Food
From Megaman Mush Wiki
Food: It's what you eat.
The agricultural industry in M3's future is seen as exactly that: an industry. The production of food is a matter too serious to be left to the vagaries of weather and soil in a world where the fused atom provides abundant energy and the bustling megacities provide compact demand.
The majority of these details are not even considered beyond a general 'food comes from these places' awareness by most of the people of the world. However, they may be informative and inspirational.
Contents |
The Staples
The greater part of most staple crops - rice, wheat, soybeans and maize - are produced from specially bred varieties grown in hydroponic factories. With a climate-controlled, virtually ideal growing environment, yields per acre are enormous and produced year-round, although the varieties change with the seasons -- it is cheaper, when possible, to use fiber-optics to collect natural sunlight than to run giant full-spectrum sunlamps.
Many vegetables are grown the same way, although generally in smaller yields and to suit local demand; bok choi and daikon radish are in much greater demand in Eastern Asia than in the central United States. The risk of parasite and crop blight is virtually nil once the crops reach market, however, and as such there is no real impediment to individuals living in Kansas City and doing their food shopping, via teleporter, in Akibahara.
The Meat of the Matter
In contrast to vegetables, animal rearing is far simpler. Many of the practices of the late 20th and early 21st century have been supplanted... to some extent. Fish farms and aquaculture, supplemented by chicken farms, provide much of the animal protein that is easily available. Wild-caught fish are also successful, thanks to greater understanding of the marine ecology and the efforts of specially-designed aquatic Reploids.
Red meat has not been outlawed. Most larger animals are not 'raised' so much as 'grown'; old practices under the late 22nd century UN laws made it simpler to adopt modified cloning of meat animals and raising them in controlled environments, more comparable to rearing plants than conventional agriculture. This sort of meat is also extremely lean and very reasonably priced. Conventional animal rearing is still regaining prominence.
"Synthetic" meat also exists, largely as a form of modified soy. While nutritionally adequate and engineered to taste reasonably good, it sees use largely in mass-market instant and fast foods, and in areas with a lot of vegetarians.
Alternatives
Organic farming remains very popular for a variety of reasons, from ideological ("It's more natural, and more like what we should eat") to gustatory ("It tastes better!") to practical ("Jim's organic farm is half a mile away and it's forty miles to the supermarket. Hm."). The core concept of growing food naturally with minimal to no chemical intervention of any kind remains strong; for farmers willing to use Reploid or mechaniloid labor, yields can be greatly increased. This use remains a point of some dispute between various parties involved in organic farming.
Old-fashioned meat raising is considered to be organic farming in areas where it is not the only alternative. The main centers of cattle production for meat are South America and Texas; the United States' animal grazing has been supplanted by Native American ranchers, who were allowed to tend buffalo herds without interference for religious reasons and have seized the opportunity to bring the buffalo back to America.
Further Alternatives
Production of even more basic staples - algae, fungus, and yeasts - is also widespread, although it is generally used as feedstock for other purposes, such as fertilizer or plastics, or for some other function, such as air purification.
Yeast products are entirely edible. Indeed, the UN produced a food staple, shelf-stable for hundreds of years and sealed in plastic wrapping, that violated no religious tenet of any known belief system, provided fully balanced nutrition for humans, and came in three "delicious" flavors. This relief ration is distributed in the aftermath of disasters and can still be found in vast quantities in many emergency stockpiles. It is generally known as "people chow". Nobody likes it.
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