Crops can blight, animals can get diseases. I don’t know much about hydroponics but I know that bacteria are a concern. What food source is the most reliable, the least likely to produce less food than expected?

    • Depends on what you have on hand. Many insects have an almost 90% conversion rate of food to insect biomass and if you have a lot of plant matter or other biological material available that humans can’t consume they are great.

      • The trope is usually depicted as farming them en-mass for consumption, and that’s much less efficient than just growing soy beans.

        Sure, in a survival situation, it might make sense to eat insects. But on a large scale, it doesn’t really.

        • Farming soy beans also produces waste and stuff still spoils. Turning that into consumable biomass efficiently via insects or other crustaceans is still a viable option. Especially since their droppings make great fertiliser. Including that in a food production cycle is not the worst idea.