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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

#71

Post by postingawayonhn »

ranguna wrote: post #13
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…

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.

Actually more than 14x. Because you control the environment you can provide them with ideal conditions which should speed up the growth cycle.

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

#72

Post by ClumsyPilot »

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."

This and 'it's much easier to do X' is exactly the lax approach that gives us crisis after crisis when we are caught with our pants down and people die.

"regulate them to be more energy efficient then they are now."

Laws of physics do not obey congress, they will pollute unless we make them nuclear.

And some countries are not even near an ocean.

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

#73

Post by ed_balls »

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…

For places like, say, UAE it could be national security issue (you are 9 meals away from a revolution). It's a great back up in case of natural disasters.

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

#74

Post by cromwellian »

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…

I don’t think LED lights are the ultimate solution. They could use light pipes during the day when it’s sunny to route sunlight from outside and distribute it inside possible using fiber optics.

Eg https://youtu.be/DN8GXTmR6RI

This is a passive system and would require little to no power.

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

#75

Post by ben_w »

orwin wrote: post #60
wainstead wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t know the geography well enough to know if this is a problem, but I thought half of the area claimed by the Moroccan government wants independence and has a long-running low-energy struggle going on to achieve that end?

(Slightly more energetic than I thought: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/14/world/middleeast/western-...)

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

#76

Post by pjc50 »

johnchristopher wrote: post #68
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…

> 5) make a system of payments that allows both mixed crops (ie fruit/lumber/nuts) as well as livestock and arable. I don't understand that statement. Is that a tech/internet software payment solution ? Or do you mean that a farmer/breeder should be able to use his fields/pastures for either livestock and agriculture ?

It's a political kind of payment: the shape of farming in the "first world" is determined by what gets subsidised.

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

#77

Post by 0xFluegel »

jacquesm wrote: post #62
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…

Vertical farms start with salads ('crunchy water') because they are easy crops to start such a process with. Once established and verified they will for sure move away from just leafy greens. The typical plan for a startup in this domain runs in the decades, not just a few years, and they're pretty capital intensive compared to software start-ups. Think of the salad producing vertical farm as you would of an MVP for…

Can you give me a reference? I am somewhat interested and my current information is that they are generally trying to work around the disadvantage of giving up scale compared to traditional farms.

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

#78

Post by ClumsyPilot »

ranguna wrote: post #13
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…

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.

Water consumtion is like the most frequently gamed statistics ever. People will count all the water that falls on the field of grass and call it 'water consumtion for raising cattle'.

Without a proper breakdown into blue water, grey water and green water this number is not even worth discussing.

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

#79

Post by roel_v »

jacquesm wrote: post #62
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…

Vertical farms start with salads ('crunchy water') because they are easy crops to start such a process with. Once established and verified they will for sure move away from just leafy greens. The typical plan for a startup in this domain runs in the decades, not just a few years, and they're pretty capital intensive compared to software start-ups. Think of the salad producing vertical farm as you would of an MVP for…

Other crops are not just scaled up versions of salads. Bulk foods (wheat, potatoes, sugar beets, cassava, rice) cannot be grown efficiently in such vertical farms, at any scale, with current technology. Having lots of multi-story greenhouses does not contribute to developing the sort of radical innovative tech that would be required for staple foods.

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

#80

Post by pjc50 »

roebk wrote: post #69
rplnt wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6) reduce waste, stop feeding meat instead of people

Ain't this the truth. It's an incredibly inefficient way to feed the human race. And to boot, there's fewer starving livestock then there are starving humans.

Northern Europeans and many steppe peoples exist largely because livestock can be raised on terrain that's not suitable for animal farming.
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