Why vertical farms are a crock. • Hacker News Board

Re: Why vertical farms are a crock.

#61

Post by hugh3 » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 10:46 PM UTC

qq66 wrote: post #45

hugh3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what if the vertical farm and office building idea were combined, so that you had alternating floors of greenhouses for plants and office workers that ate them? It takes 1-2 acres of farmland to support one person's eating requirements, which is two floors of the Empire State Building. Alternatively, there's 21000 people working in the ESB so that's about 200 people per floor. If you devoted every second floor to…

$38/year or per month?

Per year.

I also looked up the average cost of agricultural land per acre in the US, which comes down to about $1200 per acre, or about 0.3 cents per square foot.

This means that for the cost of buying outright the average agricultural square foot somewhere in the country, you could rent that same square foot in a big-city skyscraper for about 45 minutes.

Re: Why vertical farms are a crock.

#62

Post by hugh3 » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 10:53 PM UTC

eogas wrote: post #60

This is what I hate about the times we live in. When someone comes up with an idea of how to solve a problem, all we do is discuss. We discuss and we discuss. We argue about the plausibility, we may even do some calculations to see how plausible the solution is. But we never actually try it. In other words, if some guy thinks a vertical farm would be a good idea and a possible solution to a problem, then why the hell…

When someone comes up with an idea of how to solve a problem, all we do is discuss. We discuss and we discuss. We argue about the plausibility, we may even do some calculations to see how plausible the solution is. But we never actually try it.

That's not really true. An awful lot of the time, someone comes up with a solution to a problem, tries it, and it works.

In cases like this, though, it never gets beyond the discussion stage because the idea is a complete useless crock of shit and the major flaws in it are so obvious that a nine-year-old (or even George Monbiot) can see right through it.

And yet the discussion goes on, because the guy who has the idea (and a number of hangers on) is religiously wedded to it refuses to acknowledge that "wait, actually, yes, this makes no sense on the grounds of physics or economics", so I suspect we'll continue to see this idea pop up from time to time.

In conclusion, sane and workable ideas get implemented. Stupid unworkable ideas with horrendous flaws get endlessly discussed.

Re: Why vertical farms are a crock.

#63

Post by nitrogen » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 11:06 PM UTC

chadmalik wrote: post #57

sshumaker wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because your comments about local food are clearly written without a basic understanding of the breakdown of energy use. Freight shipping uses about 1 gallon of gas/ton/500 miles. Over 80% of the costs are in the final few miles - trucking from the shipping depot to the markets. Getting food locally delivered is far less energy efficient than having it shipped in bulk by freight to supermarkets.

No, it is because the moderation policies on this site are absurd and comments saying "it sucks" get modded up while a reasonable comment gets modded down. Bottom line the world is running out of hydrocarbons. Things that look "energy efficient" to you today won't look so efficient in 50 or so years. Peak oil already happened in the United States, Hubert's peak is reasonably well accepted, and the idea that shipping…

There's not some crowd of elite "mods" voting you down, it's anybody who's reached a certain karma threshold (probably ~200). Sometimes rational comments will be downvoted right away by a few early and angry jerks, but the scores will later be corrected by upvoters. But, since that was your last comment, I suppose it is pointless to reply.

Some on-topic points:

1. Energy efficiency in terms of joules per kilogram per kilometer is a constant, regardless of the actual dollar cost of the fuel.

2. 50 years is a very long time to come up with the technology to replace fossil fuels, hopefully with cheap fission and eventually fusion.

3. Modern civilization thrives on being able to disregard geographic barriers. We could never have a global society if transportation of physical goods became impossible. So, since we (as a society) won't accept the defeat of modern civilization, we will simply find another way to continue to exist. If that means replacing fossil fuels, then it will happen.

Re: Why vertical farms are a crock.

#64

Post by lsc » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 11:09 PM UTC

eogas wrote: post #60

This is what I hate about the times we live in. When someone comes up with an idea of how to solve a problem, all we do is discuss. We discuss and we discuss. We argue about the plausibility, we may even do some calculations to see how plausible the solution is. But we never actually try it. In other words, if some guy thinks a vertical farm would be a good idea and a possible solution to a problem, then why the hell…

well, if the guy wants to put up his own money to build a vertical farm, I don't think anyone is going to stop him.

The problem is that the guy is asking other people to fund his idea, so it makes sense for other people, who know more about the subject, to weigh in and point out ways in which it is a good or bad idea.

Re: Why vertical farms are a crock.

#65

Post by nitrogen » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 11:10 PM UTC

What about using vertical farms just for semi-exotic plants that fetch a higher price? Instead of expecting to feed a city of 15 million on skyscraper farms, just grow things that have to be 100% fresh in order to be tasty, and sell them to upscale restaurants and gourmet markets.

Re: Why vertical farms are a crock.

#66

Post by Someone » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 11:28 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #26

Farmland isn't just a place to put some plants while they grow. A farm is a giant solar power facility, one that converts solar energy, carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrate. Monbiot doesn't stress the point enough - it's all about light. When we say that we have a shortage of farmland, what we mean in practical terms is that we have a shortage of flat areas with good drainage to function as solar collectors. Go…

"Going vertical doesn't increase the amount of light you can gather"

I am not sure that is true everywhere on the planet. If you get closer to the poles, the sun will, on average, stand lower above the horizon. That is why, in winter in Moscow, people sun while standing up.

Also, in summers close to the equator, getting less light per square meter may be a good thing, depending on what you are trying to produce.

Re: Why vertical farms are a crock.

#67

Post by rsheridan6 » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 11:31 PM UTC

ars wrote: post #30

1053r wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Production prices for solar energy are now below $0.80 / watt ( http://www.123jump.com/market-update/First-Solar,-Inc-Q4-Ear... ), although skyrocketing demand has caused wholesale prices to remain much higher. It seems likely that we may in the next 10 years be in a place where we can turn sunlight into electricity, and then electricity into the exact wavelengths of light used in photosynthesis more efficiently than…

How in the world did you get +8 mod on this? That's utter nonsense! You can only get as much light as you have surface area - so now instead of fields of crops, you have fields of solar collectors! Did you think there was some magical light multiplier device that could give you more output light than you started with? Plants already use the best parts of the visible spectrum to collect light. The small amounts of inf…

You might be able to beat crops in that way if you dispensed with photosynthesis and crops altogether and came up with a completely different way to convert solar energy to carbohydrates. Somebody else in this thread said that a wheat field converts 1% of its solar energy to food calories. They didn't cite that and I don't have time to look it up, but if it's true it should be beatable.

Re: Why vertical farms are a crock.

#68

Post by Misha_B » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 11:58 PM UTC

I've seen this nonsense for a few years now in all kinds Architectural publications. One such example: http://www.mvrdv.nl/#/projects/research/181pigcity. Unfortunately, many architects and architecture students would buy any green (or otherwise hyped) BS thrown at them without questioning it.

I think the most prohibitive aspect of the "vertical farming" is the enormous cost (in materials, labor and energy) of building highrises or even buildings of more moderate heights, compared to the cost of growing any legal kind of crop on farmland and shipping it. Structure will have to be significantlly more massive to carry the loads of some soil and water. And not a word about competing land uses in Manhattan... But let's assume we can afford to ship the crop 10 or 30 miles into the city from a place with cheaper land, rather than a 1000 from far far away.

Otherwise, I actually believe the problem of lighting is solvable - for crops that require perhaps 3-10 times as little light as available in an open field on a certain location. Light can penetrate from the sides of the building. A structure shallow ebough compared to the floor height might suffice, say 10-15 meters for a floor 3 meters high. Close to the equator sunlight is abundant so even having less light by an order of magnitude is probably enough for some crops. Further away from the equator it's trickier: the sun is much lower in the south and so more direct sunlight is gained so perhaps only two thirds of it are lost compared to an open field. But then, the structure casts very long shadows which may prevent the land "behind" it from being used for farming (vertical or otherwise).

Re: Why vertical farms are a crock.

#69

Post by Andrew_Quentin » Sat, Sep 18, 2010, 1:12 AM UTC

hugh3 wrote: post #33

ghshephard wrote: post #20

As important as the specific theme (Vertical Farms are a crock) was this line, "Magical thinking is a universal affliction. We see what we want to see, deny what we don’t. Confronted by uncomfortable facts, we burrow back into the darkness of our cherished beliefs. We will do almost anything – cheat, lie, stand for high office, go to war – to shut out challenges to the way we see the world." So many of the inane appr…

So - I say let's build a couple of these vertical farms, see what we discover, do the math and realize it will never make sense, and maybe discover something else that we never even considered! You're suggesting doing something that we already know makes no damn sense in the hopes that we might learn something useful in the process. This argument could be used to justify an awful lot of things which make no sense. Th…

you could build just a two story house, glass side walls, high enough ceilings, and see what happens on the first or second floor.

Re: Why vertical farms are a crock.

#70

Post by Andrew_Quentin » Sat, Sep 18, 2010, 1:23 AM UTC

hugh3 wrote: post #22

alabut wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" You would need > 100 of these buildings (ignoring all the other issues for now) to be able to replace one major farm. " So what if it didn't replace one major farm and just a small local one? And what if the vertical farm and office building idea were combined, so that you had alternating floors of greenhouses for plants and office workers that ate them? I'm surprised I haven't seen the ideas brought together befor…

And what if the vertical farm and office building idea were combined, so that you had alternating floors of greenhouses for plants and office workers that ate them? It takes 1-2 acres of farmland to support one person's eating requirements, which is two floors of the Empire State Building. Alternatively, there's 21000 people working in the ESB so that's about 200 people per floor. If you devoted every second floor to…

two floors of the Empire State Building (two floors)

(two floors) x 200 people = 400 floors

(two floors) x 300,000,000 people = 600,000,000 million

Hmm, the world must be really big, or the floors must be really small. If we double that number to include Europe, indeed, lets increase it slightly as Europe has a bigger population, that is 1.5 billion floors of the Empire State buildings to feed only about 1/6th of the world. That does not sound right to be honest.