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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

#131

Post by makerofspoons »

ajmurmann wrote: post #130
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…

One more point the article makes that's missing from your list: It uses less space. We currently use enormous amounts of land on agriculture. It would be fantastic if we could give all that land back to nature.

It should also be noted reducing agricultural land use is a great way to mitigate climate change: https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/08/7-things-know-about-ipcc-sp...

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

#132

Post by ajmurmann »

shmageggy wrote: post #44
tremon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On top of that: this style of farming is additive to other uses of the same land area, not exclusive. Having a traditional 100-acre farm demands a loss of 100 acres of land in opportunity cost. Vertical farming allows to use the same land for residential or commercial development, or it allows for 100 acres of food production in only 10 acres of land.

This is a big one, and we should aim for rewilding in the reclaimed space. Agriculture is one of the biggest drivers of habitat loss and thus biodiversity loss.

I wish we could properly account for this negative externality. To me the ideal state for every inch of land is it being a wildlife refuge. To that end I'd love to see a tax that gets charged for using land for anything else. I think it would drive a lot of improvements like vertical farming

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

#133

Post by theferalrobot »

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…

> 250x less water

Compared to what exactly and for what crop? Rain is free and is all that is needed for plenty of crops

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

#134

Post by snovv_crash »

imtringued wrote: post #98
rat87 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Capturing bitcoin mining heat does not make it less energy intensive. If a bitcoin is worth X dollars it will always take X dollars worth of energy to produce a bitcoin. This is true even if you increase the efficiency of the miner.

Nope. Greenhouses use very low grade heat, so they can be run on 'waste heat' from pretty much anything, including server farms. The light they need is a different issue...

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

#135

Post by Kye »

ben_w wrote: post #67
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…

1. How many of these points can be achieved, and to what relative quality, with greenhouses? 2. Given sunlight is ~1 gigawatt per square kilometre, and given the light level plants need, to the extent that this allows winter production of: (a) staple crops such as wheat, rice, potatoes: this will need implementation of all the improvements to the global power grid that eco-optimists like me call for and which eco-pes…

>> "[0] unlike this surprise I found on Google satellite view: https://goo.gl/maps/EjD4CNCkQB3aziR97"

I don't think it's "greening the Sahara" so much as "trying to keep the last bits of green." This is on the Nile.

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

#136

Post by swiley »

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…

Plants use two (they're probably fine with just one) specific wavelenghts of light, so if you're solar power is broadband you can be saving energy this way.

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

#137

Post by wainstead »

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.

Yeah, I’m not worried much about it either... it would be a benefit to reduce phosphorus mining in general due to its environmental impact, but even that can probably be addressed in other ways.

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

#138

Post by bryanlarsen »

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…

KaiserPro had good rebuttals to some of your points[1] so I won't repeat those, but here are some more:

> - 250x less water

Most crops are grown with this thing called "rain" and without any supplemental water. Using just rain means they are part of the natural transpiration and precipitation cycle, so their unnatural water usage is 0.

> transport

Bulk transport is incredibly efficient. IIRC, many food products spend more carbon on transport from the grocery store to home than they do getting to the grocery store. I recall another study showing that it was more carbon efficient buying frozen mutton from New Zealand in London than it was buying local fresh mutton.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25415773

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

#139

Post by sauwan »

theferalrobot wrote: post #133
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…

> 250x less water Compared to what exactly and for what crop? Rain is free and is all that is needed for plenty of crops

Have you ever seen how we do conventional agriculture these days?

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

#140

Post by foolmeonce »

ben_w wrote: post #67
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…

1. How many of these points can be achieved, and to what relative quality, with greenhouses? 2. Given sunlight is ~1 gigawatt per square kilometre, and given the light level plants need, to the extent that this allows winter production of: (a) staple crops such as wheat, rice, potatoes: this will need implementation of all the improvements to the global power grid that eco-optimists like me call for and which eco-pes…

I would generally agree, but I don't see solving the problems caused by "cash crops" as very good and not unlike solar and wind solving the problems of extremes first.

If it can replace the 5% of food that is currently handled terribly and has an enormously oversized footprint then that is great.

I am not horrified by the ramifications of my staple rice coming from Asia on a slow boat which I then consume 100% of. I am horrified by all the trozical fruits that are being airmailed and then largely discarded.

Once they are done experimenting, they will want to focus on what pays best and whether they mean to or not, they will be replacing terrible with better, while still not competing on very low cost/resource staple food.

I think there's no reason we can't eventually really beat plants on achieving higher density resource usage given seasons, light spectrum conversation, wind, etc, but it is a mistake to focus on how far off that is as a reason not to begin the process.

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