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Why do we need to bother with bringing food production to urban areas? Just grow the lettuce outside town and bring it in.

rosser 11y ago
Because a nontrivial portion of the environmental costs of modern food production is all the dinosaur bones being burned to shlep it from farm to factory to warehouse to store to home. Not to say that vertical farming is cost-free; it's most definitely not. It does avoid (edit: or at least reduce) that major (hidden) cost, though.
- danielweber 11y ago
  What fraction of the energy costs that go into food production are involved in its transport? Urban areas are valuable. People in cities have less environmental impact than people spread out. The people displaced by an urban farm don't disappear -- they either stay out of the city or go to another city.
  - rosser 11y ago
    With some very quick searching, I'm seeing a few references suggesting an average of between 10-15%, and an average distance of some 1500 miles from farm to plate. In actuality, those probably vary widely, though.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Not to say that vertical farming is cost-free; it's most definitely not. It does avoid that major (hidden) cost, though. Does it? By competing with existing urban land uses, if adopted any substantial scale it forces the existing uses to spread out over larger areas, increasing the energy costs of transportation associated with those uses, while also creating a major new demand for energy in food production which replaces some of the use of energy in food transportation. Seems to me your are shifting around the fossil-fuel related energy use externalities, but I haven't seen any analysis showing it to be a net win even in that narrow regard.
- hanniabu 11y ago
  The other added benefit is that the plants get to the site faster which increases the shelf life and reduces the amount thrown out due to wilting and such on the shelves. Growing hydroponically also reduces crop loss from about 50% down to about 10-15%.

rosser 11y ago

Because a nontrivial portion of the environmental costs of modern food production is all the dinosaur bones being burned to shlep it from farm to factory to warehouse to store to home. Not to say that vertical farming is cost-free; it's most definitely not. It does avoid (edit: or at least reduce) that major (hidden) cost, though.

danielweber 11y ago
What fraction of the energy costs that go into food production are involved in its transport? Urban areas are valuable. People in cities have less environmental impact than people spread out. The people displaced by an urban farm don't disappear -- they either stay out of the city or go to another city.
- rosser 11y ago
  With some very quick searching, I'm seeing a few references suggesting an average of between 10-15%, and an average distance of some 1500 miles from farm to plate. In actuality, those probably vary widely, though.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> Not to say that vertical farming is cost-free; it's most definitely not. It does avoid that major (hidden) cost, though. Does it? By competing with existing urban land uses, if adopted any substantial scale it forces the existing uses to spread out over larger areas, increasing the energy costs of transportation associated with those uses, while also creating a major new demand for energy in food production which replaces some of the use of energy in food transportation. Seems to me your are shifting around the fossil-fuel related energy use externalities, but I haven't seen any analysis showing it to be a net win even in that narrow regard.
hanniabu 11y ago
The other added benefit is that the plants get to the site faster which increases the shelf life and reduces the amount thrown out due to wilting and such on the shelves. Growing hydroponically also reduces crop loss from about 50% down to about 10-15%.