Crops can blight, animals can get diseases. I don’t know much about hydroponics but I know that bacteria are a concern. What food source is the most reliable, the least likely to produce less food than expected?
Diversity of food sources.
This is the right response, along with proper crop rotation. No magic single correct answer here will work.
Not to be contrary, but… Soylent Green would fit the bill.
This reads like a Rimworld post.
I don’t think there’s a Rimworld community on Lemmy and I’m not going on Reddit anymore so I’ll just throw this comment into the void and hope some fans are out there. 👋
Also in Rimworld terms the answer is corn (if monoculture) and send everyone to harvest at the first sign of blight.
But in both Rimworld and real life, a monoculture strategy isn’t sustainable. Diversifying via multiple food sources reduces your risk of disaster leading to starvation.
@Rimworld@lemmy.worldYeah idk how to link it. Here: https://lemmy.world/c/rimworld
My first thought when seeing the title was also Rimworld. Glad to know others are fans of the corn monopoly.
To answer your question. When Agriculture was first “discovered” by humans ~20,000 years ago, the most stable production method was diversification. You should have a variety of crops with overlapping growing seasons and overlapping macro nutrients. For even more security, introduce animal husbandry that can graze on your fallow land and if you have enough land make sure to have multiple distinct herds that never interact with each other except for breeding every few years.
Additionally ensure your food production isn’t dependent on a single harvest season, nor a single climate. Have fruits/legumes/etc other lower yield crops that can be substituted in case your primary grains are hit with blight, or some other environmental factor.
Now let’s introduce some technology. Create several fast growing monocultures that allows you to get multiple harvests in a season that can be used for animal feed, storage and supplementing any deficiencies in the primary human food supply.
tl;dr. Make sure you have multiple methods of food production that are all viable at different times of the year. Ensure that the failure of any one or two of them isn’t a problem for overall yearly production, and ensure that they are independent on each other.
