In next 50 years.

Fifty years from now, there will be even less people working in the cropland comparing with what we have right now. From planting seeds to harvesting, the entire production process of food will be totally done by machine. We need only couple of people run the farmer company that may responsible for 1000 acres or much bigger area of cropland. Their only duties may only be check the status of machines in the cropland, enter command code into the planting system; irrigation frequencies and amount, pesticides application time, how much of the sunshine needed for crops will be accurately calculated. They don’t need to go to croplands at all since there will be different kinds of machine monitoring the growth of plants and do proper adjustments based upon the real time monitor observed. There will be barcodes attached with foods that coming from these lands so buyers are able to check the entire growing process online based on the codes they have. On the other hand, the production will increased for having multiple layers of “land” in same place. The layers of cropland will be shifted in order to have same amount of sunshine. The shifting will be calculated by the computer system automatically, which allow a more accurate outcome. With the population increasing in next 50 years. The city will take more land than now and there will be much more smaller size cities emerged as well. This may lead to the fact that the shipping distance for foods decreasing a little bit. But on the other hand, available cropland become further and further away from the central of cities that will increase the mileage of food. The way to use all the available space for food may include that using building roofs and building land on the top of parking lot to plant foods, which may be the food sources for local communities’ farmer market.  

On the consumer side, we can order the foods we need online and system will find the food with best price and also smallest mileage. The food we ordered online will be delivered to our home so that we do not have to drive to buy food. The quality and price are guaranteed. For people who cannot afford to buy fresh food, there will be another substitutes for that. It has low price but enough nutrients, calories and proteins inside of it. It is easy to preserve and also carrying around. My guess is that it would be something like a beverage and there are lots of different flavors in it. It uses the foods that are not sold but still fresh that blend all kinds of food together?