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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?

#271

Post by CameronNemo »

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…

Greenhouses solve the problem of water while still using the sun. Peri-urban greenhouses also save on transportation costs while only being mildly more expensive in terms of land costs. As cities become more dense, former sprawl can be repurposed into local agricultural land.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#272

Post by bigpicture »

randomdata wrote: post #234
AngryData wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about that guy's area, but near me in Michigan, which has a similar climate as NY, you can find decent land for $9K per hectacre easy, possibly cheaper.

Wow. That's in stark contrast to across the lake in Southern Ontario. Good farmland has been selling for upwards of $20,000 CAD/acre, or about $30,000 USD/hectare.

Michigan is not known as a big farming state. I don't know why.

Tons of Midwestern agriculture data available here: https://www.chicagofed.org/research/data/ag-conditions/index This also includes links to agriculture data in other areas of the US.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#273

Post by jcranmer »

xg15 wrote: post #259
jcranmer wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're using one (18-wheeler) truck for all of the different kinds of food for the last mile in terms of distribution center-to-supermarket, but one (pickup) truck each for the different sources for the farm-to-farmer's market. Not to mention that the distribution center is likely closer than the farms.

But food doesn't grow in distribution centers. At some point you have to transport the food out of the farm. That would result in the following chains (simplified): Local: Farm -(1)-> Farmer's market -(4)-> Consumer's home National: Farm -(1)-> Distribution center -(3)-> Supermarket -(4)-> Consumer's home International: Farm -(1)-> Harbor/Distribution center of producing country -(2)-> Harbor/Distribution center of c…

That's not the case. When you talk about large-scale farming, the (1) in the latter chains are actually (3).

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#274

Post by roryisok »

roel_v wrote: post #136
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

Sure, because those are the crops with the highest profit margin and that are hard to store and transport. You can pump grain through tubes into silos and store it for months while transporting and processing.

That makes sense

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#275

Post by antoniuschan99 »

They didn't mention nutrient cost which is pretty high in some cases.

Also I'm working on a diy home vertical Garden system people might be interested in that is automated

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bi90BiwlHEm/?utm_source=ig_share...

But I think there's even easier ways to produce leafy greens without any power required for irrigation

https://youtu.be/pZZO1tYqcwk

Also it makes sense why Soft Bank invested in one of the vertical farms. A lot of produce is shipped into Japan. I tried to visit the Pasona HQ which was an office building that also produced vegetables but they demolished the building this year :$.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#276

Post by thrill »

tzahola wrote: post #209
usrusr wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone needs to run the numbers for a modular chain of wire-carrying drones: if you get rid of the batteries, what length of cable could a drone carry? How much power would that cable be able to transmit, how much of that power would be consumed by the cable-carrying drones? Just how light could we make the power electronics to feed the drones from the (obviously, for weight reasons) high voltage power lines they wo…

Good idea. If we could control those drones via a blockchain-based AI, it could be a killer product!

Is there an app for that?

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#277

Post by antoniuschan99 »

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

That's where we're at in terms of the technology right now. Leafy greens harvest fast vs other plants. And are hydroponic friendly vs other plants.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#278

Post by nicholas73 »

mcbits wrote: post #100
nicholas73 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wonder if it's really necessary to convert the light to electricity as an intermediate step. I'm imagining a filter that's mostly transparent but has a fluorescent coating to convert UV to visible light that the plants can use, effectively brightening the sun in the useful part of the spectrum. Unfortunately Google is giving me the wrong kind of results for "fluorescent filter".

The material you are looking for is called a scintillator. It converts higher energy photons to visible. Of course it has its own issues / cost. Plus, you have to get the light from the rooftop to plants.

Re: Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?

#279

Post by rorykoehler »

jsilence wrote: post #231
rorykoehler wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, it is actually not. To elaborate: a) Urban Farming commonly produces leafy greens and water rich produce like tomatoes and cucumbers. This is commonly known as 'horticulture'. The horticulture to 'farmland farming' ratio is already less than 1:10. A larger part of horticulture are crop that grow pretty well on the fields and that are commonly not produced under glass in CES (controlled environment systems). These…

You don't need to farm the inner city but it certainly helps to do it nearby. You can definitely benefit from doing it on the rural outskirts of cities
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