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Grain farming goes indoors

modernfarmer.com

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Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#101

Post by LatteLazy »

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.

It's really not.

The patterns of rainfall are changing. But that's just a matter of needing better infrastructure or moving crops around to follow it.

It's also important to note it's a renewable resource: when you use 1l of water, you don't "use" it forever, 99% of it just goes back into the water cycle.

"Place X will be out of water by 2025" is great clickbait but it's totally untrue.

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#102

Post by HN_is_for_gemes »

II2II wrote: post #40

One thing people seem to be ignoring is that this research is useful because it creates a controlled environment in which to explore the variable affecting crop yields, even if the stated application has very limited practical value. Also keep in mind that many technologies take a considerable amount of time to develop before they are of any value at scale. Take something that I presume most people on this forum are…

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Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#103

Post by credit_guy »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #76
moloch-hai wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? Electrical equipment moving on rails seems more efficient than driving diesel tractors around on tires on dirt.

Really? On what grounds? A modern combine can harvest 30 acres of wheat in an hour, and can be trivially reconfigured to handle a variety of bulk grains. Your task is now to match or better that without resorting to a monstrous pool of starvation-wage labor and without raising the price of grain to the level of a luxury good.

Modern combines sit idle when the harvesting period ends. So about 90% of the year. With indoor farming, you are not constrained by the seasons. You can rotate your crops, so you harvest some in January, some others in February, etc. Whatever machines you need for harvesting, spraying, tilling, etc, you can arrange to use each 100% of the time.

I personally think grains will not be economical indoors this decade, or maybe even next, but in some not very distant future, the majority of the agricultural products will be produced indoors, just like chickens are now. Of course, when that time will come, indoor farming will be perceived as bad, horrendous, anti-nature, etc, just like people perceive the industrialized chicken farms now.

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#105

Post by mythrwy »

simon_000666 wrote: post #82

One wonders, given that most grain is milled into flour if precision fermentation might be a better solution to this particular problem of producing what is essentially just a mix of proteins and starches.

What would the fermentation feedstock be? Wheat?

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#106

Post by gmuslera »

How much protection will they get from external weather? What about soil quality in the middle/long run?

If weather becomes unreliable or far more extreme, indoor farming may be a better bet than hoping than a flood, a drought or other extreme weather events don't happen before harvesting.

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#107

Post by LegitShady »

mkl wrote: post #63
LegitShady wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you have to plant, spray, harvest, and transport even the indoor stuff.

You don't need to spray because you control the environment, you don't need to transport as far, and planting and harvesting won't use fossil fuels (unless that's your only source of electricity).

you have to spray because

1) you still have to use actual soil and thats full of bugs and organisms already

2) if you aren't fertilizing you won't get anywhere near the yield farmers do and you won't be competitive on cost.

Harvesting will still require the use of whatever harvesting technology there is. If we can't competitively build grain harvesters with electricity outdoors its unlikely that you'll be able to do the same indoors. You'll notice no pictures or description of how they harvest - they aren't doing it by hand and they don't say its by electricity, and even if it is do you think the sun provides more energy for free over the life of the crop vs the one time its harvested?.

This doesn't seem very interesting as it stands now.

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#108

Post by lathyrus_long »

LegitShady wrote: post #107
mkl wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to spray because you control the environment, you don't need to transport as far, and planting and harvesting won't use fossil fuels (unless that's your only source of electricity).

you have to spray because 1) you still have to use actual soil and thats full of bugs and organisms already 2) if you aren't fertilizing you won't get anywhere near the yield farmers do and you won't be competitive on cost. Harvesting will still require the use of whatever harvesting technology there is. If we can't competitively build grain harvesters with electricity outdoors its unlikely that you'll be able to do…

This article doesn't say, but vertical farms almost always grow hydroponically, using sterilized inert media (like coir) or inherently sterile inert media (like rockwool). The water and fertilizer are delivered together by drip irrigation. Some farms may instead use no medium at all, like in NFT or DWC. With precise control over the plant nutrition, this can achieve higher yields per square foot than soil, making optimal use of the expensive indoor space. (I think grains are particularly unsuitable crops though, per my other comments here.)

In theory it's possible to run completely free of insects, with cleanroom-like precautions, and I think some facilities do. I think it's more common to live with some level of insect pests though, since it's so hard to avoid introductions and so destructive when they occur--with no natural predators, they can multiply far faster than in nature. That implies some level of pesticides, deliberately introduced predatory insects (which are particularly effective indoors, since they can't fly away), etc.

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#109

Post by timmaxw »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #98
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…

This is just a proof of concept. A first attempt. Assume increased yields over time through engineering improvements, maybe some genetic engineering, etc. You end up with a more favorable situation. Also with vertical farming, you have to think in terms of vertical and time dimensions. You have no more seasons and you get to harvest throughout the year. And you can stack vertically. So, it can be pretty efficient in…

> As for energy and light needs. Yes, it would need lots of energy but nowhere near what you think. Your back of the envelope math is talking about acres which isn't that useful of a metric for your energy needs.

It's true that acres were an awkward way to do the calculation. Let's redo the calculation in megawatt-hours.

- According to https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0706-x, grain crops yield about 0.24 grams of dry weight per mol of photons. (This assumes 100% of the photons are delivered to the plant, e.g. the LED is shining directly on the leaf with nothing lost.)

- One mol of photons embodies about 0.1kWh of energy. (That's for red photons; higher-frequency photons would require more energy. And note this is a physical limit, where we're assuming the LEDs are already 100% efficient.)

- So that works out to 0.0024 metric tonnes dry weight of grain per MWh. Global grain production is about 2,700 million metric tonnes per year (per https://www.statista.com/statistics/263977/world-grain-produ...)

- So we'd need 1,125,000 TWh/yr of energy to grow the world's supply of grain through indoor farming, or 45x the world's current electricity production. And this calculation is just for grains; to grow all the non-grain crops too, you'd need even more energy. So I stand by my original estimate.

What about genetic engineering? Looking at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0706-x, the "0.24 grams of dry weight per mol of photons" calculation is taking into account that e.g. grain plants are not as efficient as some other plants at absorbing light, and not all of the grain plant is edible. The most efficient plants (leafy greens) produce 1.33 grams of dry weight per mol of photons. So if we could genetically engineer a grain plant that absorbed as much light as the most efficient plants, and didn't have an inedible stalk, then we'd need 203,000 TWh/yr of electricity to grow the world's supply of grain, which is "only" 8x the world's current electricity production.

And at that point, we've squeezed out all the obvious sources of inefficiency; to do better, you'd need to fundamentally change plant biology, or just do photosynthesis directly in a vat, or something.

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#110

Post by uxhacker »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #73
uxhacker wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would not be the case if you where growing the wheat in a tropical climate where wheat would not normally grow. For example think of Sudan. Most of the current supplies need to be shipped by ship and then expensively transported inland. But Sudan has lots of sunlight.

Modern logistics systems are so efficient transportation costs are a rounding error for bulk commodities. How's the energy grid looking in Sudan these days?

There is very little logistics in Sudan. The roads are often unpaved. The cost of road hauling the wheat will probably double the cost.

But on the other hand there is lots of sunlight for solar.

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