Po-ta-toes.
Fuck, potatoes are basically the superfood when everything is taken into account, like caloric density per acre. Way easy to grow and harvest than crickets. Basically grows everywhere. You can grow it vertically as long as you have okay dirt, and dirt is super easy to make.
It can also be eaten raw, cooked in a large variety of ways, flavored interestingly, and it doesn't need backbreaking amounts of work post harvest. Like soy products.
Oh, hey. Sorta not really on topic but I've already made the statement and there were the weird food futurist links so that I already commented to. So maybe it is on topic, if only for a brief moment.
Did some more research. Caloric density per acre is actually beaten out by Maize (Corn, which is actually a word that means 'dominant grain in the area'). By alot. Potatoes is ~6 million Calories, and corn is something like ~15 million Calories.
To be clear a Calorie is a kilocalorie. 1 million calories is about half the "recommended" 2,000 Calories a day. 1 million Calories is ~2.7k Calories a day. So going by my sources an acre of potatoes, by itself, will feed 8 people, for a Y E A R, at 2k Calories a day. With high nutritional values.
Though I'll admit in my research the average calories per acre is actually pretty inconsistent, but that's probably due to yearly variance in harvests. I've seen 15-17 million Calories for potatoes. Corn highs seems to blow past everyone, but can have dogshit numbers too in bad years, since I saw a corn number of only 13 million. (Consistently Corn>Potatoes in terms of Calories though) Rice comes in at about 11 million Calories per acre, but is nutritionally worse than potatoes and seems to be harder to grow, further typically requiring vastly more water.
Corn ekes out ahead on nutrition as well(Like potatoes win here and there but for the most part corn is a little bit better), and corn stalks can be used as construction materials. Further corn is in the ballpark of 1250% more fatty/oily than potatoes, which is why you can make biodiesel from it and if you can make that, you can make biopolymers.
Though potatoes will fucking grow just about anywhere and as a tuber are much less susceptible to disease (though Irish Potato Famine was a thing) and other environmental effects. Plus, if you box raise potatoes you can drastically improve their Cal/acre rating. What I mean by that is a say 2x2x1 box full of dirt, and every time the leaves get to about six inches, bury them. This causes the leaves to grow further up, and more potatoes to grow.
In a commercial terrestrial greenhouse, potatoes are potentially better, for just food. But under controlled conditions, the biggest upset for Corn numbers, Corn might be insanely good.
You can make bread out of both, by the way. And potatoes are super easy to flavor.
For the futurists among us, we need to figure out how to commercially grow corn and potatoes in a -ponics set up. Biopolymers are definitely something I think needs to be explored more. And biodiesel is closest to something actually renewable for a power source. If only because it'd be easier for things like arcologies and planetary colonies to be self sufficient.
Fuck Soy Beans and their products. The amount of post harvest effort you need to get things like tofu is unreal.
But now, go forth, in these answers I have confidence. New World staple crops of potatoes and corn are the best, potatoes being more stable a food crop and corn having more varied uses beyond food with higher theoretical yields. Anyone who hits you up with soy or algae or anything like that? Smack them.
Typically, traditional animals produce far less calories per acre. Beef cows, for instance are about 1.2 million Calories per acre, yet require fucktons of Calories themselves. A beef takes a lot of acreage. Minicows might be the best beef transition, about a ton in weight and more than double the heads per acre from my previous research.
When it comes to terrestrial meat, Rabbits put out insane numbers. Per pound of food and gallon of water, a meat rabbit will generate something like 8 times the meat that a cow will, on a much, much, much smaller footprint, that you can stack vertically. Though butchering bunches of tiny animals might be more work than one really big one. And rabbit starvation is a thing, it happens when a human doesn't consume enough animal fat. But vegans and vegetarians don't seem to have that problem, probably supplements?
Aquaculture (Fish Farms, particularly modern ones) blow corn and potatoes out of the water. Per acre a salmon farm produces in the ball park of 43 million Calories. There are issues with commercial aquaculture, the fish ones at least bivalves seem to do pretty well, but realistically, that's where we should go before we go to anything like bugs.
Mussels and Oysters seems to have way less problems with how they're commercially grown but that could because being crammed in against each other is how they grow normally.
Aquaponic systems could be developed to work with short stalk corn, that would probably be the greatest thing to do. You'd get fish, typically tilapia but I know a number of other fish species work, and micro greens currently, but a sturdier floatplate could maybe work, with bigger fish tanks.
When it comes to other fish farms, the middle of the ocean is a desert, excess food spilling out into the water would be a lot less negatively impactful out there than only a mile off shore.
So fungal or soy or bug meats? Fuck 'em. People who suggest them are looking for the wrong transitions in food production. If you can swing terrariums for bugs plus a hydro- or more likely since it conserves more water an aeroponics set up, you can manage a aquarium for tilapia and using that water for aeroponic growing of veggies and fruits.
Or inner city vertical farms. Aquaponic and Rabbit setups are probably the most square foot conscious ways to generate meat. And you'd have lots of good nutrients already on site for your vertical green farms, which should consist of, probably kale to start with if going max nutrition, but you should work towards Corn set ups, which might have to require a short stalk, big cob breed. To make the verticality and stacking work.
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