The Food Problem Is Bigger Than Lettuce

Michael Grunwald · 3 Jul 2023 · michaelgrunwald.substack.com ↗

3 korrents from this piece

Michael Grunwald did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
Vertical farming swaps a land problem for an energy problem, and the energy cost is what stops it feeding the world.

Their wordsI explain why in the essay; the TLDR is that they’re energy hogs. The sun is a really awesome source of calories, and it’s kind of dumb not to take advantage of it.

Interesting
Our reading
The central problem of the food system is producing much more food on much less land.

Their wordsit’s going to be incredibly difficult, but also incredibly necessary, for the world to produce much more food with much less land.

Interesting
Our reading
Vertical farms were valued as technology companies when they are in fact farms, which is why those valuations collapsed.

Their wordsBut vertical farms are not technologies. They’re farms.

Interesting