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Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

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Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#41

Post by mc32 »

dalbasal wrote: post #37
nostromo wrote: post #28

There's a lot of misunderstanding of agriculture in this thread. 1) No, land is not expensive. In agricultural areas, land is quite cheap. Organizing shelves of crops vertically solves for a problem that isn't actually a problem. 2) The sun is free and electricity isn't cheap. Putting plants indoors and then buying electricity to create light is going to be expensive compared to using the free sun. (The absurdity of…

Good points all. The aesthetic appeal of this sort of indoor farming, and the space-age-ness gives the topic a tendency to over-excitement. I'd also add (4) Mostly, urban/vertical/cubicle farms produce high quality/price leafy herbs & veg. It's not replacing vast cereal fields. That's a very small portion of agriculture overall, definitely by land use but also by most measures. All that said, the are real space-age-i…

Also, for these fast growing, relative high margin produce, having fresh product out of season that is near-local, I think has a demand.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#42

Post by jaskerr »

nostromo wrote: post #28

There's a lot of misunderstanding of agriculture in this thread. 1) No, land is not expensive. In agricultural areas, land is quite cheap. Organizing shelves of crops vertically solves for a problem that isn't actually a problem. 2) The sun is free and electricity isn't cheap. Putting plants indoors and then buying electricity to create light is going to be expensive compared to using the free sun. (The absurdity of…

I don't have data, but I do have anecdotal evidence to contradict #1.

I live in upstate NY, where farm land is cheap (in relative terms). We are seeing an influx of Amish, who can no longer afford land in Ohio and Pennsylvania. (To be clear, they might be able to afford land, but at such a cost as to risk the enterprise and family. The Amish won't do that.)

We are also seeing new farmers moving here from states such as Wisconsin. They have family in those states, but they can't afford the startup costs including land. Here they can.

I think land costs are more complicated than you make out.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#43

Post by ggm »

dalbasal wrote: post #35
ggm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3) Shipping is cheap. No, thats an externality you don't care about. Its not cheap in social consequence terms. hauling food by road from centralized warehouses is a twofold sin. Firstly, its food miles and NO, CO2 and other burdens. Secondly, its why e coli spreads across the USA: too much centralisation of distribution. "cheap" food is actually at root, the problem. It needs to be affordable, but high quality. We'r…

I appreciate the commitment to social consequences, but I think you're mis-estimating. Shipping is cheap, also in terms of the energy (for example) required to ship too. There are social consequences to using real estate for farming, using artificial lighting and to producing the vegetable factory too.

I should have said I think think indoor farming is silly(ish)

I live in Australia. the costs of shipping fruit by road from Victoria to Queensland are indeed cheap. Especially when you don't factor road quality, driver rates of pay, loss of jobs in the Queensland agricultural sector. And look, we have tomatoes all year round: crappy ones, with good shelf life, because thats what you need when you ship them by freight truck 1500km to shave 10c per KG off the price, so you can undercut the local produce.

I also know cheap food fuels the economy. I think people have got a bit twisted on cheap. Good food should be cheap enough we can afford it, and expensive enough people can afford to grow it, and if you drive to rationalist economic scale answers too hard, you wind up with three farmers and thirty thousand un-employed ex agicultural workers. And, you wind up with acid-sulphate soil, contaminated water tables, monsanto owning the seed genome.

I'd rather we did some shipping and some local. I'm not particularly hung up on vertical farms, greenhouses are mostly ok with me.

The loss of farming land close to cities to make houses is part of the Queensland South East corner story. We're a giant conurbation, of prime river floodland, some of the best soil in the country. It should be growing Asparagus. Its growing blocks of flats instead.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#44

Post by generic_user »

lighthazard wrote: post #30
nostromo wrote: post #28

There's a lot of misunderstanding of agriculture in this thread. 1) No, land is not expensive. In agricultural areas, land is quite cheap. Organizing shelves of crops vertically solves for a problem that isn't actually a problem. 2) The sun is free and electricity isn't cheap. Putting plants indoors and then buying electricity to create light is going to be expensive compared to using the free sun. (The absurdity of…

I agree with all your points. However, I believe there are additional costs to land farming like insects, weather damage, etc. So, yes, the sun is free but that comes with the caveats of the elements. Not sure how much crop is lost due to insects/drought/other factors but perhaps this helps.

Commercial farms generally have some form of Crop insurance along with equipment insurance etc.

I don't think very small one man farms that sell directly at farmers markets are eligible for most of the programs. But most of those people grow in residential areas not properly zoned for agriculture.

Vertical could be interesting to try in those micro backyard farms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_insurance

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#45

Post by shalmanese »

ggm wrote: post #29
nostromo wrote: post #28

There's a lot of misunderstanding of agriculture in this thread. 1) No, land is not expensive. In agricultural areas, land is quite cheap. Organizing shelves of crops vertically solves for a problem that isn't actually a problem. 2) The sun is free and electricity isn't cheap. Putting plants indoors and then buying electricity to create light is going to be expensive compared to using the free sun. (The absurdity of…

3) Shipping is cheap. No, thats an externality you don't care about. Its not cheap in social consequence terms. hauling food by road from centralized warehouses is a twofold sin. Firstly, its food miles and NO, CO2 and other burdens. Secondly, its why e coli spreads across the USA: too much centralisation of distribution. "cheap" food is actually at root, the problem. It needs to be affordable, but high quality. We'r…

It costs less in CO2 costs to ship a leg of lamb from New Zealand to a supermarket in Los Angeles than it does for you to get in a car and bring that lamb home with you. It also costs less in CO2 costs to ship that lamb from NZ to a supermarket than to truck it in from a local farm to your fancy organic farmer's market.

If you want to attack CO2 costs, the primary costs are in the last mile.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#47

Post by keithnz »

nostromo wrote: post #28

There's a lot of misunderstanding of agriculture in this thread. 1) No, land is not expensive. In agricultural areas, land is quite cheap. Organizing shelves of crops vertically solves for a problem that isn't actually a problem. 2) The sun is free and electricity isn't cheap. Putting plants indoors and then buying electricity to create light is going to be expensive compared to using the free sun. (The absurdity of…

we ( http://www.mywildeye.com/ ) are doing a lot of IoT stuff on the west coast of California, New Zealand, and Australia in the agricultural space. You can do a lot lot better with water usage simply by understanding what your water is doing.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#48

Post by vilhelm_s »

According to [1], lettuce grown by California farmers cost 993,567,000/84,000 = $11,900 per acre.

According to this article, electricity and power costs $216,000 for a 30,000-square-foot vertical farm, or $313,000/acre.

It seems hard to make that competitive.

[1] https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverv...

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#49

Post by lightedman »

keithnz wrote: post #47
nostromo wrote: post #28

There's a lot of misunderstanding of agriculture in this thread. 1) No, land is not expensive. In agricultural areas, land is quite cheap. Organizing shelves of crops vertically solves for a problem that isn't actually a problem. 2) The sun is free and electricity isn't cheap. Putting plants indoors and then buying electricity to create light is going to be expensive compared to using the free sun. (The absurdity of…

we ( http://www.mywildeye.com/ ) are doing a lot of IoT stuff on the west coast of California, New Zealand, and Australia in the agricultural space. You can do a lot lot better with water usage simply by understanding what your water is doing.

Why do that when you just install a water reclamation system and turn everything into a closed-loop system, only adding water when required?

Why IoT yourself into a security situation where a hacker can nail your system and kill your crop in short time? Hydroponics has the disadvantage of bad effects showing up much faster and hitting much harder than buffered mediums like natural soil, so if you're confident and have your system 'set' so you only need to check once a week, you can have your entire crop dead halfway before you're supposed to check again. If the system is only checking water, the hacker can modify that so it tells you the wrong thing to do, and you kill your crop. That's just a bad scenario all-around.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#50

Post by grizzles »

nostromo wrote: post #28

There's a lot of misunderstanding of agriculture in this thread. 1) No, land is not expensive. In agricultural areas, land is quite cheap. Organizing shelves of crops vertically solves for a problem that isn't actually a problem. 2) The sun is free and electricity isn't cheap. Putting plants indoors and then buying electricity to create light is going to be expensive compared to using the free sun. (The absurdity of…

Can't mirrors/fiber optics/windows instead of walls solve #2?
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