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Grain farming goes indoors

modernfarmer.com

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Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#121

Post by forgetfreeman »

credit_guy wrote: post #103
forgetfreeman wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Neat thing about idle equipment, it doesn't consume any inputs, so not real sure where you think you're going with that one. And yes, you aren't constrained by seasons. You're constrained by grid electricity rates, market prices for agricultural products, available labor pool, and the supply of dumb money naive enough to capitalize infrastructure projects that are balanced on that house of cards.

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#122

Post by forgetfreeman »

lightedman wrote: post #111
forgetfreeman wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't violating basic physics and thermodynamics being what they are please explain simply where the additional energy comes from?

"electrocatalysis-based artificial photosynthesis" https://engr.udel.edu/news/2022/06/artificial-photosynthesis... This should help out some.

This reads like marketing bullshit. "4 times more efficient than photosynthesis" is gibberish when the sun costs nothing and your process requires electricity. Yeast, algae, and fungus? And maybe lettuce (which has roughly the nutritional content of a glass of ice water with a couple gnats in it)? That's it?

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#123

Post by forgetfreeman »

credit_guy wrote: post #99
forgetfreeman wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be the principle but it's obviously flawed inasmuch as every square inch of cultivation needs its square inch of sunlight equivalent to grow. So now you're stuck with the energy cost of cramming (the sun) x (your stack depth) into your grow facility. You can certainly save on other inputs like water, but you lose the only free input available to agriculture, namely sunlight.

Plants don't use the whole light spectrum, at most they use 45% of the natural light. Solar panels can take advantage of the whole spectrum. Then, the indoor lighting will just shine the light that the plants can actually use (all growing lamps advertise that, see [1] for example). Plants also don't use the light while they are just sprouting. Plants don't use light after you harvest them. And most importantly, plant…

Or we could maybe just keep growing things in places where they actually grow? Crazy, right?

Re: Grain farming goes indoors

#124

Post by forgetfreeman »

uxhacker wrote: post #110
forgetfreeman wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So the proposal is to construct and maintain complex infrastructure in a place where simple road construction and maintenance are problematic?
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