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Vertical farming does not save space

lowtechmagazine.com

11–20 of 464 posts

Re: Vertical farming does not save space

#11

> the sun provides free energy and the clouds free water This is somewhat tangential to the author's point, however considering the resources from the Earth as free (not the sun) has been a disaster - environmentally, socially and economically. It's like double entry accounting but only entering on one side.

That being said, exactly 0 of the listed examples are actually bad to consider free. If you don't collect rain coming down, it'll just come down anyway.

Re: Vertical farming does not save space

#12

> the sun provides free energy and the clouds free water This is somewhat tangential to the author's point, however considering the resources from the Earth as free (not the sun) has been a disaster - environmentally, socially and economically. It's like double entry accounting but only entering on one side.

I assumed this was meant in terms of energy required to exploit the resource—if water's literally falling from the sky the energy required is zero.

Re: Vertical farming does not save space

#13

This ignores nuclear power. It also ignores the fact that you can put solar panels in places that you can't put farms such as the desert.

You can put farms in the desert. Some of the most productive farmland is in deserts. Arizona and California are both noted for producing large quantities of high-quality cotton.

Incredible amount of lettuce is grown in Arizona as well!

Re: Vertical farming does not save space

#15
An interesting proposal was discussed by some people on Twitter recently. They discussed it around using Bitcoin mining to create a larger demand for electricity when prices are cheap. Then when an event happens such as in Texas recently, electricity prices would go up, causing mining rigs to turn off since it's no longer economical. There would then be more available electricity for heating homes & businesses.

One would assume vertical farming could be discussed in the same situation. Plants, like mining rigs could go offline for a few days without a major impact I assume, when prices sky rocket due to a major event such as a heat wave or blizzard. Keeping the vertical farm building at a reasonable temperature would be another factor here.

Re: Vertical farming does not save space

#16
Vertical Farming saves space at the expense of electricity. I think the argument against them has to be along the lines of this trade-off >>possiblyNo one cares if the net result is using more space if this means farms closer to the city and larger solar farms far away.

Re: Vertical farming does not save space

#17
post #7

> Artificial lighting saves land because plants can be grown above each other, but if the electricity for the lighting comes from solar panels, then the savings are canceled out by the land required to install the solar panels. This doesn't have to be the case. Plants don't use all the sunlight that hits them, because available light isn't generally the bottleneck in plant growth. Note how most plants are green, whic…

Say a plant needs 1/10th of actual full sun during the day, could you theoretically remove the electricity step entirely but "just" (putting "just" in quotes because I'm sure it wouldn't be easy) having some sort of fancy mirror setup on a 10 storey building to send 1/10th of the sunlight hitting the roof to each floor?

Re: Vertical farming does not save space

#18

> the sun provides free energy and the clouds free water This is somewhat tangential to the author's point, however considering the resources from the Earth as free (not the sun) has been a disaster - environmentally, socially and economically. It's like double entry accounting but only entering on one side.

That being said, exactly 0 of the listed examples are actually bad to consider free. If you don't collect rain coming down, it'll just come down anyway.

If you collect the rain coming down, someone downstream ends up with no water.

Water is not free.

Re: Vertical farming does not save space

#20

> the sun provides free energy and the clouds free water This is somewhat tangential to the author's point, however considering the resources from the Earth as free (not the sun) has been a disaster - environmentally, socially and economically. It's like double entry accounting but only entering on one side.

Most agricultural water costs are from growing crops in areas where there is not enough rainfall: California's Imperial Valley is a desert (3 inches of rain per year) and produces $1 billion of food and cotton each year. Then all the waste runs into the Salton Sea -- another unpaid-for externality.
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