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Europe's Biggest Vertical Farm Will Be Powered by Wind and Planted by Robots

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Re: Europe's Biggest Vertical Farm Will Be Powered by Wind and Planted by Robots

#51

Post by wainstead »

user568439 wrote: post #19
Barrin92 wrote: post #3

I'm gonna be honest I do not understand the economics and logic of vertical farming. You're basically putting plants in expensive, complicated buildings operated by extremely expensive and complicated robots, then you turn energy from the sun into electricity and back into light so you can grow the plants when you can just... farm in sunny places instead? Plants have the ability to turn sunlight into tasty nutrients…

- 250x less water - Sun/heat/light maybe needs to be converted but it's always used in the right amount for each crop - Controlled environments protected from plagues, floods, fires... Crops are not lost due to uncontrollable events and a lot of savings in chemicals to protect them from bugs - Saving the cost of SCM (transport and intermediaries) which is sometimes much bigger than producing. In farming is actually a…

And it addresses the potential issue of “peak phosphorus”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_phosphorus

Re: Europe's Biggest Vertical Farm Will Be Powered by Wind and Planted by Robots

#52

Post by ovi256 »

rat87 wrote: post #43
Melting_Harps wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead of growing cabbage in prime real estate in Copenhagen, why don't we invest in Africa, give them some huge machines and then buy their produce? Do we really need a repeat of the supply chains breaking down again to answer this question? African farmers were dismayed when their bumper crops were rotting in their fields because they couldn't export the crops or even sell the excess locally [0]. Livestock farme…

> It's hard to imagine that people haven't learned the value of having a robust local food supply chain, which is the one thing that I had hoped we had learned after the shortages and panic buying created during the 1st wave of COVID. This seems like a worst case scenario, and it still seems like an overblown issue. I would say its usually much easier to just import produce if your country is not good at it. Use larg…

>This seems like a worst case scenario, and it still seems like an overblown issue.

These are not overblown to people like military and civilian planners, who's jobs are setting up things during the good times so their country gets through the worst times like a global catastrophe or a world war. Having food security for years is essential for that. A pandemic like Covid-19 can severe supply chains for months. Their jobs is imagining what a Nipa virus pandemic or a world war could do.

FWIW I have no particular opinion other that "huh interesting" about vertical farms and no idea about their role food security planning.

Re: Europe's Biggest Vertical Farm Will Be Powered by Wind and Planted by Robots

#53

Post by KaiserPro »

Vertical farms don't feed people. They are basically a solution to just in time delivery for restaurants and nothing else.

all They grow are great salad crops. Thats about it. If you're going holistic, you can farm fish at the same time. But that introduces a load of complications.

Look, if you want to make the world a better place you need to:

1) come up with a simple system that can create good quality soil (think Terra preta, but different blends for different regions of the world)

2) make a multch that is cheap, safe and sustainable, so normal farmers can reduce water loss

3) create a cheap fast robot that can remove weeds

4) same again but for pests.

5) make a system of payments that allows both mixed crops (ie fruit/lumber/nuts) as well as livestock and arable.

Out of all of them 5 is the hardest. Its also the one that will have the biggest impact on climate (mixed land holds the most water, regulates heat and captures the most carbon, it also can have the lowest yield.)

Re: Europe's Biggest Vertical Farm Will Be Powered by Wind and Planted by Robots

#55

Post by jeromenerf »

qayxc wrote: post #35
user568439 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 250x less water - Sun/heat/light maybe needs to be converted but it's always used in the right amount for each crop - Controlled environments protected from plagues, floods, fires... Crops are not lost due to uncontrollable events and a lot of savings in chemicals to protect them from bugs - Saving the cost of SCM (transport and intermediaries) which is sometimes much bigger than producing. In farming is actually a…

> but the real soil somehow must add a lot of flavor Correlation ≠ causation. I did some experiments years ago growing food under various conditions. The difference in taste is dominated by two factors: variety and time of harvest. Most industrial fruit is harvested long before it's ripe and ripens artificially in warehouses. This is the main factor that determines taste as this is the process in which taste develops…

Varieties have long been selected to optimize industrial constraints, production, distribution ... Ripe often means colorful, perfumed, tasty, sweet ... and fragile.

Some tomatoes won’t ever get good. They just don’t produce the compounds necessary, have thick skin, etc.

However growing a decent variety in a vertical farming style would produce better tasting fruits.

Collecting ripe fruits with machines is however difficult.

Re: Europe's Biggest Vertical Farm Will Be Powered by Wind and Planted by Robots

#56

Post by Darmody »

baq wrote: post #50
Darmody wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Price will go down in the future - Similar farms can be built on Mars. - Diversity of crops in places where it would be complicated otherwise

> Similar farms can be built on Mars. I'm an Elon fanboi but please let's start with desertified populated regions first so we have time to build a Mars colony without having to deal with civil wars

Both objectives can be worked on at the same time. I don't really like that argument. We could say "let's end hunger first then focus on computer games, or beer, or vacations, etc". Ending world hunger is way more important than those things but you can't expect we stop doing them to focus on something that is already being addressed but is very complex.

Re: Europe's Biggest Vertical Farm Will Be Powered by Wind and Planted by Robots

#57

Post by rplnt »

KaiserPro wrote: post #53

Vertical farms don't feed people. They are basically a solution to just in time delivery for restaurants and nothing else. all They grow are great salad crops. Thats about it. If you're going holistic, you can farm fish at the same time. But that introduces a load of complications. Look, if you want to make the world a better place you need to: 1) come up with a simple system that can create good quality soil (think…

6) reduce waste, stop feeding meat instead of people

Re: Europe's Biggest Vertical Farm Will Be Powered by Wind and Planted by Robots

#58

Post by Manheim »

andi999 wrote: post #32
ranguna wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you even read the article? Water consumption is 250 times less that typical agriculture flat fields. Also, instead of using 1 meter square to grow 1 meter square of crops, you can use the same space to grow 14x the amount of crops.

As far as I understand, water is not a sparse resource in Denmark (but might be an expensive one)

Denmarks only source of fresh water comes from their ground water. They do not have water shortage, but still.

Re: Europe's Biggest Vertical Farm Will Be Powered by Wind and Planted by Robots

#59

Post by eitland »

rat87 wrote: post #41
user568439 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 250x less water - Sun/heat/light maybe needs to be converted but it's always used in the right amount for each crop - Controlled environments protected from plagues, floods, fires... Crops are not lost due to uncontrollable events and a lot of savings in chemicals to protect them from bugs - Saving the cost of SCM (transport and intermediaries) which is sometimes much bigger than producing. In farming is actually a…

>- Independence from other countries. Very important for small ones like Denmark that wouldn't have alternative to planting on their own soil. This does not seem like an important thing, it seems like an unimportant thing that can politicians can try to make a thing out of. It seems like it would be much cheaper and easier to just buy crops from abroad

> This does not seem like an important thing, it seems like an unimportant thing that can politicians can try to make a thing out of.

Quite the contrary: at least in Norway politicians have been busily pushing your side of the story for decades and only stopped pushing it earlier this year.

> It seems like it would be much cheaper and easier to just buy crops from abroad

If you said this last year many would have agreed.

This spring showed that even Norway - as rich and well connected as we are - cannot get hold of a simple thing like face masks if there is an emergency.

Re: Europe's Biggest Vertical Farm Will Be Powered by Wind and Planted by Robots

#60

Post by orwin »

wainstead wrote: post #51
user568439 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 250x less water - Sun/heat/light maybe needs to be converted but it's always used in the right amount for each crop - Controlled environments protected from plagues, floods, fires... Crops are not lost due to uncontrollable events and a lot of savings in chemicals to protect them from bugs - Saving the cost of SCM (transport and intermediaries) which is sometimes much bigger than producing. In farming is actually a…

And it addresses the potential issue of “peak phosphorus”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_phosphorus

Peak phosphorus is one of the peak i'm less worried about in my lifetime or my children's lifetime. Morocco reserves are probably underestimated, as are Algerian reserves. As long as Morocco stay stable and is help by its economic partners during hard times (France and Spain mostly), it wont' be an issue.

But you're right, hydroponics solve this issue.

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