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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?

#101

Post by Gravityloss »

nicholas73 wrote: post #91
llukas wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aaand this is true! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency 1-2% of best plants vs 22% of best commercial panels! :)

This is not exactly correct. The link explains why by breaking down the stages of efficiency loss. The solar panels only mitigate the first step, so you are look at 22% vs 47% for plants. Then, the 22% is not including losses from converting the electricity to lighting (or heck, the energy to create those panels in the first place). LEDs can select the most favorable wavelengths however so maybe it can approach parit…

You could generate chemically costly preproducts for the plant synthetically too to help its efficiency. Things like increasing CO2 and providing at least nitrogen.

But while you are at it, you could directly to synthetic food... Hydrogen, methane, formaldehyde, sugars.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#102

Post by rorykoehler »

jsilence wrote: post #85
rorykoehler wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do better but you will never beat hydro

yield of hydroponic wheat is significantly lower than conventional production in soil. Prof. Bugbee and team worked on this at NASA.

Thanks will check it out. Goes against everything I've experienced

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#103

Post by rorykoehler »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #98
rorykoehler wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a pretty good case to wean us off cereals. They aren’t the best diet health wise. We only consume so much because they are calorie dense and easy to grow.

you have to replace those calories with something, and it makes no sense if the something has 100x the production costs for what returns exactly?

The issue with this view is it is looking at the future potential using today's technology and efficiency. We're about to blow productivity per watt out of the water and this will change everything. If you want to know more watch jeremy rifkin's talk on YouTube https://youtu.be/QX3M8Ka9vUA

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#104

Post by edrobap »

tathougies wrote: post #21
pascalxus wrote: post #4

Why don't they just do it without all those expensive lights and equipment, that's where all the biggest expsenses are. Just straight hydroponics with vertical farming. am i missing something? EDIT: I mean, do it outdoors with vertical farming, either on rooftops or around offices or parks or just outside the city (better there than 6000 miles away). the vertical aspect of it would still help reduce costs since real-…

Everyone here is saying there's not enough light. That's not actually true. The sun produces more than enough energy to grow all the plants. The issue is one of distribution. You have to distribute very particular wave lengths of light to the entirety of the structure and all the plants. This is a hard problem. Mirrors are inefficient. Fiber optics don't do exactly what you want, and plus, a lot of the light energy i…

The use of electricity instead of sunlight is very similar to the two step process used in HEVs for energy conversion to achieve better efficiency

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#105

Post by rorykoehler »

jsilence wrote: post #84
rorykoehler wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Industrial farming is ravaging the land that could otherwise be used for ecologically positive purposes. What you say looks simple on the surface however when you take a holistic view of the biosphere much of it needs to be further interrogated.

the amount of farmland area you could substitute with urban vertical farming is neglible. way below one percent.

This is like the famous 'we'll only need 64kb ram' quote. I look forward to it being proven completely and absurdly wrong in the coming years.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#106

Post by rmason »

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…

In a word no. I spent twenty years as a fertilizer agronomist and I'm very familiar with the costs of producing a crop.

The numbers simply do not work. Even when they tried in Detroit and got buildings for five cents on the dollar they couldn't make it work.

The investors funding these enterprises do not understand agricultural economics. I keep investigating these stories looking for some kind of 'breakthrough tech' that would dramatically reduce costs or increase yields. I've been tracking these vertical greenhouses for fifteen years, they open and a couple of years later they're gone.

I think what could change things for produce is solar cells and electric trucks. It would isolate producers transportation costs from oil prices and lower the cost of getting produce to the cities. I know technology is quickly improving in both battery technology and solar cells.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#107

Post by FrozenVoid »

mygo wrote: post #66
mc32 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I believe that this is a relatively reliable marker for whether 5-star restaurants will be in the area. quick on-demand access to fresh, never-frozen, produce. They also tend to go for out-of-season / exotic produce, which is doesnt need to be grown in end-world-hunger quantities.

Why a restaurant wouldn't run their own private vertical farm where they would control the quality and amount of supply? That would remove supply volatility and transport costs entirely, and even some bulk products can be produced at smaller scale organically.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#108

Post by foobar1962 »

mac01021 wrote: post #87
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…

Would land and shipping both be cheap if we ceased to externalize a lot of the cost of each? Both land use [1] and shipping [2] contribute significant fractions of our society's carbon budget. [1] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/285/5427/574 [2] https://www.transportenvironment.org/press/shipping-emission... That said, I'm not so sure about 2-story, LED-lit warehouses for growing food either...

> Would land and shipping both be cheap if we ceased to externalize a lot of the cost of each?

No.

But neither would the energy and equipment used to do this vertical farming either.

IMHO it's only a "thing" because it can be presented as a disrupting-startup-venture to attract capital. Like those "farm-in-a-box" things.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#109

Post by stale2002 »

mac01021 wrote: post #87
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…

Would land and shipping both be cheap if we ceased to externalize a lot of the cost of each? Both land use [1] and shipping [2] contribute significant fractions of our society's carbon budget. [1] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/285/5427/574 [2] https://www.transportenvironment.org/press/shipping-emission... That said, I'm not so sure about 2-story, LED-lit warehouses for growing food either...

Yes, it would still be cheap in comparison.

You are correct that there are externalities. But even if we priced in thise externalities, it would most currently NOT 100X the price (which is what would be required to make vertical farming cost competitive).

I would be extremely surprised if those externalities even came close to 2Xing the price of "normal" farming.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#110

Post by greggman »

FrozenVoid wrote: post #107
mygo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that this is a relatively reliable marker for whether 5-star restaurants will be in the area. quick on-demand access to fresh, never-frozen, produce. They also tend to go for out-of-season / exotic produce, which is doesnt need to be grown in end-world-hunger quantities.

Why a restaurant wouldn't run their own private vertical farm where they would control the quality and amount of supply? That would remove supply volatility and transport costs entirely, and even some bulk products can be produced at smaller scale organically.

my guess is they have a limited amount of time to manage such a thing and the scale isn't large enough to cover the variety they'd want
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