6 ms·

Fruit Walls: Urban Farming in the 1600s

100 points by bootload 11y ago

yourapostasy 11y ago
This is a good era to revisit fruit walls because if you can make a robot that automatically cultivates and harvests the fruit walls, it makes them a viable urban agriculture option again because the primary issue with them today is the high labor input required.
- gmisra 11y ago
  The "if you can make a robot" problem for this use-case is quickly becoming "when you can make a robot" that. See, e.g., these (mostly) roboticized lettuce farms: http://www.fastcoexist.com/3050750/this-robot-run-indoor-farm-can-grow-10-million-heads-of-lettuce-a-year http://www.fastcoexist.com/3050750/this-robot-run-indoor-far...
olau 11y ago
I find the Chinese greenhouses described in the follow up intriguing: http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/reinventing-the-greenhouse.html http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/reinventing-the-green...
SixSigma 11y ago
> In the Netherlands, which is the world's largest producer of glasshouse grown crops, some 10,500 hectares of greenhouses used 120 petajoules (PJ) of natural gas in 2013 On a recent tour of hydroponic growers in Almeria, Spain, I was told that province alone had 30,000 hectares in commercial greenhouses.
pm24601 11y ago
What I think is fascinating about this. Is that as humans we ignored opportunities to use the passive technology. For example, why don't today's greenhouses have brick floors or a brick north wall (even a small wall to increase the thermal mass)
- ashark 11y ago
  Takes too long to recover costs? Requires larger footprint (shadow behind the wall unusable)? The pessimist in me says "because these things would last centuries with a little upkeep, and we don't build that kind of thing anymore". Too hard to take advantage of short-term opportunities to repurpose or sell the land if you've put expensive, permanent(-ish) infrastructure on it.
  - cfcef 11y ago
    > The pessimist in me says "because these things would last centuries with a little upkeep, and we don't build that kind of thing anymore". They wouldn't. You're building miles of thick stone walls exposed to the elements, which you are deliberately forcing plants to cover as much of them as possible. The article and the followup hint at the repair and labor costs (note that the article is set in China): > The decline of the European fruit wall started in the late nineteenth century. Maintaining a fruit wall was a labour-intensive work that required a lot of craftsmanship in pruning, thinning, removing leaves, etcetera. The extension of the railways favoured the import of produce from the south, which was less labour-intensive and thus cheaper to produce. Artificially heated glasshouses could also produce similar or larger yields with much less skilled labour involved. This should not be surprising, since if fruit-walls were strictly superior, why were they ever obsolesced? In general, when reading sustainability fetish material like this, you should remember that these sorts of things are like code-golfing or min-maxing: schemes which place unrealistic value on just one dimension, and which can be highly interesting in how one maximizes that dimension, but are only rarely optimal under a more realistic set of tradeoffs. In this case, the fetish is for energy use while running, and mostly ignoring capital, repair, space, and labor costs.
    - pm24601 11y ago
      That was with the materials back then. Here are some of the current materials that we have that they didn't: 1. Concrete ( reinforced ) - much more durable than brick and mortar. 2. Mechanized vehicles like backhoes and the such to build walls 3. Better materials to trap and retain heat. Probably others as well. We also now have a global warming problem and other externalities that make greenhouses' energy inefficiency bad for society. You know that "energy fetish"
ilaksh 11y ago
I have some concepts integrating different ideas for sustainability which is related to this idea of fruit walls. In my concept, each group of residents has 1/3 of the property dedicated to insulated buildings that are full of agricultural production. They have large windows but are also supplemented with LED light. The materials and vegetation inside are the heat sink. I believe this is a more efficient way to produce food than a standard greenhouse because of the insulation and overall better temperature control. https://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage https://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage
pavel_lishin 11y ago
Interesting, I thought that one of the reasons for building greenhouses was that they trapped heat.

100 points by bootload 11y ago

This is a good era to revisit fruit walls because if you can make a robot that automatically cultivates and harvests the fruit walls, it makes them a viable urban agriculture option again because the primary issue with them today is the high labor input required.

gmisra 11y ago
The "if you can make a robot" problem for this use-case is quickly becoming "when you can make a robot" that. See, e.g., these (mostly) roboticized lettuce farms: http://www.fastcoexist.com/3050750/this-robot-run-indoor-farm-can-grow-10-million-heads-of-lettuce-a-year http://www.fastcoexist.com/3050750/this-robot-run-indoor-far...

olau 11y ago

I find the Chinese greenhouses described in the follow up intriguing: http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/reinventing-the-greenhouse.html http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/reinventing-the-green...

SixSigma 11y ago

> In the Netherlands, which is the world's largest producer of glasshouse grown crops, some 10,500 hectares of greenhouses used 120 petajoules (PJ) of natural gas in 2013 On a recent tour of hydroponic growers in Almeria, Spain, I was told that province alone had 30,000 hectares in commercial greenhouses.

pm24601 11y ago

What I think is fascinating about this. Is that as humans we ignored opportunities to use the passive technology. For example, why don't today's greenhouses have brick floors or a brick north wall (even a small wall to increase the thermal mass)

ashark 11y ago
Takes too long to recover costs? Requires larger footprint (shadow behind the wall unusable)? The pessimist in me says "because these things would last centuries with a little upkeep, and we don't build that kind of thing anymore". Too hard to take advantage of short-term opportunities to repurpose or sell the land if you've put expensive, permanent(-ish) infrastructure on it.
- cfcef 11y ago
  > The pessimist in me says "because these things would last centuries with a little upkeep, and we don't build that kind of thing anymore". They wouldn't. You're building miles of thick stone walls exposed to the elements, which you are deliberately forcing plants to cover as much of them as possible. The article and the followup hint at the repair and labor costs (note that the article is set in China): > The decline of the European fruit wall started in the late nineteenth century. Maintaining a fruit wall was a labour-intensive work that required a lot of craftsmanship in pruning, thinning, removing leaves, etcetera. The extension of the railways favoured the import of produce from the south, which was less labour-intensive and thus cheaper to produce. Artificially heated glasshouses could also produce similar or larger yields with much less skilled labour involved. This should not be surprising, since if fruit-walls were strictly superior, why were they ever obsolesced? In general, when reading sustainability fetish material like this, you should remember that these sorts of things are like code-golfing or min-maxing: schemes which place unrealistic value on just one dimension, and which can be highly interesting in how one maximizes that dimension, but are only rarely optimal under a more realistic set of tradeoffs. In this case, the fetish is for energy use while running, and mostly ignoring capital, repair, space, and labor costs.
  - pm24601 11y ago
    That was with the materials back then. Here are some of the current materials that we have that they didn't: 1. Concrete ( reinforced ) - much more durable than brick and mortar. 2. Mechanized vehicles like backhoes and the such to build walls 3. Better materials to trap and retain heat. Probably others as well. We also now have a global warming problem and other externalities that make greenhouses' energy inefficiency bad for society. You know that "energy fetish"

ilaksh 11y ago

I have some concepts integrating different ideas for sustainability which is related to this idea of fruit walls. In my concept, each group of residents has 1/3 of the property dedicated to insulated buildings that are full of agricultural production. They have large windows but are also supplemented with LED light. The materials and vegetation inside are the heat sink. I believe this is a more efficient way to produce food than a standard greenhouse because of the insulation and overall better temperature control. https://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage https://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage

pavel_lishin 11y ago

Interesting, I thought that one of the reasons for building greenhouses was that they trapped heat.