What Todd takes for granted part 5

As much as the productions of consumer good has changed the production of food has changed even more. As is mentioned in the Face in the Mirror most meat productions occurs in artificial tissue growth facilities similar to those that produce replacement limbs and organs. These facilities are much more cost effective in producing meat than traditional farming and ranching methods for several reasons. First, they are considerably less space and labor intensive than taking care of active living animals. Second, they can grow the cuts of meat that are the most in demand. Third, they can control exactly what goes into growing the meat even more precisely that the most controlled factory farms.

Not that everyone likes artificially cultured meat. Smaller farms do still raise animals the old fashioned way for a small minority of consumers who don't trust factory produced food.

Fruits, vegetables and grains are produced through a mix of tissue specific lab grown cultures, hydroponics and old fashioned farming techniques. It is still more cost effective to grow grains and rice in the fields than by other methods. Natural sunlight and rain are much cheaper than artificial lighting and irrigation even with the need for weed-killer and pesticides. Many orchards on the other hand have been replaced by fruit bearing branches cultured in a lab without the need to support the bulk of a tree. Such artificial growth facilities also allow the grower to regulate the type of insects that have access to their crop. Although some growers use microbots (insect sized machines) to completely replace the insects involved in pollinating their crops. Hunter killer microbots are also used in lieu of pesticides on some farms. They are centrally controlled (or use distributed computing) and programed to eliminate members of insect species that are harmful to the crops they guard. Such machines are not reliable enough yet to have completely replaced chemical pesticides but they are greatly reducing the need for them. There have been experiments with airborne swarms of microbots being used as scarecrows but this has met with protests from some environmental groups.