This market will resolve YES if by the end of 2024 some group credibly reports having successfully converted wood pump (or a similar source of cellulose) into >400,000 calories of food that is demonstrated to be safe for human consumption, at an estimated cost of <$10 million, using a method resembling that described here:
> "Producing sugar from lignocellulosic biomass is a promising resilient food solution to counter the near-total global failure of food production due to the agricultural collapse that would likely follow an abrupt sunlight reduction catastrophe such as a nuclear winter, a supervolcanic eruption, or a large asteroid or comet impact.
> This study examines how quickly edible sugar production could be ramped up globally by repurposing pulp and paper mills, sugarcane biorefineries, corn biorefineries, and breweries for lignocellulosic sugar production..." Keep reading.
Also see discussion in these interviews:
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Consider changing the title to clarify if the deadline is the beginning or end of 2024.
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/comet-biorefining
"The company’s proprietary technology allows for the conversion of wood [...]. Demonstrated at 5 dry tons per day scale"
I talked to one of the coauthors of the paper Juan García and he says that this has already happened
https://comet-bio.com/products/sweeterra-syrup-blends/
@JaimeSevilla It says it's made from:
straw, leaves and shells
Those aren't similar to wood. For example, wood has a higher cellulose content.
@MartinRandall Hi, Juan here. The question explicitly states that a similar source of celullosic material also counts.
Separately, even though this particular product is not made with woody biomass, this has been done extensively. See for example: https://farm-energy.extension.org/renmatix-turns-biomass-into-sugars-for-industrial-use/
@JuanGarciaMartinez I guess it hangs on whether wood is sufficiently similar to straw and leaves for purposes here.
@M I did some brief research and wood does have a higher cellulose content than straw, which is presumably part of why more animals can eat straw than wood.
@JuanGarciaMartinez Would you resolve this market as YES already based on what you know?
@RobertWiblin Even though I have >99% confidence this is feasible with current patented technologies (based on a reasonable accounting of capital investment), I do not know whether it has happened. I would need to contact the companies who developed the technologies to confirm.
@RobertWiblin Hi Rob, I think you can now resolve this question as yes. I have received confirmation from industry people that at least one company has produced several batches of cellulosic sugar of the proposed size. Any reasonable accounting of costs would put the cost of producing a batch of this size at well under a million, even for a small pilot facility not designed to scale.