CHAPTER 54: CHAPTER 54: PREDICTABLE FOOD CRISIS

In fact, Mo Qingyan also knew how important it is to have a greenhouse that can produce food in an apocalyptic environment, but their shelter was built when the house was constructed, and the greenhouse was not considered at that time. Instead, the underground floor was designed as a bar.

This resulted in Mo Qingyan’s shelter having no self-sustaining food capabilities.

In the short term, this is certainly not a problem. Whether it’s exchanging goods with others or acquiring food through other means, they can manage to get by.

Moreover, because the underground space is sufficient, Mo Qingyan also stored a lot of supplies, enough for her, Mo Qingxin, and Ding Ning to eat for two years.

If it were just a nuclear war or some other apocalyptic disaster, one or two years would be enough for them to wait for post-disaster reconstruction or rescue teams to come to the rescue.

But now everyone is facing a century-long extreme cold night, with the surface becoming a frozen environment for a hundred years, completely unsuitable for any crop cultivation. Humanity’s food production can almost be said to have been completely written off by 99%.

In such a situation, the only thing people can rely on is the material reserves before the disaster and these planting greenhouses built in shelters underground that aren’t as affected by temperatures.

Chen Xin may not know the situation yet because he’s far from the city, but Mo Qingyan, due to being close to the City Hall Shelter and the shopping center shelter, somewhat knows the situation. Shelters in urban areas have already begun to control the use of supplies.

Although the main food source is still pre-disaster stored grains, mushrooms grown in planting greenhouses and rats being raised have also started to be incorporated into the food supply.

In the Flame Country, the technology for mushroom cultivation is already quite mature, which is why the government opted to use mushrooms as the main food source for post-disaster sheltering.

Mushrooms, being the main obtainable food source in the current environment, if managed properly, can yield significant output. In a suitable environment, a 100 square meter planting area using a five-layer cultivation method can produce even at a conservative estimate of 30 jin per square meter, reaching 75,000 jin a year.

This yield is not low, but to ensure food supply for a shelter, though small shelters find it hard to build greenhouses, they don’t need too vast planting areas to ensure food supply, thus not having much of an issue.

Just like Chen Xin’s shelter, with a 100 square meter planting greenhouse, if all planted with mushrooms, it would be enough for Chen Xin to eat his fill and still have surplus yield to make mushroom wine and drink himself under the table.

But for large shelters, the problem gets more severe, and the bigger the shelter, the more serious the issue becomes.

The larger the number of people, the more food is needed, and the corresponding greenhouse area required will also be larger.

After all, upon hearing that 100 square meters can produce over 70,000 jin of food in a year, one might think it’s a lot, but with a permanent population of 300,000 in the city, thanks to the pre-disaster "leave no one behind" policy of the Flame Country government, at least over 90% survived in shelters.

Calculating based on one ton of food consumption per person per year, 270,000 people would require at least 360,000 square meters of mushroom growing area to meet consumption needs.

Because the surface cannot grow any crops anymore, all food sources are from underground greenhouses, but shelters evidently don’t have that much space to set up planting greenhouses.

And 360,000 square meters is 3,600 mu, 540 acres, 36 hectares, which is equivalent to half of the Forbidden City, 1.7 Bird’s Nests, or 51.4 standard football fields in area.

Such an area, if it were before the disaster, would not be an issue, excluding rural farmland, just the labor reform farm near the city had 36,500 mu of farmland, making food production not an issue at all.

As for constructing planting greenhouses, before the disaster, building them on the surface would merely be a matter of money, without any difficulty in terms of construction.

But with the disaster at hand in the apocalyptic world, due to the severe cold, building greenhouses on the surface is impossible. To ensure sufficient food production, one can only dig out enough space underground.

And digging out such a large underground space would take quite some time.

Even if the major shelters have enough manpower and possibly stored enough tools before the disaster, carving out such a vast space is a massive project.

In other words, unless other factors intervene in the future, food shortages will be an inevitable issue for the major shelters.

Fortunately, the apocalypse has just begun, and all major shelters have enough material reserves to sustain for a relatively long time.

This period is golden for each shelter; whether they can tackle the upcoming food crisis depends on whether they can dig out enough planting greenhouses during this time.

So it is foreseeable that food will become the most in-demand necessity in the future, and ensuring a stable supply of obtainable food will become the top priority for survival in this apocalyptic world.

Whether it’s Chen Xin or Mo Qingyan, or other people in other shelters, if they want to survive in this apocalypse, they must first solve this problem.

Fortunately for Chen Xin, with the help of the system, food is no longer a challenge for him.

"Alright, with Ah Lan’s help, your problem over there is also resolved now, Dragon Lady." Chen Xin looked at Mo Qingyan, a smile in his tone as he said to her, "Now you just need to clear out the wine cellar and convert it into a greenhouse."

"Hmph, if I clear out the wine cellar, you’ll start eyeing my collection, won’t you? Let me tell you, if you want my wine, you’d better bring something good to trade!" Mo Qingyan snorted at Chen Xin.

Looking at Mo Qingyan’s demeanor, Chen Xin burst into laughter, "Don’t worry, I definitely won’t disappoint you!"

For the bickering-like conversation between Chen Xin and Mo Qingyan, Qin Lan just watched from the side, waiting until they finished before speaking, "If you two have finished chatting, shouldn’t we get the vegetables you promised us SWAT?"

Although Chen Xin was using Mo Qingyan’s name to trade supplies with Uncle Ding, both Uncle Ding and Chen Xin knew that the actual trade was between Chen Xin himself and the SWAT.

After all, although Uncle Ding is the SWAT team leader, he couldn’t personally come up with so many supplies, and so much vegetable supply couldn’t be consumed by one person alone, so collecting supplies under the SWAT name to exchange for vegetables to improve the SWAT’s meals was inevitable.

So Qin Lan’s comment was perfectly justified.

Facing Qin Lan’s prompting, Chen Xin smiled and led them to his planting greenhouse, "Don’t worry, the vegetables have already matured, and I was harvesting them before you arrived."