Tech Levels and Food Production

[Beerfume]

I recently added a post to my blog called H is for Hydroponics, but the research I was doing really turned into a table showing the relationship between different tech levels and food production. If you find this topic interesting, I'd love to hear your input. It seems to me that the interstellar shipping of large quantities of food would be unnecessary if the right technologies were available. Any thoughts?

Also, is there a way I can easily upload a PDF or Word file to this forum? I've just got a screencap of the document posted at my blog. Thanks!

 

[Whipsnade]

Also, is there a way I can easily upload a PDF or Word file to this forum? I've just got a screencap of the document posted at my blog. Thanks!

Put it in the File Library as an attachment to an explanatory post.

Thanks!

 

[kilemall]

I am assuming 'artificial' food production and life support in the Oort Cloud predicated on easy fuel, oxygen and water due to all the ice, with full modified plants and vat-grown synthmeat.

In vacuum, desert planets and other Non-Agricultural planets, one would assume a higher TL allows sufficient production, but not cheap, and that there still might be a market for relatively fresh or natural materials, or at least cheaper.

Lack of water or toxic atmospheres would raise the costs even further, and in the case of something like a methane or corrosive atmosphere, effectively the same or possibly worse then a pure space habitat.

 

[JimCook]

As with many things I think there will be trade offs. Growing or manufacturing food require space, energy, and raw materials. Space is always at a premium on ships. Fusion power plants to provide ample, but not unlimited power. Then there is raw material. Food requires approximately that same bulk raw material as the food itself contains. For relatively short trips it make more sense to just stock food, possibly freeze dried of equivalent to save weight assuming water was relatively available.

For long duration missions, growing or manufacturing food starts to make more sense.

Recycling raw material also should be taken into account. A hydroponics bay will probably be more desirable for producing oxygen and removing carbon dioxide then for providing food. Solid and liquid waste could also provide raw material for producing food as it has been since TL1.

 

[McPerth]

Fusion power plants to provide ample, but not unlimited power. Then there is raw material.

See that for all the time in jumpspace, there's much power to spare (and in most ships, for most the time, when agility and weapons are not used, that's true too).

 

[Beerfume]

Put it in the File Library as an attachment to an explanatory post.

The document with the table has been posted here if anyone is interested in taking a crack at it. Thanks!

 

[Timerover51]

See that for all the time in jumpspace, there's much power to spare (and in most ships, for most the time, when agility and weapons are not used, that's true too).

Unless you are talking about extremely long duration expeditions, you would not need to worry about growing food onboard the ship. Based on my U. S. Army Quartermaster manuals, the following is the amount of space required for rations.

Assuming a ration weighing per day of 5.33 pounds or 160 pounds per month per person, the space required for that would be 8 cubic feet. The ration would supply about 4,000 calories per day, far in excess of that required for sedentary workers, as you would have onboard of a starship, unless they were all exercise fanatics. One Traveller dTon of volume would have sufficient space for rations for 60 persons for one month. Each person would also need about 3 cubic feet of refrigerated space per month, and a Traveller dTon would supply sufficient refrigerated space for 160 persons for one month. Approximately 4 Traveller dTons of space could easily hold enough food for 180 persons for one month, or 180 person-months of food.

If you take the average Free Trader, with a crew of 4, add 2 gunners, and 6 passengers, you have 12 persons to provide food for. Being quite conservative, you want to have sufficient food for 2 months onboard the ship. Storage space for non-perishable food would equate to 12 persons X 8 cubic feet per month per person X 2 months, or 192 cubic feet of space. You would need 3 cubic feet of refrigerated space per month per person, or 72 cubic feet of space. The total space required would be 264 cubic feet. A Traveller Displacement ton is equal to 476.748 cubic feet (13.5 cubic meters) or 494.4 cubic feet (14 cubic meters). Slightly over one-half of a Traveller dTon would supply sufficient room for food for 12 persons for 2 months, with a pretty comfortable cushion on top of that with the 4,000 calorie per day ration. Supplies for a year for 12 persons would require 2.5 Traveller dTons for non-perishable food, and 1 Traveller dTon for refrigerated space, for a total of 3.5 Traveller dTons.

 

[Timerover51]

The document with the table has been posted here if anyone is interested in taking a crack at it. Thanks!

I have downloaded it and will look it over this week.

 

[McPerth]

Unless you are talking about extremely long duration expeditions, you would not need to worry about growing food onboard the ship. Based on my U. S. Army Quartermaster manuals, the following is the amount of space required for rations.

Assuming a ration weighing per day of 5.33 pounds or 160 pounds per month per person, the space required for that would be 8 cubic feet. The ration would supply about 4,000 calories per day, far in excess of that required for sedentary workers, as you would have onboard of a starship, unless they were all exercise fanatics. One Traveller dTon of volume would have sufficient space for rations for 60 persons for one month. Each person would also need about 3 cubic feet of refrigerated space per month, and a Traveller dTon would supply sufficient refrigerated space for 160 persons for one month. Approximately 4 Traveller dTons of space could easily hold enough food for 180 persons for one month, or 180 person-months of food.

If you take the average Free Trader, with a crew of 4, add 2 gunners, and 6 passengers, you have 12 persons to provide food for. Being quite conservative, you want to have sufficient food for 2 months onboard the ship. Storage space for non-perishable food would equate to 12 persons X 8 cubic feet per month per person X 2 months, or 192 cubic feet of space. You would need 3 cubic feet of refrigerated space per month per person, or 72 cubic feet of space. The total space required would be 264 cubic feet. A Traveller Displacement ton is equal to 476.748 cubic feet (13.5 cubic meters) or 494.4 cubic feet (14 cubic meters). Slightly over one-half of a Traveller dTon would supply sufficient room for food for 12 persons for 2 months, with a pretty comfortable cushion on top of that with the 4,000 calorie per day ration. Supplies for a year for 12 persons would require 2.5 Traveller dTons for non-perishable food, and 1 Traveller dTon for refrigerated space, for a total of 3.5 Traveller dTons.

Well, I only talked about power availability aboard a ship...

 

[Timerover51]

Well, I only talked about power availability aboard a ship...

My apologies, McPerth, I guess it was a case of the Quartermaster Officer in me taking over. As my signature says, I study Logistics for fun and enjoyment. I do not think that it is contagious, although I now have my co-teacher for our summer World War 2 class thinking of logistics first when evaluating the decision making process in World War 2. Possibly direst contact is required.

 

[whartung]

Do these volumes include water? or is this just food? 5+lbs per day seems like a lot of food to no include water.

 

[Enoki]

I did come up with a method to rate worlds for the availability of food in general that works pretty good...

http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/rules/foodscore.html

 

[kilemall]

I did come up with a method to rate worlds for the availability of food in general that works pretty good...

http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/rules/foodscore.html

Ooooh, peachy!

 

[Timerover51]

Do these volumes include water? or is this just food? 5+lbs per day seems like a lot of food to no include water.

My apologies for that. For water, the military recommends 30-60 gallons per day per man for a semi-permanent camp, allowing for bathing and laundry. If you assuming a very high level of water recycling, along with water as a byproduct of food consumption, one-half a Traveller dTon of water would be 1,783 gallons, which should be more than sufficient for a crew of 12 for two months.

 

[Jame]

I'd include smoking food (meat, usually) as one of the things at TL 0.

 

[robject]

I'd include smoking food (meat, usually) as one of the things at TL 0.

And smoking herbs. Oh wait, that's not strictly food.

 

[atpollard]

And smoking herbs. Oh wait, that's not strictly food.

Just the opposite, that causes the munchies ... or so I heard.

 

[epicenter00]

I have quite a bit of interest in early agriculture and while I can't say I'm an expert, I'd say that the availability of technologies by TL is off for the early TLs. (proviso: I believe that the current TL system is an terrible eurocentric system but we work with it.)

TL0 - Fire.
Food Production: Hunting and gathering.
Notable Agricultural Techology: Passive farming (the intentional scattering of seeds in a plot of land, but little or no effort is made to tend to the grains afterwards).
Food Preservation: Drying (and basic freeze-drying, particularly in cold climates), Salt Curing (and other kinds of curing, such as using lye), Smoking. Basic Pickling is going to be discovered as a natural adjunct to salt curing or burial. Salt curing certainly occurred long before steel.
Notes: Foods of this period are "raw" and simply what exists in the wild. Wild berries and nuts, wild grains, edible roots, game meats, wild-caught fish. Archeological evidence shows that hunter-gatherers actually had more free time, were healthier (taller and more robust), were generally longer-lived, and ate better and more balanced diets than more "advanced" agricultural peoples. Their populations were limited to the "wild" carrying capacity of the land, however.

TL1 - Early Agriculture.
Food Production: Low density farming and herding.
Notable Agricultural Technology: Plowing/tilling, Selective Breeding, Animal Domestication, Land Fallowing, basic irrigation. Terracing, Extensive Irrigation (aqueducts, qanats, dams/reservoirs), Aquaculture, Chemical Pesticides (seriously, they dusted crops in sulfur in ancient Sumer), Early Greenhouses. Some exotic edge cases might include widespread and intensive Fungiculture. Fertilizer concepts become more advanced (green manure/terra preta) theory to maintain soil fertility. Land fallowing is modified by ideas of cover crops. Intensive agriculture ideas such as chinampas and raised-bed agriculture.
Food Preservation: Pickling/Fermentation: Products such as cheeses, alcohol, leavened bread, intentional and large-scale fermentation of foodstuffs.
Notes: The human diet actually takes a huge hit in terms of balanced nutrition at this point in almost all cultures that get early agriculture. Domesticated grain, supplemented with hunted and gathered foodstuffs become a large portion of the diet. Gradually the gathered foodstuffs take a further drop and the human diet really only recovers around TL6 or so. So while agriculture was a boon to civilization, it was a disaster in many ways for individual humans. The develops in this TL are ridiculous because Traveller's TL scale lacks any kind of granularity in the early TLs. In reality, this is thousands of years of development and many momentous technologies, but to Traveller, it's all lumped together.

TL2 - Classical Agriculture.
Food Production: Pre-industrial farming and herding.
Notable Agricultural Technology: Improvements in animal harnesses, iron plows, and similar technologies allow for ever-greater areas to be put under the plow.
Food Preservation: There's some evidence that shows that cultures had longer-term (2 years or so) grain storage by storing grain underground in low or no oxygen areas even in humid areas - however, it's unlikely they understood the mechanism of this, only that it worked.

TL3 - Late Classical Agriculture.
Food Production: Early Industrial farming and herding.
Notable Agricultural Technology: Land fallowing turns into crop rotation - the understanding of nitrogen-fixing means that legumes are included in a rotation. Cheaper bulk transport means that concentrated fertilizers such as guano can be transported over great distances to improve yields. Climate-controlled (heated) Greenhousing becomes practical for more widespread food production.
Food Preservation: Bottling/Canning.
Notes: This period lays the groundwork for modern agriculture. For instance, the principles of hydroponics existed by the mid-late 18th century. The application of scientific method to the problems of agriculture begins at this point.

TL4 - Very Early Modern Agriculture.
Food Production: Intensive farming.
Notable Agricultural Technology: Steam and early ICE engines remove animals from plowing. On Earth, this is when chemical pesticides start seeing widespread use in European agriculture (mostly because industrial transport and production allows the 'discovered' technology to be practiced in large areas). With greenhouse technology and electrical lighting and pumps the knowledge and technology necessary for indoor hydroponics (even sun-free) exists by TL4 - all it requires is someone to put it all together.
Food Preservation: Pasteurization, Refrigeration.

TL5 - Early Modern Agriculture.
Food Production: Industrial farming.
Notable Agricultural Technology: The production of nitrogen fertilizer from atmospheric nitrogen means yields explode. Typically around this point, sufficient capital exists for large-scale hybridization scientific seed improvment so crops become more resilient as well.
Food Preservation: Industrial freeze-drying. Chemical food preservation becomes much more advanced.

 

[Timerover51]

The following quote on crop yields is taken from the 1886 Edition of Sir Garnet Wolseley's Soldier Pocket Book.

Crops.—The following is a fair average of the number of bushels that go
to an acre at home; Oats, 40 to 50; barley, 35 to 40; wheat, rye, and beans, 25 to 30 ; maize and buckwheat, 30 ; peas, 25 ; potatoes, 8 tons ; turnips (white), 30 to 40 tons ; (yellow), 30 to 32 ; (swedes), 28 to 34 tons ; cabbage, 35 to 40 tons ; carrots, 10 to 20 tons. The weight of straw per acre of the following crops is: wheat 3000 to 3600 lbs. ; barley, 1500 to 2100 Ibs. ; oats, 2700 to 3500 lbs. ; rye, 4000 to 4800 lbs. ; bean-straw, 2700 to 3200 lbs.; pea-straw, 2700 lbs. An acre of meadow-land, according to its quality, gives from 1 to 3 tons of hay.

The turnips, at this time, were grown primarily as winter fodder crops for cattle and sheep, to supplement the hay ration.

I do not so much worry about how the crops are grown as I focus on crop yields. The primary benefit of mechanization is the reduction of the number of persons required to cultivate a given amount of acreage. As stated earlier, Amish and Mennonite crop yields using draft animals are fully comparable to mechanized farming, just more manpower intensive. With the draft animal you have the tradeoff of having to feed it regardless of it being used or not verses the reproductive capacity and ability to sell surplus animals. It is hard to breed tractors.

 

[Ackehece]

Tech Levels are dependent on cultures and cultural imperatives.
What I mean is that TLS are a snapshot of what and average culture of that tech level would demonstrate.
Some cultures would be significantly advanced in areas of cultural significance and behind in areas not important.
Agriculture and social development might be more important than data driven developments in some societies. Some might value data over personal development. Some leisure over travel. All impact how technology changes. Some chan require development in many areas and there you might see a plateau develop. Social, technological, mechanical etc all have to hit that development level to proceed in that area. It is conceivable to have no jump drives but antimatter power plants