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Grain farming goes indoors

modernfarmer.com

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Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#21

Post by joegibbs »

This really doesn't seem cost-effective. Yeah on the one hand you're getting an increase in your output but on the other, you're getting a massive increase in costs. Traditional farming is dirt simple - you put the seeds in the dirt and the plant grows, then you harvest the plant (plus irrigation, plus fertilisation, plus pesticide use, etc). The cost, once you have the land, is the cost of the seed you're using (plus labour, plus machinery, plus water rights, plus everything else).

With this method you get the land, then you spend a fortune building a place to house your hydroponic setup, then getting the solution ready, then adding lighting, etc. Also, if you're using solar to power your lamps you're basically capturing sunlight, converting it to electricity, then using that to make fake sunlight for your crops to grow.

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#22

Post by timmaxw »

I just can't see how this can replace conventional farming at scale. Currently, outdoor farming uses 4.62 billion acres [1]. The article says indoor farming has 25x the yield per acre. So that would be 177 million acres. Today, there are only about 44 million acres of total buildings in the world [2]. So to replace conventional farming, we'd need to build 4x as many buildings as currently exist; what's the environmental impact of _that_?

But the real deal-breaker is energy. Outdoor farming gets energy naturally from sunlight. Indoor farming is powered by LED lights. LEDs could be more efficient than sunlight by only emitting the frequencies that are most useful for plants; but on the other hand, I suspect that they might need to be brighter than sunlight to achieve 25x the yield per acre. So let's estimate it's exactly as bright as sunlight. To light 177 million acres exactly as bright as sunlight, you'd need somewhere around 3,000,000 terawatt-hours per year. For comparison, global electricity consumption is around 25,000 terawatt-hours per year [3]. So to replace conventional farming, this would need about 100x as much electricity as the current global electrical grid can supply!

So until we get fusion power, I doubt this is practical.

[1] https://www.producer.com/news/worlds-farmland-total-bigger-e...

[2] https://guidehouseinsights.com/news-and-views/the-global-bui...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_energy_consumption

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#23

Post by jonathankoren »

cute_boi wrote: post #20
jonathankoren wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The same way every hydroponic system saves water. Recirculation.

Traditional soil growing literally pours the water on the ground, where most of it evaporates, and what doesn’t sinks into the soil and becomes unrecoverable on any reasonable timescale.

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#24

Post by MPSimmons »

timmaxw wrote: post #22

I just can't see how this can replace conventional farming at scale. Currently, outdoor farming uses 4.62 billion acres [1]. The article says indoor farming has 25x the yield per acre. So that would be 177 million acres. Today, there are only about 44 million acres of total buildings in the world [2]. So to replace conventional farming, we'd need to build 4x as many buildings as currently exist; what's the environmen…

But what if you _couldn't_ farm outdoors, because your outdoor farm is now a dust bowl, or a desert, or a recently inundated coastal plain, submerged by sea water?

Financial practicality is not a concern if this is the only way a region has to make food.

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#25

Post by lightedman »

timmaxw wrote: post #22

I just can't see how this can replace conventional farming at scale. Currently, outdoor farming uses 4.62 billion acres [1]. The article says indoor farming has 25x the yield per acre. So that would be 177 million acres. Today, there are only about 44 million acres of total buildings in the world [2]. So to replace conventional farming, we'd need to build 4x as many buildings as currently exist; what's the environmen…

"but on the other hand, I suspect that they might need to be brighter than sunlight to achieve 25x the yield per acre."

https://i.imgur.com/FFKWNy8.jpg

I've been doing this for almost a full decade, so can say with quite a lot of certainty that you can safely put your suspicions to rest. We even have tech to grow various crop types to harvest stage without needing light at all.

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#26

Post by vxNsr »

MPSimmons wrote: post #24
timmaxw wrote: post #22

I just can't see how this can replace conventional farming at scale. Currently, outdoor farming uses 4.62 billion acres [1]. The article says indoor farming has 25x the yield per acre. So that would be 177 million acres. Today, there are only about 44 million acres of total buildings in the world [2]. So to replace conventional farming, we'd need to build 4x as many buildings as currently exist; what's the environmen…

But what if you _couldn't_ farm outdoors, because your outdoor farm is now a dust bowl, or a desert, or a recently inundated coastal plain, submerged by sea water? Financial practicality is not a concern if this is the only way a region has to make food.

If any of those things happened our food needs would likely be diminished anyway

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#27

Post by lightedman »

joegibbs wrote: post #21

This really doesn't seem cost-effective. Yeah on the one hand you're getting an increase in your output but on the other, you're getting a massive increase in costs. Traditional farming is dirt simple - you put the seeds in the dirt and the plant grows, then you harvest the plant (plus irrigation, plus fertilisation, plus pesticide use, etc). The cost, once you have the land, is the cost of the seed you're using (plu…

"With this method you get the land, then you spend a fortune building a place to house your hydroponic setup, then getting the solution ready, then adding lighting, etc. Also, if you're using solar to power your lamps you're basically capturing sunlight, converting it to electricity, then using that to make fake sunlight for your crops to grow. "

With the right crops, the turnaround time goes between 2-5 years for the setup.

LEDs are way more efficient when using properly-targeted wavelengths for the crop - way more efficient than the sun.

And there are also various crop types, like fodder grasses, which you can bring to full harvest stage, without any light whatsoever. Look up H2OFarm on BBC Countryfile, if the video of that company still exists on the BBC site.

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#29

Post by LegitShady »

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…

outdoor farming already uses green power - a giant fusion reactor in space, if you would believe it.

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#30

Post by mickdeek86 »

hutzlibu wrote: post #17
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 tha…

Your desert idea tracks (many of the biggest greenhouses already are) but to keep the majority of the water, you would dehumidify it from the exhaust air. There are systems for this, I saw a couple in NW Mexico when I worked in greenhouse hydroponics in a past life
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