Why vertical farms are a crock. • Hacker News Board

Re: Why vertical farms are a crock.

#31

Post by jlgbecom » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 7:04 PM UTC

ghshephard wrote: post #28

jlgbecom wrote: post #21

Vertical farms are kind of a crock, kind of. The idea of indoor agriculture is not, however (just look at Thanet Earth), and there is an advantage of building up a few floors and using grow lights to supplement the loss of passive lighting. A series of low-rise warehouses using hydroponics in the outer rings of a city makes a lot of sense. However, the architectural games people are playing with huge spires in the ce…

Can you identify a single instance of economic use of grow lights for agricultural (as opposed to pharmaceutical) purposes? Green Houses (Thanet Earth) are designed to trap the Sun's energy.

Using grow lights 100% of the time? No, that's definitely not going to work, unless major gains in efficiency are made. But using led grow lights to supplement passive solar and elongate the grow cycle is what I'm referring to, and designing low-rise greenhouses to capture the sun's energy for the light hours. If you capture excess solar energy, store it, and use it at night, then the energy pull from the grid for night-time grow lights is reduced, and then it's an economic question of cost of energy versus sale potential.

I'm not specifically thinking about staple crops (ie, wheat, rice, etc), but supplementary crops like tomatos, lettuce, cucumbers, etc. Mostly, what Thanet Earth is growing.

Re: Why vertical farms are a crock.

#32

Post by jlgbecom » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 7:07 PM UTC

cturner wrote: post #17

davars wrote: post #13

What if you covered existing skyscrapers with hydroponic trellises?

Structural issues. Adds weight, in ways buildings aren't designed to take. Requires soil, and water in the soil, which is more weight. Water causes damage to building structure. Some plants will be impractical because they'll want to burrow into the structure. It's dangerous to collect the produce. There are insurance issues around stuff falling off onto people. It becomes difficult to clean or replace windows. Once…

No soil.

Re: Why vertical farms are a crock.

#33

Post by hugh3 » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 7:08 PM UTC

ghshephard wrote: post #20

As important as the specific theme (Vertical Farms are a crock) was this line, "Magical thinking is a universal affliction. We see what we want to see, deny what we don’t. Confronted by uncomfortable facts, we burrow back into the darkness of our cherished beliefs. We will do almost anything – cheat, lie, stand for high office, go to war – to shut out challenges to the way we see the world." So many of the inane appr…

So - I say let's build a couple of these vertical farms, see what we discover, do the math and realize it will never make sense, and maybe discover something else that we never even considered!

You're suggesting doing something that we already know makes no damn sense in the hopes that we might learn something useful in the process. This argument could be used to justify an awful lot of things which make no sense.

This is, of course, just fine, as long as you're spending your own money on doing nonsensical things, and not mine. Good luck rustling up the hundred million dollars you'll need to build a skyscraper though.

Re: Why vertical farms are a crock.

#34

Post by ars » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 7:10 PM UTC

astine wrote: post #7

These ideas aren't new. I doubt that they are impossible but we haven't yet solved the technical problems that would make 'vertical farms' cost effective over regular farms. If farmland became expensive enough (really expensive,) I could see them seeming more viable. If these were to happen, my entirely uneducated guess would be that it would start with rooftop farming, and that extending to storied greenhouses at th…

No it wouldn't.

The amount of usable farm space at the top of a skyscraper is so small it's a joke. You could feed 1 person for each skyscraper.

And if farmland got expensive, exactly where would you get your energy to make light?

Re: Why vertical farms are a crock.

#35

Post by jdietrich » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 7:13 PM UTC

mechanical_fish wrote: post #27

jdietrich wrote: post #26

Farmland isn't just a place to put some plants while they grow. A farm is a giant solar power facility, one that converts solar energy, carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrate. Monbiot doesn't stress the point enough - it's all about light. When we say that we have a shortage of farmland, what we mean in practical terms is that we have a shortage of flat areas with good drainage to function as solar collectors. Go…

When we say that we have a shortage of farmland, what we mean in practical terms is that we have a shortage of flat areas with good drainage to function as solar collectors. Well, it is a bit more complicated than that. A huge problem in agriculture is the depletion of soil. For example, over time intensively irrigated soil tends to become contaminated with excess salts which destroys its fertility, yet still leaves…

Of course it's a bit more complicated, but we again come back to energy - soil improvement is essentially an energy input, be it oil-derived fertilisers, organic matter or fallow.

Re: Why vertical farms are a crock.

#36

Post by orblivion » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 7:16 PM UTC

http://www.plantchicago.com/

This guy sees your critique on expensive real estate, and uses an abandoned factory. Sees your argument about nutrients not just appearing, and uses aquaponics. Lighting... that I don't know.

I'm curious to see how it goes.

Re: Why vertical farms are a crock.

#37

Post by chadmalik » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 7:20 PM UTC

Maybe vertical farms are a crock but at least people are starting to realize that local food production is a better idea than shipping factory farm food thousands of miles. Eating local, seasonal food is how it has been done for 99.99% of human history. We waste hydrocarbons in a criminal fashion and our ancestors will absolutely hate our guts for it. Why should we burn up billions of years of oil inside of ~200 years just so that we can eat strawberries in NYC during winter? It is INSANE. The decision-making process we use is only what will make money in the short term. The issue of cost externalization by companies is well documented by economists. Just because it appears "cheap" to use factory farm methods, N-P-K based fertilizers, etc., doesn't mean the long term effects already showing up are not going to severely impact the food chain inside of our lifetimes.

Ultimately though agriculture itself is a non-sustainable process. That is why the fertile crescent, cradle of civilization, is now a desert. We should start creating food forests, this is a very promising sustainable way to feed people and all of the unemployment we experience can be solved by transitioning a larger % of our population to food production as a job, just like our grandparents used to do it.

The desertification caused by agriculture and our increasingly desperate use of technology to cover up the fundamental flaws in how we feed ourselves is increasing rapidly. The water table in many places around the planet is being depleted faster than it can restore itself. These issues are NOT going away and they are far more important than coupons for cupcakes and the like.

Re: Why vertical farms are a crock.

#38

Post by rwhitman » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 7:27 PM UTC

jlgbecom wrote: post #21

Vertical farms are kind of a crock, kind of. The idea of indoor agriculture is not, however (just look at Thanet Earth), and there is an advantage of building up a few floors and using grow lights to supplement the loss of passive lighting. A series of low-rise warehouses using hydroponics in the outer rings of a city makes a lot of sense. However, the architectural games people are playing with huge spires in the ce…

I had always thought that the skyscraper version of vertical farming was more of a fantasy technology.

Everything real I've seen is focused on what you mention, low-rise warehouses with racks of hydroponics and skylights - making it essentially a robotic greenhouse. I don't see how this is outlandish

Re: Why vertical farms are a crock.

#39

Post by ultrasaurus » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 7:31 PM UTC

astine wrote: post #7

These ideas aren't new. I doubt that they are impossible but we haven't yet solved the technical problems that would make 'vertical farms' cost effective over regular farms. If farmland became expensive enough (really expensive,) I could see them seeming more viable. If these were to happen, my entirely uneducated guess would be that it would start with rooftop farming, and that extending to storied greenhouses at th…

I assume rooftop gardening is a completely different (and good) idea. There you have the sunlight already, just being reflected or absorbed as waste heat, it's simply a materials (weight) and cost or species issue. (also it's easier to design for one than retro-fit one on).

Re: Why vertical farms are a crock.

#40

Post by mattmcknight » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 7:31 PM UTC

chadmalik wrote: post #37

Maybe vertical farms are a crock but at least people are starting to realize that local food production is a better idea than shipping factory farm food thousands of miles. Eating local, seasonal food is how it has been done for 99.99% of human history. We waste hydrocarbons in a criminal fashion and our ancestors will absolutely hate our guts for it. Why should we burn up billions of years of oil inside of ~200 year…

The local food movement is quite silly. http://www.thebigquestions.com/2010/08/23/loco-vores/

99% of human history pretty much sucked. http://cafehayek.typepad.com/hayek/2008/06/the-real-life-o.h...