What Happens When Nobody Knows How to Grow Food?

[RobertPummer]

Most of us know how to buy food.


Far fewer of us know how to grow it.


That difference doesn't matter much while trucks are moving, stores are stocked, electricity is running, and somebody somewhere is doing the farming.


But what happens when those systems stop working?


In The Good Earth Saga, I started playing with that question on a much larger scale. Earth itself has been pulled out of its familiar place in the solar system. Technology can solve some enormous problems, but it can't make ordinary human knowledge unnecessary.


Eventually somebody still has to plant a seed.


Somebody has to know when to plant it, how to save it, how to protect the crop, preserve the harvest, feed animals, repair tools, and teach the next generation what they've learned.


That led me to a question I hadn't expected:


Have we become more knowledgeable, or have we simply become more dependent on other people knowing things for us?


I'm curious how science-fiction readers see it.


If modern supply systems disappeared tomorrow, what practical skill would become valuable first?


The complete Good Earth Saga is free to read at the Planetary Roundtable:


https://planetaryroundtable.online/library.html

 

[Cicero]

Jonh Christopher did a novel called The Death of Grass 1956 in which a disease wiped out wheat on global , Civilization very quickly collapsed in a Mad Max like fashion.

 

[Hobbit]

Jonh Christopher did a novel called The Death of Grass 1956 in which a disease wiped out wheat on global , Civilization very quickly collapsed in a Mad Max like fashion.

And reviewed here, back in 2009!

 

[Cicero]

And reviewed here, back in 2009!

I agree , both dated yet aspect of it are stilll very relevant. I found the rapid collapse of society to be very chilling and believable.

 

[Stanley Steamboy]

How is this promotion? It doesn't seem appropriate to discuss these questions in the context of a published work.

 

[Hobbit]

How is this promotion? It doesn't seem appropriate to discuss these questions in the context of a published work.

Because the author is using the discussion to promote his own work at the end of the first post and therefore he has considered the Forum's rules. Not the first time an author has done that. It's a grey area admittedly, but seems fair.

 

[Cicero]

Most of us know how to buy food.


Far fewer of us know how to grow it.


That difference doesn't matter much while trucks are moving, stores are stocked, electricity is running, and somebody somewhere is doing the farming.


But what happens when those systems stop working?


In The Good Earth Saga, I started playing with that question on a much larger scale. Earth itself has been pulled out of its familiar place in the solar system. Technology can solve some enormous problems, but it can't make ordinary human knowledge unnecessary.


Eventually somebody still has to plant a seed.


Somebody has to know when to plant it, how to save it, how to protect the crop, preserve the harvest, feed animals, repair tools, and teach the next generation what they've learned.


That led me to a question I hadn't expected:


Have we become more knowledgeable, or have we simply become more dependent on other people knowing things for us?


I'm curious how science-fiction readers see it.


If modern supply systems disappeared tomorrow, what practical skill would become valuable first?


The complete Good Earth Saga is free to read at the Planetary Roundtable:


https://planetaryroundtable.online/library.html

Robert , I look at the current generation and see people staring at phones, tablets and computers with libraries of digitized information at the tips of their fingers but no real appreciation or understanding of that knowledge . As far as the big picture is concerned , this is not a good development.

 

[Stanley Steamboy]

It is attractive to posit a big picture problem based on average behavior, but some things - like gardening - is not so complex that people can't learn to do it with instructions on the seed packet or from the person distributing the seed. Similar to what happened with Victory Gardens during WWII.

A much bigger problem is distributing seed, actually having enough water to grow anything and producing enough of it to actually feed people. But passing knowledge along with the seed? I don't think that is a major barrier.

 

[Raf]

Having gone through several large hurricanes in a large metropolitan area where supply chains stop? Panic buying sets in quickly. Stores initiate rationing almost immediately. Cause people get greedy when faced with the possibility of their family going without of food. Most people only keep a few days of food / water on hand. Especially the younger generation who eat out mostly.

In a city, if the supply chains never came back up? People would be raiding grocery stores, houses and their neighbors. Stockpiling ammunition ( in the states anyway) and gasoline trying to defend what they have or trying to get out of the city. It would devolve quickly, I think.

Growing food is the least of your worries in a scenario like that. Given the length of time from planting to harvest, people would need to scavenge in the meantime,

 

[RobertPummer]

Stanley and Raf, I think you've both identified a weakness in the way I framed the question.


Growing food may not be the first problem at all. If the trucks stopped permanently, planting a garden doesn't solve what happens during the months before anything can be harvested.


That raises a more interesting question for me. How long does a modern city have before a supply problem becomes a social problem?


Cicero's point about having access to information without necessarily understanding it fits into that too. Instructions may tell me how to plant corn, but they don't put seed in my hand, water in the ground, or food on the table while I'm waiting for harvest.


Maybe the valuable skill isn't simply knowing how to grow food. Maybe it's knowing how to bridge the gap between the system that disappeared and the system that has to replace it.


That's actually more interesting than the question I started with.

 

[Stanley Steamboy]

They are not problems with solutions. Cities can and do run out of food during disasters. However, the earth can't change orbits rapidly enough (under normal physics) to change the ability of trucks to run. There would be time to replace older systems, if it is even needed at all. I don't see why the earth moving would make anything change in a way that wouldn't also prevent gardening.

 

[Raf]

They are not problems with solutions. Cities can and do run out of food during disasters. However, the earth can't change orbits rapidly enough (under normal physics) to change the ability of trucks to run. There would be time to replace older systems, if it is even needed at all. I don't see why the earth moving would make anything change in a way that wouldn't also prevent gardening.

The earth orbit puts the planet in the "Goldilocks Zone". That particular distance from a primary that allows water to exist in a liquid form on the surface of a planet. Physically, moving the planet inward or outward would surely affect the ability to grow food.

But maybe the OP is envisioning another type of movement?