I was thinking that we need to optimize for growing crops indoors under minimal water and light scenarios. Living in your own apt/led greenhouse. To do this it would be nice to run thousands of experiments to find the optimal conditions, crowd source the variable space. Thoughts?
Instead of trying to build life-supporting systems from the ground-up, look to nature, which had been thriving with no human intervention for thousands of years.
Chemical fertilizer can't come anywhere close to the fertility and output of a rainforest. Look into holistic environmental systems; living soil, the role of fungi and bacteria in the capture and sustained release of nutrients, the role of animals in the growth/death cycle.
The world's food crisis is not caused by a lack of petrochemical distribution, but by the abuse (and thus death) of the soil.
Are there any civilizations you're aware of that, after soil rehabilitation, wouldn't have a local source of food? Except for the poles and extreme elevations, this entire planet is well suited for life.
