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What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

thinkingagriculture.io

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Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#261

Post by bilbo0s »

saeranv wrote: post #194
kumarski wrote: post #158

My father is an ag soil chemist of 50+ years. I'm an industrial systems eng. w/ a specialty in polymer-textile-fiber engineering. (Mostly useless skillsets in the US now) Gonna share a few lessons here about agriculture that I try to convey to EECS, econ, Neuroscience, and the web developer crowd. - You can only grow non-calorically dense foods in vertical farms - It takes 10-14 kwh/1000 gallons of water to desalinat…

Re: Which brings up another issue, which is energy density/m2 of land. To support industrialization/high density urbanism the only fuel sources that do this are currently fossil fuels, or nuclear, but none of the renewable fuels have the energy density. So if these countries want to increase the amount of MWh/capita, the most efficient (only?) pathway is through high-energy density fuel sources, which right now is be…

Hmm. If the target is 1MWh in a year, that seems trivial to deliver in a place like Chad. Insolation in Chad should be right around 6 or 7 kWh per sq metre. [0] Chop off 85% of that, because we can't harvest all of the solar energy that falls on a square metre of land. We can only reliably capture maybe 15 to 20% of it. But even if you harvest that 1.5 kWh for only 4 hours a day, (which is pretty easy in the middle of the Sahara where you should get about 8-12 hours a day), it comes in around 120 kWh per month. Well above the 1MWh per annum target.

So on the distribution side, they have a population of only 13 million, with a geographic size of 1.2 billion sq metres, which lands us at roughly a thousand times the amount of energy they need to meet the 1MWh per annum per Chad citizen. If they were harvesting it that is. (And that's using 20% efficient solar panels alone. No wind, etc.)

Chad's problem is a lack of anything to trade in exchange for the equipment to harness the sun and build the storage and distribution network. (Grid distribution infrastructure, maybe a liquid air storage facility or 3, solar panels etc) But the sun itself provides them more than enough energy to meet that 1MWh per annum per capita target.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#262

Post by saeranv »

m3047 wrote: post #251
saeranv wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: Which brings up another issue, which is energy density/m2 of land. To support industrialization/high density urbanism the only fuel sources that do this are currently fossil fuels, or nuclear, but none of the renewable fuels have the energy density. So if these countries want to increase the amount of MWh/capita, the most efficient (only?) pathway is through high-energy density fuel sources, which right now is be…

I'm not going to provide a source, but my understanding is that one square meter can provide roughly 1 KW of electricity at noon on the equator. Looks like that's about 4MW per acre. Five acres for the "traditional" family farm. I bet where I live that irradiation equals 1MW per acre, and of course it varies seasonally. Sounds ridiculous, until you've tried to water any sizable amount of square footage, and contempla…

1 KW sounds high to me. Granted I work in higher latitudes (42). Rule of thumb is 1KW for peak solar radiation, which translates 100W from a solar panel (which are 15% - 20% efficiency).

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#263

Post by saeranv »

bilbo0s wrote: post #261
saeranv wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: Which brings up another issue, which is energy density/m2 of land. To support industrialization/high density urbanism the only fuel sources that do this are currently fossil fuels, or nuclear, but none of the renewable fuels have the energy density. So if these countries want to increase the amount of MWh/capita, the most efficient (only?) pathway is through high-energy density fuel sources, which right now is be…

Hmm. If the target is 1MWh in a year, that seems trivial to deliver in a place like Chad. Insolation in Chad should be right around 6 or 7 kWh per sq metre. [0] Chop off 85% of that, because we can't harvest all of the solar energy that falls on a square metre of land. We can only reliably capture maybe 15 to 20% of it. But even if you harvest that 1.5 kWh for only 4 hours a day, (which is pretty easy in the middle o…

Solar panels themselves are only 10% - 15% efficient at converting solar to electricity. So I think your estimate here is off by a factor of 10.

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#264

Post by ethbro »

oddsockmachine wrote: post #73
chrisco255 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see that being critical in Brazil, near the rainforests, but does this strategy work in the great plains?

Might not count as the great plains, but Mark Sheppard's New Forest Farm in Wisconsin is a good demonstration of a similar approach in a different context. https://newforestfarm.us/about/

Not to belittle the difficulty, but as someone who just drove from WY to WI over the last couple days... east of the Mississippi is drastically wetter than western MN+.

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#265

Post by paconbork »

kls wrote: post #187
mathgladiator wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what advice would you offer to another developer that longs to get into agriculture?

If you are wanting to do it as a commercial venture, then livestock (particularly beef if you are in the US) is about the only way to go unless you can purchase vast tracts of land and the equipment to run it. If you are considering vegetable farming commercially, don't unless it is an extremely boutique product like truffles or exotic mushrooms, the economies of scales are crushing. The other option that is still vi…

What changed after NAFTA, if you don't mind my asking?

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#266

Post by Infernal »

saeranv wrote: post #263
bilbo0s wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. If the target is 1MWh in a year, that seems trivial to deliver in a place like Chad. Insolation in Chad should be right around 6 or 7 kWh per sq metre. [0] Chop off 85% of that, because we can't harvest all of the solar energy that falls on a square metre of land. We can only reliably capture maybe 15 to 20% of it. But even if you harvest that 1.5 kWh for only 4 hours a day, (which is pretty easy in the middle o…

Solar panels themselves are only 10% - 15% efficient at converting solar to electricity. So I think your estimate here is off by a factor of 10.

Grandparent estimated capturing 15%-20%, so they’re only off by a factor of 0x-2x from your estimate range.

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#267

Post by jacknews »

"90M acres of corn, 85M acres of soybean, and 30M acres of wheat. Brazil has as much, and usually more, soybean acreage grown every year in their breadbasket "

We need to drastically reduce agricultural land-use.

That's what indoor farming will be good for, and especially synthetic foods, beyond meat, etc.

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#268

Post by Amygaz »

antocv wrote: post #122
alisson wrote: post #42

Around 6 years ago I quit my job as a developer to dive into agriculture. I learned about syntropic agriculture systems and felt in love with it because: - You are able to work with space and time in a way to maximize yield (not 1 crop yield, but but multi crop) - It focus on being biodiverse - It builds forests So in this systems you will see rows of trees intercalated with rows of beans, corn, soy anything "weedy"…

Hey man no way, you have been living my dream! First I wanted to just grow berries, then I realized, pesticides and so on, so add another plant to fight that attacker instead of pesticide, then add another plant to protect that plant by being attractive for those other bugs which kill the bad bugs. Then I realized, this would eventually be a forrest with just more berries and edible fruits than normal. Thats where th…

You don't do sustainable farming for the money. It can certainly pay the bills and some. Plus subsidies and incentives can help.

If you want to make money you start a vertical farming AgTech, which will not be profitable, but will attract the trendy funding. Pay yourself well while it last.

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#269

Post by cheerlessbog »

tathougies wrote: post #237
pmontra wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The total amount of electricity to power those UV lamps should be on par with what the Sun sends to the potatoes fields. Maybe that's the reason for fusion. It didn't do the math.

Actually no not really. Plants only absorb two wavelengths of light. It's currently more efficient to convert sun into solar power via panels and then to light LEDs supplying only the wavelengths that plants use. Despite the seeming inefficiency here, the fact is that plants are even more inefficient at absorbing light not at the right wavelengths than solar panels.

Could one imagine a material that would absorb solar spectrum and emit the preferred frequencies? Something like a polymer one could stretch over fields to get more from the suns rays.

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#270

Post by cryptonector »

chx wrote: post #174
kumarski wrote: post #158

My father is an ag soil chemist of 50+ years. I'm an industrial systems eng. w/ a specialty in polymer-textile-fiber engineering. (Mostly useless skillsets in the US now) Gonna share a few lessons here about agriculture that I try to convey to EECS, econ, Neuroscience, and the web developer crowd. - You can only grow non-calorically dense foods in vertical farms - It takes 10-14 kwh/1000 gallons of water to desalinat…

> 1MWh/capita annum Oh this is fascinating! I never thought of this but of course energy consumption per capita is going to be an indicator of how industrialized a country is. I briefly checked the two countries I am a citizen of (Canada, Hungary) and counterchecked with one of the poorest countries I know of (Chad) and the numbers are as expected: 14.6, 4.1, 0.013 (oof).

Now think about what it means to do with less energy.

Energy availability is wealth.

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