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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

#161

Post by jasonjayr »

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…

Doing vertical farming on earth, lets us practice here, so we can do this on space colonies reliably later.

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

#162

Post by ClumsyPilot »

vbezhenar wrote: post #99
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, aeroponi…

There are some things that were not available 50 years ago. Better robots, better accumulators, flying drones, image recognition, AI able to make complex decisions. Those things might reduce need in humans and humans are not cheap.

Thats true, but all of those things work just as well in a normal horizontal greenhosue that takes maximum advantage of the sun , or even in the open field

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

#163

Post by bryanlarsen »

ajmurmann wrote: post #132
shmageggy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

As a counter example, raising grass-fed cattle on native prairie in Montana is much more "natural" than a wildlife refuge. The natural state of that land was maintained by massive wandering herds of bison. The massive bison herds and their apex predators generally don't exist any more, so a wildlife refuge can be far less "natural" than grazing land.

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

#164

Post by onetimemanytime »

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…

> but the real soil somehow must add a lot of flavor

I too think that a vegetable and fruit need sun, win and soil to taste the best. Cannot prove it though.

It's also possible that the type of tomato they choose to plant will taste like cardboard even if grown in a regular farm.

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

#165

Post by pas »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #149
kitd wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. A few days ago there was a post here about water now being traded as a commodity. In many parts of the world, the water supply is far from guaranteed and must be shared with the local environment, populatio…

Plants don't destroy water, they store, move and clean it.

Somehow the water used by [almond and whatnot] farmers is a problem in CA.

Rain is great, and Earth's water cycle is closed, but plants evaporate water but you won't get it back as rain immediately.

Plus if you install irrigation you are taking water away from somewhere that would likely not evaporate that fast. (Eg from a river.) And if you also happen to have drainage, (eg if you converted a wetland area), then you suddenly discharge too much water from that region, and you won't get it back as rain.

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

#166

Post by eitland »

vidarh wrote: post #125
eitland wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's first in relatively recent time (last 30 years or so) that this has receded in importance. That's what I mean by decades :-) I'm 40 now, so this means at least since I was 10.

Yeah, I didn't mean to sound like I was contradicting you. Just more background. This used to be a big deal, until people started forgetting about it, and now people are suddenly remembering it again.

Thanks, I clearly misunderstood then :)

As much as I tend to prefer text I'll still admit there are times when it is harder to understand the intent.

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

#167

Post by bryanlarsen »

pas wrote: post #165
bryanlarsen wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plants don't destroy water, they store, move and clean it.

Somehow the water used by [almond and whatnot] farmers is a problem in CA. Rain is great, and Earth's water cycle is closed, but plants evaporate water but you won't get it back as rain immediately. Plus if you install irrigation you are taking water away from somewhere that would likely not evaporate that fast. (Eg from a river.) And if you also happen to have drainage, (eg if you converted a wetland area), then you…

Most crops aren't irrigated.

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

#168

Post by pas »

KaiserPro wrote: post #151
ehnto wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are problems though, we haven't used all of the globes arable land but that doesn't mean we are able to or even should. Consider that much of the remaining arable land is forests we really need to keep. Not all of that is suitable to the types of crops we want to grow, and not all of it is available to the countries currently requiring more food. Arable land is a resource not available to everyone as well, and w…

> Absolutely there is room for development of more traditional farming I'm not talking about traditional farming. I'm talking about using "low tech" solutions but monitoring them scientifically. For example, flooding in the UK is becoming a bigger problem, partly because of more rain, partly because people are allowed to live on flood plains. However a significant change is the way farming has modified land drainage.…

Tax externalities. The concept isn't that foreign. Basically the same as pollution fines, but instead of on a case-by-case basis, with long investigations and usually with involving the courts, just use that IT thing you mention and have people pay according to how badly they mismanage their land.

> There are no real incentives to change this.

Well, yeah, it's not surprising. UK is not really looking far ahead nowadays.

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

#169

Post by gostsamo »

kitd wrote: post #148
bryanlarsen wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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. A few days ago there was a post here about water now being traded as a commodity. In many parts of the world, the water supply is far from guaranteed and must be shared with the local environment, populatio…

No, most crops are watered with dams and irrigation systems. It means changing the natural patterns for river areas, destroying ecologies, concentrating water to water-needy crops, destroying soil. Some plants do not store water, but vaporize it fast and it also can affect other plants and animals.

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

#170

Post by brohee »

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…

It's a luxury product and I'm pretty sure their market is restaurants. Since freshly harvested just tastes better, now good restaurant must source produce locally so are limited by seasons.

This opens the possibility of "farm" to plate under a few hours for what is out of season.

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