A clever idea that could help the world grow a lot more food

一个能帮助世界生产更多粮食的巧思

Economist

2026-01-13

27 分钟
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单集文稿 ...

  • You know that old saying, buy land.

  • They're not making it anymore.

  • It's the classic real estate mantra, the bedrock of any long-term investment philosophy.

  • And it's true, for the most part.

  • Unless you're talking about those really messy, super expensive land reclamation projects near the coast

  • or a volcano pops up out of nowhere.

  • Which is pretty inconvenient.

  • The total landmass on Earth is pretty much fixed.

  • It is a zero-sum game and that's why when we talk about critical resources, especially food,

  • the amount of truly fertile arable land is always the bottleneck.

  • That silent constraint on everything.

  • We're always trying to squeeze more and more yield out of that 10% of the land we currently farm.

  • But what if that saying 'not making it anymore,' what if that was less of a physical law

  • and more of an engineering challenge we could just bypass?

  • What if you could take land that's basically worthless right now, scrubland, desert grasses,

  • stuff you can't grow crops on, and fundamentally change it?

  • Transform it and do it using technology that is simple, that already exists

  • and could potentially be cheap enough to scale up.

  • That is the audacious mission we are diving into today.

  • Our sources are pointing us to this vision that's just a perfect blend of geoengineering ambition and textbook physics.