Hydroponics is a method of growing large amounts of crops indoors in a semi-automated way. Hydroponic technology nurtures plants without soil by delivering nutrients through water, promoting efficient growth in inert mediums or the solution itself. Controlled environments, such as greenhouses, optimise temperature, light, and humidity. Automation ensures precise nutrient delivery, enhancing plant health.

 Using this method has lots of advantages over traditional agriculture and factory farming. Since the plants are grown indoors, we do not disrupt ecologies in order to grow our crops. These crops are simply grown in buildings, which can be located near or even in the city, allowing for great savings in terms of transportation. Yields for many plants are also higher per square meter in hydroponic systems, leading to greater space efficiency. In a meta-review of hydroponic studies, Payton et al. 2022 found that 17 out of twenty different types of fruits or vegetables could be grown in a more space-efficient manner than in their urban counterparts. This is all while using approximately 90% less water, a resource that will become critical in future decades (Barbosa et al. 2015). Since these plants are indoors, there is the added benefit that they are shielded from extreme weather events, allowing for consistent and predictable yields, and precise planning.

This highlights the clear need for regime change, based on the problems highlighted above that hydroponics solves.





Currently, hydroponics systems can create and sell lettuce that is approximately 40% more expensive than lettuce grown in a traditional agricultural manner (Barbosa). This means that additional research would have to be done by whichever firm wants to use this new technology. And the startup costs are considerable - the estimated cost of a new hydroponics farm is $89,653.66 (Sousa et al. 2019).





 Hunger is a collective action problem because while it is not aligned with my personal incentives to feed everyone who is hungry (I cannot afford it in either economic or temporal means), I pay a cost for other people being malnourished. Feeding the members of a community makes the community more safe (since it is only the truly desperate who commit dangerous crimes), prosperous (since food will create increased cognitive development), and stability. So while it cannot be me who solves this problem alone, society would benefit if we all banded together and fed the hungry. This is confirmed by a large-scale review of US investment in food stamps, with the conclusion that recipients of food stamps (a US social safety net that gives food assistance to the needy) wound up with higher paying jobs, higher test scores, and lower crime rates than their peers in similar economic conditions who did not receive food stamps. Overall, the marginal marginal value of investing in food stamps was $56, meaning that every dollar invested in food stamps projects returned $56 back to the economy (Bailey et al. 2020).

 Can we kill two birds with one stone, and solve the collective action problems of hunger and technological investment at the same time? There is a way, called the “public option.” A public option is a government-run program that consists of two parts:

1) A Public Option guarantees access to important services at a fixed price

2) A Public Option coexists with private provision of the same service.

 When outlined this way, we recognize many public options in our society, fulfilling a plethora of needs: universal healthcare, the postal service, DeutschBahn, and pension plans are all examples of extremely popular public options.

 I argue that the state should solve the technological investment and hunger collective action problems by creating a public option of food powered by hydroponics. In this way, the risk of investing in a new technology is aggregated, access to food is guaranteed to the public, and freedom of choice is respected and maintained. What would this public option look like?





 Inspired by the massive MVPF of investments in public food programs, I argue the public option should take the form of a public canteen, wherein all the food is grown in a hydroponic farm, and provided to citizens for free. Although the benefits are tremendous, what is the cost of such a program?

 I calculate the costs based on the following idealizations:

- A person needs 2000 calories a day

- We feed the entire population of Aachen (~250,000 people) every day, 365 days a year

- Soy is the only crop grown and harvested in our hydroponic farm





 These calculations are rough, but should land us in a ballpark figure of the amount of cost (infrastructure space in terms of euros and i) that must be devoted to such a project. In fact, the actual amount required for the city of Aachen will be far less, since we are assuming the entire population will get all of its calories from this endeavour. Again, a public option is designed to guarantee access to a good or service, not replace it – everyone will be free to choose (and likely will choose to do so) to eat out at their favourite restaurant or enjoy a home-cooked meal.





Let us now go through the relevant figures:





How many calories does Aachen eat in a year?

A human must eat 2000 calories a day

365 days a year

2000 x 365 days per year = 730,000

Aachen Population: 250,000

730,000 x 250,000 = 182,500,000,000 calories

Soybean growth stats (source: De Bruin, J. L., & Pedersen, P. 2009)

90 days to harvest

400 grams / sq m

420 calories / 100g

How much space is required?

400 grams /sq m

1.6 kg / sq m y

1600 x 420 = 672000 calories / sq m y

182,500,000,000 / 672000 = 271,577.38 sq m





So approximately 271,577 square meters are required to feed Aachen. To add perspective to this, an amazon warehouse is approximately 243,840 square meters (source: Amazon). With a single building the size of a typical amazon warehouse, Aachen would be able to feed every citizen breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day of the year. Of course, this calculation is idealised - there will be demand for less calorically dense food. Tomatoes and lettuce for salad, for example, have about 20 calories per 100 grams, a whole order of magnitude less than soybeans. However their yield per square meter year is 6 and 16 kilograms, respectively (Sin Goh et al. 2023). Though they are less calorically dense, their yield is much higher.

 Additionally, we have been doing all of our calculations considering only squared meters. But this is forgetting that the farming we are doing is vertical - we have considered only covering the ground of the building with plants, without building the structures upwards for additional harvest. Once this is accomplished, we can see that we have the potential to grow a massive amount of crops in a single building, allowing for feeding cities orders of magnitude larger than Aachen.





CONCLUSION:

 Why is there still hunger in this day and age? As these calculations have shown, it would be easy to create enough food for everyone, and supply this to the community wholesale. What we require is a government that breaks us out of the collective action problem of initial costs, and has the courage to invest in its people in the long term. A single amazon warehouse could feed Aachen, and as the US reports each dollar invested in its food assistance programs yielded a 56$ return to its economy. Let us use this opportunity to change the regime of food production for the good of everyone.







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