IF life on Earth like planets develops like here
- Thread starter HG_B
- Start date
Wait, what?? No liver and onions? No chicken gizzards?
Noooooooooo!!!
Just visit Giblet 2. A quick 4 parsec trip from New Azuria...
Yeah - they missed a lot of sci-fi tropes and cultural ramifications of tech. Since the early '80s, IMTU, the selling, distribution and consumption of 'natural' and 'native' food stuffs is restricted within my Imperium. Generally all foods must be 'grown' in pristine, certified, environments.
Part of the background I give to my players is their cultural fear of contamination from 'natural' sources that is widespread and promoted by the government. Somewhat rational considering an interstellar community - but mostly historical given high medical/bio tech. My premise being that such now more supports a niche market mindset for 'exotic' foods.
This has the 'benefit' of making livestock smuggling a not uncommon endeavor (and fun to pull on PCs when they find out what they are smuggling or what they've just stolen and then have to deal with it). Firefly brought this back to my attention with their cattle run episode.
Noth'in but bacon bits left...
Why don't they just irradiate the stuff? It's what we do nowadays, no? Kills the seeds so they won't accidentally take root and ruin an alien ecology, kills any tiny fauna that might be hitching a ride, can even kill germies - in which case some foods will last quite a long time when properly sealed.
http://uw-food-irradiation.engr.wisc.edu/Process.html
Only problem I can see is that folk raised on vat-grown foods might consider the natural stuff too variable in taste and quality. Might also be squeemish despite the assurances that the sterilization process killed all the bugs and germies - not everyone likes the idea of the inevitable insect part or rodent hair ending up in your morning cereal. However, that kind of squeemishness kinda puts a damper on the smuggling market.
BlackBat242
SOC-14 1K
Not to mention the ethical aspects of eating living creatures!
Vat-grown meat was never part of an independently-living creature... Its Karma-free!™
Empiri-pork's Porcuswine® and BulkBacon® are approved by all the sector Dhali LLamas, as well as by Swamijis, Gurujis, and Acharyas throughout the Imperium!
And yes... I deliberately applied the camelid spelling to the Buddhist leader title.
Its Karma-free!™ is the registered slogan of the Empiri-pork Corporation, LIC. All rights reserved.
Porcuswine® and BulkBacon® are registered trademarks of the Empiri-pork Corporation, LIC. All rights reserved.
Vat-grown meat was never part of an independently-living creature... Its Karma-free!™
Empiri-pork's Porcuswine® and BulkBacon® are approved by all the sector Dhali LLamas, as well as by Swamijis, Gurujis, and Acharyas throughout the Imperium!
And yes... I deliberately applied the camelid spelling to the Buddhist leader title.
Its Karma-free!™ is the registered slogan of the Empiri-pork Corporation, LIC. All rights reserved.
Porcuswine® and BulkBacon® are registered trademarks of the Empiri-pork Corporation, LIC. All rights reserved.
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Rigel Stardin
SOC-13
There has always been a rumor about Empiri-pork.
Nothing major, mind you.
Just that one day early on, in one of the vats the cloning process went a little to far.
Of course, this is only rumor most likely spread by one of it rivals in the industry.
But if you ever run into a fifty ton pig, you'll know why...
Nothing major, mind you.
Just that one day early on, in one of the vats the cloning process went a little to far.
Of course, this is only rumor most likely spread by one of it rivals in the industry.
But if you ever run into a fifty ton pig, you'll know why...
Oh, there are plenty of ways to deal with sterilizing food stuffs, especially when further adding sci-fi to the mix... hence the 'biotech' ref above.
Of course, irradiation is not only not guaranteed to kill everything (and not widely used in the RW, actually - historically in part from irrational fears, what that link was addressing), but, unless one is also 'sterilizing' the sophonts and everything else inside and out from ships to containers - an interstellar community is gonna be spreading their 'bugs'.
Eating only artificially grown food in controlled environments may cut down on such (just like irradiating kills most everything, if strong and broad enough over enough time) and avoid genetic mutation with the frequency that occurs in nature (in good part from radiation
) - its nothing more than a stopgap and initial rationalization for supporting an economy, in this case. Government, backed by commercial interests, promotes the cultural idea that natural food is unsafe.Yeah, I forgot to mention that. James White's Sector General series addresses some of these tropes.BlackBat242 said:
All this 'vat grown' stuff would seem to make the "Ag" trade classification far less important than the OTU says it is. Why have all those trade effects for Ag products when food that is better, cheaper, and more abundant can be had on any world that can afford to purchase vats?
Correct. Also, consider that under 3I trade rules, products (especially bulk stuff) just doesn't get shipped much further than 3 parsecs owing to the high cost of high jump ships and the paltry freight hauling rates. A TL 10+ world is going to be able to support its own pop. There is always some demand for expensive, exotic imports.
Everybody knows that vat meat is bland and flavorless compared to properly reared, carefully bred meat animals. Vat meat is for the poor and for philistines.
Except in a few rare cases, interstellar trade in food is luxury trade. Since vat meat is pretty much the same no matter what vat it comes out of, no one imports it. What they import are gourmet items for the discerning palate, such as porker hams and copperfish garum.
Hans
Except in a few rare cases, interstellar trade in food is luxury trade. Since vat meat is pretty much the same no matter what vat it comes out of, no one imports it. What they import are gourmet items for the discerning palate, such as porker hams and copperfish garum.
Hans
Ag worlds just export food. Nothing is fixed about the amounts.
(Although not all Traveller writers realize that, which gave us such legacy oddities as the Ag World Combine where three worlds with a combined population of a handful of millions historically exported food to support worlds with billions of people.)
Hans
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
I do not see a problem with that, given the current agricultural output of the US in terms of agricultural population verses consuming population. Assuming that a low population Agricultural planet is concentrating production to the most productive areas, along with stock raising, 1 producer should be able to support anywhere from 100 to 600 people. A population of maybe 10 million should be able to support with adequate food supplies a population on the order of a billion or so.
I sincerely doubt it. Not only do I find it hard to believe that one agricultural laborer can produce food enough for 100 people, a population of X people contains a good deal less than X agricultural laborers.
Hans
... Vat-grown meat was never part of an independently-living creature... Its Karma-free!™
You hope. SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!:devil:
Census demographic data says less than 1% of the U.S. population claims farming as an occupation. Allowing for undocumented workers and family members pitching in but not formally "employed", that still brings us TL7-8 types pretty close to the 1 per 100 mark.
And, some areas with crops that surrender to large harvesting machines (think wheat and the like) it is >100:1 in the USA. But, that is TL 7. That ratio gets larger as TL goes up from there...
Rigel Stardin
SOC-13
There is a hi-pop world near Vargr space.
Who sells little green biskets to the Vargr.
Just saying...
For 1999 the total number of operators on farms with sales of $10,000 and above is given as 949,000, but the total number for all farms is given as 1,912,000. Also, of that number 165,000 are said to be female, which suggests that family members are not counted. So even without the undocumented workers we're looking at several million workers, bringing productivity down to around 50 per worker. (OK, that's a very rough guess).
Then you have food imports. In 2009 the US imported 17% of the food consumed, so we're down to around 40 per worker.
And then there's the other half of the question, how big a part of a population would be agricultural workers, even for a world totally dedicated to food production[*]? Start with children and retired parents of the workers. Then add the people who build the machinery that enables the agricultural worker to be so productive and their families. Then add tertiary professions catering to those workers (and their families). Even if an agricultural worker could produce food for 100 people (instead of less than half that), a population of 10 million wouldn't come anywhere near producing food for a billion people.
[*] Which Tarsus definitely isn't, as shown in the writeup ind the boxed module Tarsus. Food production is shown as important, but it's far from the only thing going on on Tarsus. Tarkine and Motmos we don't have much of a description of, but Tarkine has a TL of 7 and Motmos of only 5.
Hans
Ever read "Unpleasant World" about Dasku? :devil:
A very rough guess indeed. The not-counted family members range from the preteen who tends a few chickens or pigs and such, to the spouse who does some farm work while simultaneously managing all the myriad details of household and family affairs, to the adult offspring or in-law who's running the harvester and doing a full day's work alongside the owner-operator. Very hard to estimate. Undocumented farm workers are estimated at a quarter to a half million or so. I don't think you're going to make "several million" out of all of that.
In 2009, food exports accounted for about 20% of production. We export a bit more than we import.
At 1 per 100, a food worker doesn't feed 99 other workers (or 50, or somewhere between the two). He feeds 99 other people (or 50, or somewhere between the two), including his family. Ergo, if we go by that 1 per 100 ratio, a population of 10 million food workers is feeding 1 billion people - of whom about 20 million or so are his/her spouse and children, dependent elderly family members, etc., while those 970 million other consumers consist of about 300 million or so non-food workers (including such folk as the guys who built the tractor, the guys who process the grown food into finished goodies like bread, the guys who haul the food to market, and so forth), plus THEIR spouse and children, dependent elderly family members, etc. That puts the food worker at around 3% of the labor force under that model.
In the current U.S. (a net exporter, as previously stated), the acknowledged food worker is 1% of the labor force; factoring in the undocumenteds and other unrecognized workers, it might get to 2%, maybe 3% if we're generous.
So, that 10 million feeding 1 billion is reasonable where there's abundant land, energy and technology to apply toward agriculture.
However, while only 1 to 3% of the labor force is food workers, 1/6th of the labor force is involved in getting that food from farm to your plate: processors (mill, bakery, cannery, slaughterhouse), distributors (trucks, etc.), retailers (your local supermarket), and food services (restaurants, etc.). So, getting back to that billion, there may be only 10 million producing the food, but there are about fifty million beyond that who work with them to keep everybody fed. That leaves roughly 250 million for other professions and 600 - 700 million dependents - likely less depending on the degree to which spouses and elderly are a part of the formal workforce.
