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Grain farming goes indoors

modernfarmer.com

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Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#11

Post by pard68 »

schiffern wrote: post #4
pasttense01 wrote: post #2

"with the first successfully grown indoor wheat." I very seriously doubt this. Here's a video from 8 years ago from Australia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFxF3VpzdLY Growing wheat in a greenhouse is going to have enormous capital and other costs. If this article was serious they would have posted the costs.

As usual, actual numbers for water/land/pesticide use (5%/3%/0%), but the only mention of electricity use is the fraction of green power. Of course, the use of green power is positioned as an unalloyed good. No mention is made of the fact that every electron used is taken away from the transition from fossil fuels. We're losing ground here, not gaining it. We're supposed to forget that the goal is to increase green e…

Not to mention plants are peak "green energy". There is a very real irony to the indoor farming movement.

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#12

Post by jonathankoren »

I’m skeptical. The problem with grains and hydroponics is that grains are just so cheap it doesn’t make economic sense to do it. Vegetables, particularly leafy greens, are mostly water and can be sold at tremendous markup. I don’t see anything here that changes that economic reality. Even if they were able to double wheat production to 4 crops a year, I don’t that’s enough to make it viable.

Most telling is this passage:

>It’s a tradeoff, says Frederick Smith, a regenerative food consultant. “You replace field-based risk with cost-based risk,” he says. “Having control of [variables such as water and temperature] eliminates a lot of potential risks, and that really appeals to investors who don’t understand farming as much and are looking to invest in something at scale.”

This makes it sound like that investors that understand they market and biology, are staying away, and instead meme investors are who they’re trying to attract.

That ain’t good.

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#13

Post by jonathankoren »

LatteLazy wrote: post #5

I don't understand what problem this is meant to actually since. We have no shortage of land or water in most of the world. Aside from some tiny cases like nuclear bunkers or space colonies this remains a pet project.

Water is actually scarce and getting more scarce every year, particularly in agricultural areas.

There are article about this pretty much every year now.

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#15

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

defrost wrote: post #10

For general interest; Let's call Western Australia a small cog in feeding the world demand for grain. * WA produces on average 13 million tonnes of grains (cereals, oilseeds and pulses) each year. Grain exports generate more than $4 billion (five year average) for the WA economy each year * The state's grain production area, known as the 'wheatbelt', covers seven million hectares across the south-west corner of the s…

To put a big number into perspective for how ridiculous indoor cereal grain farming is... 576,000 acres is ~900 square MILES (3x the size of NYC) - or almost ~2400 square kilometers.

You'd need a structure bigger than Florida to replace all cereal grains with indoor farming. It's just absolutely absurd to imagine.

You'd need to get probably a 1000x increase in production for it to make sense to move indoors.

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#16

Post by giantg2 »

Am I missing something with this whole square foot fetish? I get that vertical farms can be great in cities for reducing shipping issues. But how many cubic feet are used is more interesting to me. Sure, it costs money for land. It also costs money to build vertical infrastructure. It seems that only in urban areas are the costs for land so prohibitive as to make the infrastructure costs look reasonable.

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#17

Post by hutzlibu »

sinoue wrote: post #6

Anyone know how many acres of solar panels you would need to power one acre of LEDs to grow the wheat?

My rough estimate would go like this

- 20% efficency of solarpanels

- 1000W/m² sun under good conditions (at the equator)

-> we get 200W/m² from solar panels

- 600 W/m² energy needed for the plants

- 60% efficency of the LEDs

(both from the paper linked in another comment)

600/0.6 = 1000 W elecricity needed per m²

1000/200=5

So for 1 acre LED farm, we need 5 acres solar panels, if I made no major misstake.

Add to that further losses from energy transformation and you see that solar panel powered, it makes even less sense.

If you want to grow grain indoors, because for example outside is a dessert, but sun, you just would use windows, (mainly to keep your water).

This project only makes sense in space or very remote areas with other good sources of energy.

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#19

Post by TillE »

giantg2 wrote: post #16

Am I missing something with this whole square foot fetish? I get that vertical farms can be great in cities for reducing shipping issues. But how many cubic feet are used is more interesting to me. Sure, it costs money for land. It also costs money to build vertical infrastructure. It seems that only in urban areas are the costs for land so prohibitive as to make the infrastructure costs look reasonable.

All the city farming tech stuff requires some kinda cyberpunk megalopolis scenario to be remotely practical. Or maybe a nuclear post-apocalypse. It's cool or whatever, but most of the world has quite a lot of arable land.

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#20

Post by cute_boi »

jonathankoren wrote: post #13
LatteLazy wrote: post #5

I don't understand what problem this is meant to actually since. We have no shortage of land or water in most of the world. Aside from some tiny cases like nuclear bunkers or space colonies this remains a pet project.

Water is actually scarce and getting more scarce every year, particularly in agricultural areas. There are article about this pretty much every year now.

How would this venture bypass the water issue? Because, I think this venture will also require similar quantity of water.
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