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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?

#111

Post by azernik »

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.

Because there are serious costs to bringing everything in-house; you've got to get hold of the capital, you lose any economies of scale that come from addressing a larger market, etc.

With regards to transportation costs, you're assuming that a restaurant running a private vertical farm could do so on its storefront premises, which is a big assumption. Most pricey restaurants are space-limited.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#113

Post by throwaway2048 »

rorykoehler wrote: post #103
throwaway2048 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You are never going to beat the efficency of the sun shining down on plants for free, no matter what. I mean the entire idea is absurd, what are you going to have solar panels on the building that somehow collect light and re-emit it, and have that be more efficent than just the plants collecting the light directly?

So you take more land area for solar, why wouldnt you just plant crops on that land area instead...

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#114

Post by azernik »

rorykoehler wrote: post #103
throwaway2048 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

As a commenter on the same top-level comment noted:

"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."

Higher productivity per watt in the broader industrial sense does not equal higher productivity per watt in the smaller sector that is agriculture.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#115

Post by azernik »

foobar1962 wrote: post #108
mac01021 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That energy and equipment is priced a lot better than land use, on average.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#116

Post by azernik »

roryisok wrote: post #112

Every time I read an article about vertical farming its always leafy greens, and very occasionally strawberries and tomatoes. It doesn't seem like vertical farms can grow anything else

Not competitively - the added cost of indoor equipment isn't that high compared to the already-high costs of those products, whereas the competition in bulk grains production is a lot tougher.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#117

Post by FrozenVoid »

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…

The current vertical farming is in its infancy, sooner or later, new optimizations will emerge that will allow major increases in productivity(e.g. producing only the exact wavelengths of light optimal for growth, computer rationed water supply, advances in genetic editing like CRISPR, better knowledge of small-scale processes when studied in isolation such as their nutrient/energy needs, the selection and study of nutrient rich strains, how plants respond to increases in light/sound/vibration, etc). The idea that natural environment is optimal for growth is a conservative assumption that we need to replicate it exactly. There many factors out of control with natural environment that we apply pesticides, fertilizers, greenhouses, soil tilling, herbicides and weed removal, etc. A closed vertical farm environment will allow much cheaper overall control over production process.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#118

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

rmason wrote: post #106
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'…

I think I read somewhere that most leafy greens are grown hydroponically.

But there's only so many leafy greens you can grow before you saturate peoples already weak appetite.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#119

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

FrozenVoid wrote: post #117
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…

The current vertical farming is in its infancy, sooner or later, new optimizations will emerge that will allow major increases in productivity(e.g. producing only the exact wavelengths of light optimal for growth, computer rationed water supply, advances in genetic editing like CRISPR, better knowledge of small-scale processes when studied in isolation such as their nutrient/energy needs, the selection and study of n…

Short of a free and unlimited source of energy, growing most food under the sun is going to be the norm for quite some time.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#120

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

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…

Mostly leafy greens are already grown hydroponically, I believe.
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