Europe's Biggest Vertical Farm Will Be Powered by Wind and Planted by Robots • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by ben_w » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 11:59 AM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #65

LoSboccacc wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

all these mechanical parts will cause pollution both in their production and their disposal. 365 days of production will also require some heavy fertilization cycles, so more chemicals to be produced and disposed. I don't see that talked much and might very well come ahead with the efficiency of scale in having all these thing stacked instead of dispersed over a large tract of land, but these thing are an important a…

> "chemicals to be produced and disposed" I wish we could just remove the word 'chemicals' from the English language. Most of the time it's used, it doesn't mean anything at all. What is actually used? Fertiliser, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, not some scary poisons and 'chemicals'. Do they need to be disposed of? Not really, plants use them up. If you are disposing of them, you are disposing of your money, becaus…

> not some scary poisons and 'chemicals'.

I dunno, DHMO is pretty scary, but not as scary as the naturally occurring pesticide 1,3,7-Trimethylxanthine [0], which has become the world's most widely consumed psychoactive drug despite side effects of anxiety, nervousness, irritability, restlessness, insomnia, headaches, and palpitations.

[0] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1%2C3%2C7-Trimethylxant...

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

#82

Post by 4gotunameagain » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 12:02 PM UTC

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…

Another argument is that produce has to be packed unripe in a truck to come all the way to copenhagen from spain without spoiling, which results in a usually bland product.

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

#83

Post by pjc50 » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 12:03 PM UTC

achow wrote: post #16

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…

Earth: 29% Land, 71% Ocean Land: 71% Habitable, 29% Not Agricultural: 2.3% of all habitable land Livestock: 8% of all habitable land Looking at the stats, your question is very valid. We can drastically increase food production by marginally decreasing land dedicated for livestock and/or utilizing unused habitable land. Source: https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/11/Global-land-use-g...

Much of the livestock land is steep or rocky. The same obstacles to drawing a plough across it present to building buildings on it. Unless you're prepared to invest a lot of energy flattening it.

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

#84

Post by Manheim » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 12:06 PM UTC

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…

Let us not make the best an enemy of the good. The overall benefits from vertical farming are good when implemented correctly. Sure it isn't a perfect solution that solves everything, but it is on the road to better solutions. And in my opinion a part of our future farming solutions.

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

#85

Post by KaiserPro » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 12:09 PM UTC

rplnt wrote: post #57

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

Sorry, yes I should have put these two points in.

Waste is a big fucker, as is the over supply of meat.

However where I diverge is that I still think livestock have a strong role to play in established and subsistence agriculture. I mean this in the way that fish can be put in the loop for hydroponic, chickens to reduce pests, or pigs/sheep used to rotivate fields. Not in the way that we devote vast amounts of land to pasture. (although there are questions to answer about how to manage rich grasslands that are carbon sinks.)

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

#86

Post by ClumsyPilot » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 12:11 PM UTC

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…

Salads are economic to produce because they have no calories.

Calories = Light (energy) + Fertiliser.

Efficiency of an LED is like 40%, and Photosynthesis efficiency is like 2%.

In other words calories are expensive and ineffieicent to produce through artificial lighting, no amount of 'startuping' will change that.

Also nothing here is new, we've had greenhouses, artificial lighting, hydroponics, aquaponics, aeroponics and even vertical farms like 50 years.

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

#87

Post by esarbe » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 12:11 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #80

roebk wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't quite get the point you are making. Can you rephrase it?

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

#88

Post by LoSboccacc » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 12:13 PM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #65

LoSboccacc wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

all these mechanical parts will cause pollution both in their production and their disposal. 365 days of production will also require some heavy fertilization cycles, so more chemicals to be produced and disposed. I don't see that talked much and might very well come ahead with the efficiency of scale in having all these thing stacked instead of dispersed over a large tract of land, but these thing are an important a…

> "chemicals to be produced and disposed" I wish we could just remove the word 'chemicals' from the English language. Most of the time it's used, it doesn't mean anything at all. What is actually used? Fertiliser, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, not some scary poisons and 'chemicals'. Do they need to be disposed of? Not really, plants use them up. If you are disposing of them, you are disposing of your money, becaus…

> I wish we could just remove the word 'chemicals' from the English language

and I wish people would read the full sentences before entering a debate, because it was completely clear this wasn't about the specific fertilizers usage in situ, but pollutant released during production ( one of many examples https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190606183254.h... you can find, about every precursor can and is leaked in the environment ) and after usage (even assuming it's closed off, which it isn't, you need to scrub waste and put it somewhere or reprocess it at some cost)

is it so bad to be curious about these cost in hyper intensive production, especially since they aren't available in this press release?

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

#89

Post by jacquesm » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 12:14 PM UTC

roel_v wrote: post #79

jacquesm wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Other crops are not just scaled up versions of salads.

I didn't claim they were.

But Salads are a good way to get a whole pile of principles figured out (contamination, environmental effects on the gear, basic robotics, deals with potential customers and so on).

> Bulk foods (wheat, potatoes, sugar beets, cassava, rice) cannot be grown efficiently in such vertical farms, at any scale, with current technology.

That's true, but that's also not where the next move would be. Bulk foods (more properly called staple foods) do just fine in regular soil where ever they are being grown, and do so reasonably efficiently.

But for cucumbers, tomatoes and a whole pile of other veggies vertical farming quite probably will work just fine and cost competitive with normal greenhouses.

A vertical farm does not compete with in soil agriculture in open air, it competes with greenhouses. Staple foods are an entirely different class of problem.

In IT terms: don't complain that the more efficient CPU factory doesn't make your memory faster, it isn't meant to do that.

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

#90

Post by jacquesm » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 12:17 PM UTC

0xFluegel wrote: post #77

jacquesm wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would not compare a vertical farm to a traditional farm but to a greenhouse and then the comparison is quite favorable. Effectively it is a more acreage efficient version of the greenhouse at a somewhat higher energy expense per kg of produce.