Smart Futures | An Optimistic Peek into the Future

As the general public become better read (or better Youtubed…), and religion declines, you can expect a greater number of people to start accepting that humans do not have any divine rights over non-humans. In the last 50 years we have, as a species, learned to love nonhumans more and more – some examples:

free range chickens
save the whale
save old-growth forests
concern over extinctions
dogs migrating from the kennel to the bedroom
paganism
assigning “love” to devices like iPhones and corporate branding

There’s a definite trend – and it will become quite interesting when nonhumans become more prolific, because we will need to decide just how much we care about their well-being and the their “rights”.

So this December Yale will be hosting a conference – Personhood Beyond the Human.

The conference will be co-sponsored by the Nonhuman Rights Project and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies in collaboration with the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics.

Looking at the list of speakers, it seems most of the focus will be on animal rights (regular welfare and intelligent animals gaining extra rights), but also there will be discussions regarding the rights of androids and other forms of artificial intelligence – plus transhumans.

Now would be a good time to get started on legal definitions and ethical treatment. If a person in a permanent vegetative state has rights, what about the mouse that is injected in the brain with human stem cells?

Until today, like most people, I had no idea how much farmers sold their bulk lettuce for. After doing some basic research I’ve decided that $1000 per ton is roughly the best price you will receive.

For years now I have been reading about vertical farming and how it will revolutionize agriculture. The concept is quite simple: land is expensive, so build your farm vertically rather than horizontally. These days you don’t need dirt – many crops can be grown hydroponically.

Until now it was all theory – although there were no technical hindrances to building such farms, they weren’t yet financially viable. They would need to wait until food was more expensive and harder to source.

Thankfully the cost did not scare off Sky Greens farm in Singapore (rich country, little land, makes sense…).

So that is why I looked up the price of lettuce. The article at The Intel Hub mentions the cost, the yield, but not the return…

Currently producing 0.5 tons of produce per day
Farm cost $7+ million so far, and they seek $21 million more

According to my math that equals about 180 tons per year, or $180,000. That’s a terrible return from a $7 million investment! Even if the lettuce was more gourmet than I expected, still no way it could be profitable.

According to Inhabit, locals are willing to pay a premium for this produce because it is so fresh – but it looks like they’d have to pay 10x as much for it to be profitable.