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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?

#241

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've worked in this field. I'll list a few points for it. 1) Pesticide free. There's a lot of chemicals that go into growing crops and they contaminate our bodies, water, and soil. 2) Sun is free, but sun exposure and temperature aren't consistent year round. 3) Shipping may be cheap, but the time of travel from the farm to the table is long. Growing locally increases the amount of time a plant can be on the shelf or…

> 3) Shipping may be cheap, but the time of travel from the farm to the table is long. Growing locally increases the amount of time a plant can be on the shelf or fridge before going bad. Food waste is a big problem from a waste and cost perspective.

To the point that strains are picked and/or modified based on their ability to withstand long trips.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#242
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the parent comment is referencing the huge economies of scale you get on shipping things in bulk with respect to CO2 emissions. If you have 1,000 legs of lamb in a shipping container, the per-leg CO2 cost is low in comparison to one leg of lamb in a car, even if the distances are very different. A heavy truck gets maybe 6mpg compared to your car getting 25, but if the truck is carrying 1000x more items, the t…

The problem is that's only amortizing on side of the equation. If you were to pick up that leg of lamb and a dozen other things on the way home from work then the additional CO2 cost from the lamb itself is negligible. It's like saying cars produce less emissions than bikes by including the manufacturing costs of the bike but not the car.

Sure, it also depends what kind of car you're driving, how much traffic there is, how far you are from the grocery store, etc. etc. The original parent point I was trying to clarify is that transportation impact on the environment for most food products is low on the list of things we should be worrying about.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#243
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…

I'm occasionally boggling that there's no electric farm equipment, since it at least suffers from one fewer problem than electric cars: you're mostly driving around in a finite area. You might need to plumb a dozen or so charging stations at various fields, and have the equivalent ability to essentially carry a five gallon jug of electricity to a tractor in a field when you run out accidentally, but you're not driving 200 miles to an Ikea on the spur of the moment.

Besides the lack of consumer demand (farmers have other things to worry about), I think the other thing that makes the farm market slow to adopt electric is that the market is, erm, slow. People are constantly buying new cars. Some people drive a new car every year, some people drive a car for 10 or 20 years, but I'd guess that most people get a new car every 3-7 years. That means, firstly, that a lot of people have bought a new car since they first started getting good; that also means that an electric car only has to last 3-7 years to meet most people's expectations, and your car will only be 3-7 years out of date when you get a new one.

I would guess the average farm tractor in the fields today in the US is 20-30 years old. You've got some really new ones with GPS, autopilot and satellite TV, sure, but you've also got some 50-75 year old tractors which are still doing just fine. I used to rake hay with a little Farm-All my great grandfather bought back in his prime, which is still going strong today, and I bought a used Cletrac from '45 to use around my woodlot.

This creates three problems for the prospective electric tractor manufactures: not a lot of tractors are sold each year, so you're fighting for a chunk of a very slow-moving market; prospective buyers are going to be asking themselves "will this tractor outlive me?" so you need to have a compelling story on how those battery packs and motor bearings are going to last 50 years, or be easily replaceable; the technology is still rapidly developing, so you also need to explain to the prospective buyer why it's is worth buying an electric tractor now, instead of waiting 10 years to buy a more mature electric tractor.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The sun produces a full spectrum of light, like a blackbody of a certain temperature. The atmosphere then selectively absorbs, scatters, or reflects a portion of it. That produces the Earth daylight spectrum, which varies by season, latitude, and time of day. It doesn't ever match up precisely with the absorption spectrum of plant pigments.

A grow light can produce the exact wavelength of blue light most readily absorbed by chlorophyll, and the exact wavelength of red light most readily absorbed by phytochrome, and the exact wavelengths of other hormone/signaling photoreceptor pigments.

The grow light produces exactly the light that the plant needs, whereas the sun throws out a lot of energy that the plant cannot use effectively. If we had a material that could absorb two green photons and emit one blue photon, that would improve the photosynthetic efficiency of sunlight, but for now, it's still easier for us to turn green light into electricity and power a blue LED.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked in this field. I'll list a few points for it. 1) Pesticide free. There's a lot of chemicals that go into growing crops and they contaminate our bodies, water, and soil. 2) Sun is free, but sun exposure and temperature aren't consistent year round. 3) Shipping may be cheap, but the time of travel from the farm to the table is long. Growing locally increases the amount of time a plant can be on the shelf or…

> 3) Shipping may be cheap, but the time of travel from the farm to the table is long. Growing locally increases the amount of time a plant can be on the shelf or fridge before going bad. Food waste is a big problem from a waste and cost perspective. To the point that strains are picked and/or modified based on their ability to withstand long trips.

Yup, and are also harvested early so they ripen on the way to the store. Also since plants start to decay as soon as they're picked(even if cooled), the more time that passes until consumption the less nutritious they will be.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#246

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've worked in this field. I'll list a few points for it. 1) Pesticide free. There's a lot of chemicals that go into growing crops and they contaminate our bodies, water, and soil. 2) Sun is free, but sun exposure and temperature aren't consistent year round. 3) Shipping may be cheap, but the time of travel from the farm to the table is long. Growing locally increases the amount of time a plant can be on the shelf or…

>6) Soil type and exhaustion. Only certain type of plants can be grown in certain soils and environments and only for so long before the soil is exhausted of nutrients.

Wouldn't this also be true for vertical farming?

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#247
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the end you need just too much collection area - more than the square footage of each floor put side to side. It's easier to put the 'collection area' somewhere remote as solar panels and bring in the light as electricity. The energy cost isn't that big a deal compared to the labor cost.

What is the benefit of vertical farming if you need to occupy 10x more land with solar panels than conventional farming?

Solar panels don't require as much water.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked in this field. I'll list a few points for it. 1) Pesticide free. There's a lot of chemicals that go into growing crops and they contaminate our bodies, water, and soil. 2) Sun is free, but sun exposure and temperature aren't consistent year round. 3) Shipping may be cheap, but the time of travel from the farm to the table is long. Growing locally increases the amount of time a plant can be on the shelf or…

>6) Soil type and exhaustion. Only certain type of plants can be grown in certain soils and environments and only for so long before the soil is exhausted of nutrients. Wouldn't this also be true for vertical farming?

Not if done with hydroponics. The water is frequently dosed with nutrients to keep the proper levels.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked in this field. I'll list a few points for it. 1) Pesticide free. There's a lot of chemicals that go into growing crops and they contaminate our bodies, water, and soil. 2) Sun is free, but sun exposure and temperature aren't consistent year round. 3) Shipping may be cheap, but the time of travel from the farm to the table is long. Growing locally increases the amount of time a plant can be on the shelf or…

>6) Soil type and exhaustion. Only certain type of plants can be grown in certain soils and environments and only for so long before the soil is exhausted of nutrients. Wouldn't this also be true for vertical farming?

They're not using soils; they're providing the entire environment for the plants to grow, including any nutrients.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#250

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've worked in this field. I'll list a few points for it. 1) Pesticide free. There's a lot of chemicals that go into growing crops and they contaminate our bodies, water, and soil. 2) Sun is free, but sun exposure and temperature aren't consistent year round. 3) Shipping may be cheap, but the time of travel from the farm to the table is long. Growing locally increases the amount of time a plant can be on the shelf or…

> 4) You've touched on the water aspect. It's an issue that this can solve.

Market pricing for water could solve all of the problems with water too.

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