Comment by evanjrowley
1 day ago
Same region all the new data centers are being built. Unfortunately, humans can't eat data like they can wheat.
1 day ago
Same region all the new data centers are being built. Unfortunately, humans can't eat data like they can wheat.
DNA is technically data, right?
Wheat, being basically worthless, is predominantly not irrigated. A data center that draws water from a river or aquifer is not a rival to wheat, which relies on rain. When farmers have invested in irrigation they largely grow something else that's worth actual money.
"All the new data centers" are being built everywhere.
They are planned everywhere, if they are actually being built is a different story
Largely not. Data center people aren't idiots. They site their projects in places with water and power, or if not power then at least gas. I don't think you'd be able to point out a project that actually exists and is competing for a scarce local water resource.
Data centers don't use much water on the scale of things. The numbers look big in isolation, but most people have no idea how much water a country really needs and isolating the numbers makes data centers look bad.
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This doesn't have anything to do with data centres.
You can eat soybeans, though, which are seeing record production thanks to it supplanting what is affectionately known in agriculture circles as poverty grass.
There's some cosmic irony that this is happening when the people who came up with the derogatory term "soy boys" are in office, but I'm too depressed to laugh about it.
AFAIK the first occurence of that expression is from Katy Perry in 2018: https://youtu.be/tWbLkXhGEmo?si=EGtXdwHneXGQRWbP&t=153
Perhaps someone in the industry can chime in, but I had read that the soybeans that the US primarily grows and previously sold to China were used for pig feed. In my mind I pictured it like "cow corn" -- humans technically can eat it, but it's chewy and not very good.
Are there different grades of soybean?
There are different grades with different properties. However very few are consumed by humans. When sold for humans it is called edamame.
The most common use is crush the beans, and collect the oil feeding the rest to pigs. If you read the ingredients at the grocery store, soy bean oil comes up a lot. Soy bean oil is also often used in diesel engines after processing.
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I would appreciate tofu being cheaper than pork again.
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> humans technically can eat it, but it's chewy and not very good.
Not just technically. It is a relatively common food. A fair bit of it is crushed (i.e. turned into cooking oil). But it is also a product used in a number of processed foods, tofu, etc. Granted, it does seem to be eaten less commonly in the USA, but is more often used in Asian cuisines.
> Are there different grades of soybean?
All crops have different grades. Poor weather conditions is the most likely reason for a downgrade.
Shark attacks increase relative to ice cream sales. Unless you have some theory that correlates the two, that you're willing to share, we shouldn't entertain this.
> Unless you have some theory that correlates the two
I guess you meant something more like "shows a causal relationship"?
Because they're already correlated, which I thought was the point..