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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?

#161

Post by typeliftr »

mikro2nd wrote: post #128
rmason wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

The "breakthrough tech" I'm NOT seeing: There's all the excitement over electric cars and electrical trucks, and I, for one, can't wait to get an electrically powered car I don't have to drive. But the thing I'm not seeing is electrically powered farm machinery. I think people underestimate just how hard that problem is. These machines, when they're working at peak times of the year (planting time, harvest) are requi…

Asking out of genuine curiosity, does it actually matter if harvesting takes 5 or 10 days? If electricity is cheaper, it might make sense for the job to take a bit longer but be cheaper? Human labour is not involved (with automated vehicles) so price should only be dependent on actual power consumption.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#162

Post by xg15 »

shalmanese wrote: post #45
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…

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.

So:

CO2 for meat from NZ: Shipping + last mile

CO2 for locally produced meat: last mile

How is meat from NZ producing less CO2 than locally produced?

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#163

Post by mikro2nd »

cjrp wrote: post #134
mikro2nd wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "breakthrough tech" I'm NOT seeing: There's all the excitement over electric cars and electrical trucks, and I, for one, can't wait to get an electrically powered car I don't have to drive. But the thing I'm not seeing is electrically powered farm machinery. I think people underestimate just how hard that problem is. These machines, when they're working at peak times of the year (planting time, harvest) are requi…

This may be a stupid idea, but is there any reason that this kind of heavy machinery needs a battery and couldn't just be connected to a power source via a (admittedly, very long) cable?

Very long cables at normal supply voltages (240V/380V) suffer too much voltage drop over any distance (say) >150m. Remember that we're talking of multi-kilometre distances, not a mere hectare or two.

Not only that, but anyone who has used an electric lawnmower on a larger area will tell you that cables are a fucking hazard to navigation when you're trying to move a machine trailing a cable. They constantly get tangled, driven over and cut.

So anything at a reasonable voltage to run heavy machinery at a long distance from the nearest supply would need to be... I don't accurately know -- ask an electrical engineer for a definitive answer, but... something like 1.1kV. Cable that's sufficiently well insulated for moderately high voltage is /very/ expensive and deadly if the insulation gets compromised. Doesn't sound very feasible to me. Maybe someone with more EE knowledge can prove me wrong -- this is just my gut-feel conjecture. I got kicked out of the EE program at university for being bored to tears by this sort of stuff.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#164

Post by mikro2nd »

typeliftr wrote: post #161
mikro2nd wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "breakthrough tech" I'm NOT seeing: There's all the excitement over electric cars and electrical trucks, and I, for one, can't wait to get an electrically powered car I don't have to drive. But the thing I'm not seeing is electrically powered farm machinery. I think people underestimate just how hard that problem is. These machines, when they're working at peak times of the year (planting time, harvest) are requi…

Asking out of genuine curiosity, does it actually matter if harvesting takes 5 or 10 days? If electricity is cheaper, it might make sense for the job to take a bit longer but be cheaper? Human labour is not involved (with automated vehicles) so price should only be dependent on actual power consumption.

Yes it most certainly does matter! A crop that's harvested even a few days too late is likely to suffer severe nutrient and quality losses.

eta: Of course this varies per crop, so let me back down just a little, but for most food crops there really is a optimal window outside of which the farmers' rather meagre profits evaporate quite fast.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#165

Post by pjc50 »

typeliftr wrote: post #161
mikro2nd wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "breakthrough tech" I'm NOT seeing: There's all the excitement over electric cars and electrical trucks, and I, for one, can't wait to get an electrically powered car I don't have to drive. But the thing I'm not seeing is electrically powered farm machinery. I think people underestimate just how hard that problem is. These machines, when they're working at peak times of the year (planting time, harvest) are requi…

Asking out of genuine curiosity, does it actually matter if harvesting takes 5 or 10 days? If electricity is cheaper, it might make sense for the job to take a bit longer but be cheaper? Human labour is not involved (with automated vehicles) so price should only be dependent on actual power consumption.

> does it actually matter if harvesting takes 5 or 10 days?

Crops are perishable, and there's always the risk of weather conditions damaging them while they're in the field.

How much it matters will depend on the crop, but it's definitely important.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#166

Post by pjc50 »

mikro2nd wrote: post #128
rmason wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

The "breakthrough tech" I'm NOT seeing: There's all the excitement over electric cars and electrical trucks, and I, for one, can't wait to get an electrically powered car I don't have to drive. But the thing I'm not seeing is electrically powered farm machinery. I think people underestimate just how hard that problem is. These machines, when they're working at peak times of the year (planting time, harvest) are requi…

Agricultural machinery is likely to keep using liquid hydrocarbon fuel even when it's being banned entirely from cities. It's just too much of a technological challenge, as you say.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#167

Post by mikro2nd »

rorykoehler wrote: post #144
mikro2nd wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would also have to wean us off meat, including poultry. Not all meat, sure, but the bulk is cereal-fed in CAFO factory operations. Similarly you'd have to wean us off most of the dairy produce and dairy-derived food we like, because grass-fed is not going to produce the quantities we've grown accustomed to. Then you'd have to wean us off bread and beer, and a whole host of extracted starches and sugars that are u…

Most meat will be lab grown within a decade. Livestock meat will become a luxury

Care to put a little Bitcoin on that? ;) I'm skeptical.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#168

Post by semi-extrinsic »

mikro2nd wrote: post #128
rmason wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

The "breakthrough tech" I'm NOT seeing: There's all the excitement over electric cars and electrical trucks, and I, for one, can't wait to get an electrically powered car I don't have to drive. But the thing I'm not seeing is electrically powered farm machinery. I think people underestimate just how hard that problem is. These machines, when they're working at peak times of the year (planting time, harvest) are requi…

My forecast is that heavy diesel engines (excavators, farm equipment, ships, maybe trains) will be replaced by hydrogen power. Either fuel cells in the 100-800 kW class, or gas turbines for the megawatt to tens of megawatt applications. For the latter, you might need to blend hydrogen with e.g. ammonia to slow down combustion, but we'll get there.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#170

Post by samatman »

cjrp wrote: post #134
mikro2nd wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "breakthrough tech" I'm NOT seeing: There's all the excitement over electric cars and electrical trucks, and I, for one, can't wait to get an electrically powered car I don't have to drive. But the thing I'm not seeing is electrically powered farm machinery. I think people underestimate just how hard that problem is. These machines, when they're working at peak times of the year (planting time, harvest) are requi…

This may be a stupid idea, but is there any reason that this kind of heavy machinery needs a battery and couldn't just be connected to a power source via a (admittedly, very long) cable?

Plenty of sibling comments spelling out why not.

I want to add that for farm equipment, having a big weatherized battery cube and a crane to swap it is practical. For automobiles, less so.

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