Questions tagged [agriculture]

For questions related to the production of certain types of food: plants, nuts and everything else that is edible and cultivated.

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Societies After A Sudden 'Ice Age'

About 300 years ago, my world underwent massive climate change. It suddenly shifted from something we'd consider normal/livable to a climate similar to that of the last glacial maximum. (Side note: I ...
aquariumgravel's user avatar
14 votes
22 answers
5k views

Why would a highly advanced society still engage in extensive agriculture?

What are some plausible reasons why an advanced, futuristic society would still have a sizable agricultural/rural component, and a significant rural population? This hypothetical civilization is ...
mrz123456's user avatar
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4 votes
2 answers
259 views

Solutions for an Aquatic Race to Harvest the Sugar Under Sea Grass Meadows

So it turns out that there’s billions of Coca Colas’ worth of sugar released into the rhizosphere beneath sea grasses. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/05/220502120422.htm I have a race of ...
Thunderhammer's user avatar
3 votes
4 answers
1k views

Would a windmill shaped like a waterwheel work?

The culture I'm working on lives in a constant state of snow storms and tundra. In the snow lives a bioluminescent type of algae that thrives on the cold and only glows when its temperature goes above ...
CoffeeSluggin's user avatar
12 votes
7 answers
3k views

What earth crops could be grown on a high gravity (1.5-3g) planet?

I feel like there must be a lot of factors here from the actual structural rigidity of the plants, to how well capillary action functions in higher gravity, to how well cellular mechanisms such as ...
Adam Kabbeke's user avatar
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14 votes
16 answers
2k views

What would be the easiest way for a fictional civilization to feed carnivorous mounted animals?

Many fictional worlds have their civilizations (usually the bad guys) ride some sort of carnivorous animal, usually something like a wolf or a creodont. Think something like the Wargs from Lord of the ...
user2352714's user avatar
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6 votes
2 answers
538 views

Conditions required for a society to develop aquaculture?

While researching Kwak'wala, because I think the languages of the Pacific Northwest have this amazing aesthetic I want to mimic in some languages in my world, I came across the fact that the Kwakwak'...
Arcaeca's user avatar
  • 215
5 votes
3 answers
214 views

What are the best food crops for sapient rats?

In the near-future, a hitherto-undiscovered island becomes a training and research facility for an unnamed nation’s military. One field of research taking place on this island is in the development of ...
user98816's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
100 views

Aeroponic farming in a gas giant

In the setting of my projects there is a gas giant (with a mass of about 3 jupiters) that migrated within the habitable zone, as such it's outer atmosphere would feature plenty of water wapor and have ...
JuimyTheHyena's user avatar
15 votes
5 answers
5k views

What is the most efficient crop for converting kilowatts of UV light into calories people can eat?

If a group of people live in a closed loop environment, with all energy coming from a reactor. What crops would you grow if you only care about keeping people fed for the absolute minimum amount of ...
Adam Kabbeke's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
161 views

What could humans forage 75 million years ago in Laramidia (Western North America) and could the stuff I've found actually be plausible?

So first things first, I'm trying to put together a grounded cretaceous Western setting for a personal world building project. I'm aware of just how... Limited humans would be when it comes to diet ...
Ethan Philpot's user avatar
5 votes
5 answers
130 views

Growing space on an early planetary colony

So, humans in the distant future have launched a sleeper ship to a new solar system. Having shed its light-sails in orbit, the vessel has crash landed on it’s intended World; a barren mars-like planet....
user98816's user avatar
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4 votes
2 answers
136 views

What would the climate be like on highly volcanic planet?

I'm writing about a planet that is harsh but livable. This planet is covered with mountains and active volcanoes. Far more volcanoes than what exists on Earth. It is more like Venus but is much ...
Rhymehouse's user avatar
  • 2,608
5 votes
2 answers
415 views

Greenery on a planet without large oceans

I want to create a planet that is mostly covered in land mass, with large amounts of forest, grassland, and farmland, but does NOT have large oceans. I envision the planet to have lots of lakes of ...
Angelique's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
322 views

Food chain based in geothermal heat?

Underground dwarven (and other) civilizations are a staple of fantasy worlds. The obvious question (what do these people eat?) is rarely answered. As an explanation, I considered a food chain based in ...
X Y's user avatar
  • 521
12 votes
6 answers
3k views

Would a post-apocalyptic village full of only children be sustainable? [closed]

In Fallout 3, there is an infamous settlement the player has to go through called Little Lamplight. Little Lamplight is a cave town that exclusively consists of children and tweens under the age of 16....
Rhymehouse's user avatar
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5 votes
5 answers
1k views

How would one create a living pantry to use in an emergency?

A group of ~100 people working together have built a large forest secluded from the rest of society. The forest is ~70 km by ~70 km square. It has no seasons and can not be found or accessed by any ...
Postlim Fort's user avatar
  • 1,619
28 votes
10 answers
4k views

Would a purely agricultural world exporting its production be sustainable when it comes to water?

To simplify the question as much as possible, let's assume an Earth-like planet, part of a galaxy-spanning civilization. 30% is above water level, the rest is ocean of salt-water. This world is an ...
Nyakouai's user avatar
  • 4,623
6 votes
8 answers
2k views

In a world without grasses, which vegetarian foods would be best suited for long-term storage?

In my fantasy world I am going for a Mesozoic-inspired biome, so I want there to be no grasses. This means no wheat, rice, corn, and the like. I imagine that the staple crops will be tubers, legumes, ...
Claus Appel's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
251 views

The absolute limits of photosynthesis [closed]

I have found that some crops, like sugarcane, have a photosynthetic efficiency of 12%. Using extensive genetic modification and eliminating all natural barriers, like light wavelength, chloroplast ...
Rhomaioi's user avatar
  • 769
9 votes
3 answers
911 views

Hypothetically, can early humans have an alliance with giant ants? Maybe even assist humans in the agricultural revolution?

Any ant-keeping geeks out there? I know what it's like to keep ants and they are quite fascinating, I was wondering if there were giant ants (their gigantism is due to high O2 levels) could they be ...
Mr.D's user avatar
  • 151
3 votes
6 answers
545 views

How can crops survive in a desert where it's over 110 degrees... in the Winter?

Some folks I write about live in a series of mutually-supporting, mostly self-sustaining agricultural stations/colonies on the edge of a desert, and are attempting to turn said desert greener. ...
KEY_ABRADE's user avatar
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6 votes
1 answer
101 views

Evaporation Pans by Filling Lake Makgadikgdi with water from the Zambezi [closed]

I have Macro question, and have enquired and discussed this topic with numerous people. My background is more in Economics and Finance, but I have a small little plot in the Waterberg Limpopo (Pecan ...
Charl Yazbek's user avatar
6 votes
3 answers
232 views

At what point does a human civilization on a dead planet require petroleum?

I’ve gone and designed an entire earth-like planet where life had never evolved. Oil can be reached if needed—the purpose of this question is to find how far they can go and avoid it. (Oil is ...
Vogon Poet's user avatar
  • 8,129
21 votes
19 answers
4k views

Could animal husbandry in space ever hold economic value?

Could animal husbandry ever have any economic value as a space-based industry? We are already on the cusp of lab-based meat that is grown as an alternative industry, but would the practice of actually ...
Wolf Beaumont's user avatar
5 votes
4 answers
398 views

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 ...
Vakus Drake's user avatar
  • 2,398
4 votes
2 answers
212 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 ...
Rhomaioi's user avatar
  • 769
3 votes
2 answers
410 views

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 ...
Boo Radley's user avatar
  • 1,154
5 votes
3 answers
403 views

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 ...
KEY_ABRADE's user avatar
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-2 votes
1 answer
89 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.
Hamza Baloch's user avatar
4 votes
4 answers
249 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 ...
Ligament's user avatar
  • 353
16 votes
5 answers
1k views

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 ...
Land Placoderm's user avatar
12 votes
6 answers
2k views

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 ...
Ligament's user avatar
  • 353
4 votes
5 answers
569 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 ...
Martin L's user avatar
  • 433
4 votes
3 answers
453 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 ...
rwallace's user avatar
  • 4,825
5 votes
11 answers
2k views

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 ...
ShadeQ's user avatar
  • 227
6 votes
2 answers
670 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 (...
Stella Platino's user avatar
5 votes
3 answers
287 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 ...
KeizerHarm's user avatar
3 votes
5 answers
364 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. ...
Antarctica07's user avatar
8 votes
10 answers
977 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 &...
Claus Appel's user avatar
  • 1,040
7 votes
4 answers
1k views

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 ...
user594273's user avatar
7 votes
3 answers
311 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 ...
Rhomaioi's user avatar
  • 769
7 votes
4 answers
209 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 ...
BoaHancocklover's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
192 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 ...
Ghazt Master's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
148 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 ...
Jacob Badger's user avatar
  • 2,323
2 votes
5 answers
316 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 ...
Jacob Badger's user avatar
  • 2,323
4 votes
3 answers
224 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 ...
ArtickokeAndAnchovyPizzaMonica's user avatar
3 votes
3 answers
385 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 ...
Rhomaioi's user avatar
  • 769
7 votes
2 answers
288 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. ...
Rhomaioi's user avatar
  • 769
-2 votes
1 answer
164 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 ...
The Weasel Sagas's user avatar

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