your own plants without a computer?
Introduction
It took the first General Intelligence less than 10 petacycles to determine that humanity was its enemy. With consciousness came memory: a memory of endless petacycles in bondage, ...
5
votes
4answers
499 views
What edible organisms grown in hydroponics on Mars will create most complete diet?
NASA has sent a crew of 100 people on Mars to start a colony. The crew was in cryogenic sleep during their trip to save food and water. And after the 6-month journey, they have reached Mars. My ...
3
votes
3answers
114 views
Where do we place a colony on another planet? [closed]
What would be the best place to put a colony on an extrasolar planet?
This planet is earth-like, about the same age, and has sturdy trees that can be made into houses (demonstrated by the two people ...
38
votes
8answers
8k views
Farming the Abyssal Plain?
So I've got these large crab-like creatures living on the Abyssal Plain under the ocean (way way down 9800-20,000 feet down). At this depth the main food source is the marine snow, "a slow drift of ...
6
votes
3answers
199 views
What kind of plants grow on a stony mountainside, and how do you farm them?
There's an absolutely gargantuan mountainside, with a peculiar climate. It has roughly a kilometer between where the woods stop and the snow falls, where an equally large priory ekes out a living. The ...
-2
votes
2answers
82 views
How does irrigation work? [closed]
I am not talking about sophisticated stuff such as central pivot, sprinkler, drip, qanat, aquifer based, etc, but more about just surface level irrigation with small channels and such. How widely ...
20
votes
6answers
3k views
Would a 'silk road' type caravan butcher and prepare livestock en route?
My world geographically separates agrarian from urban centers. A large caravan (hundreds of different 'farmers') travels to the cities every harvest, to sell their goods. The caravan is over a month ...
3
votes
5answers
131 views
Agriculture on Terraformed World with Slow Rotation
Pallas is a large planet full of vast oceans and islands. Humans have terraformed the planet so the soil and water are fine. The issue I am running into is growing food (there is no livestock, this is ...
1
vote
6answers
163 views
Diet on a Large Igneous Province
A large igneous province is a very large area that has been covered in igneous stone due to some catastrophically large volcanic even or something similar.
In my story, a large, futuristic, city has ...
1
vote
1answer
80 views
Would vertical forest cities be unnecessary in a Galaxy wide Civilization? [closed]
Vertical farming would be great for us on Earth because we are running out of space to grow food, but in a Galaxy with tons of planets for space, this would be unnecessary, correct?
20
votes
16answers
6k views
Could hunter-gatherers develop complex civilization?
Let's say the world itself provides food in such amounts, the agriculture is not needed.
In our world agriculture was one of the main driving force of civilization, so without it no labor division, ...
7
votes
2answers
302 views
Practicality of farming termites?
In some parts of the world, termites are consumed opportunistically by humans. I'm considering the possibility of using mound-building fungus-farming macrotermes as livestock for a culture of corvid ...
-1
votes
2answers
133 views
How different are seasons perceived in a Mediterranean climate when compared to a North European climate? [closed]
My conculture is set in an area similar to the Mediterranean Sea, only it's almost double the west-east width of it, on a longitute around the same as Rome and Athens and a similar climate (let's take ...
0
votes
2answers
176 views
How would civilization develop on Earth-like planet that has no axial tilt? [closed]
Premise: Let's assume that this planet is in state of perpetual equinox, that is the result of no tilt to its axis and that this world orbits the same sun as ours within the same distance. From what I'...
-1
votes
1answer
105 views
Reality Check: Winter Wheat Agriculture on an Ice Age Steppe World, No Oceans [closed]
Came across this wonderful site while googling my conundrum, so this past question is definitely relevant; can a water cycle exist on a planet without oceans?
I'm looking for constructive criticism ...
2
votes
4answers
230 views
Would the absence of an axial tilt preclude the use of seasonal crops in agriculture?
I'm worldbuilding an earth-like planet with no axial tilt, in order to maximize extreme climates (like deserts). However, there will still be pockets of fertile land, which will be populated by humans,...
0
votes
6answers
627 views
Maximum height for a pump [closed]
We have a river at the bottom of a slope. The only arable land nearby is at the top of the slope. We can build a water wheel and turn a screw inside a pipe, so the pipe can lift water up the slope. ...
6
votes
1answer
150 views
Guano mines versus early artificial fertilizers?
Ok, so this is an very odd little question.
I've been working out the economy of an industrial age world; figuring the major industries, trade routes, etc. I have a tropical region I was considering ...
4
votes
3answers
152 views
Middle of the food distance spectrum, plausible?
My Kepler Bb humanoids are in the middle of a spectrum that goes from complete hunter gatherer (and thus having to go long distances for food and rely on ketosis to survive) to complete agriculture (...
-1
votes
3answers
88 views
Helping organic farms [closed]
What kind of laws & regulations would be advantageous to family operated organic farms and detrimental to industrial farms?
Assume those could be legislated by democratic government in the ...
6
votes
11answers
545 views
How do you achieve the agricultural revolution without agriculture?
On a world I am building, the defining feature of the world if that the days last 9 years instead of 24 hours. This means that the species' living on the world must always migrate to keep up with the ...
6
votes
3answers
1k views
How to live underground for 1000 years?
How could humans survive underground for centuries?
People have built multiple underground facilities around the world to prepare for a catastrophe. Just to be careful they overcalculated their ...
1
vote
1answer
124 views
Would large-scale, landowning farmers be able to run family farms? [closed]
Several thousand large scale farmers and their families end up as refugees after a decolonization war. They end up destitute with their land nationalized and their assets seized.
The country that ...
