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>and the decision to use grow lights indoors instead of sunlight This is the part of indoor automated farming I don't get. You have this free, abundant source

>and the decision to use grow lights indoors instead of sunlight This is the part of indoor automated farming I don't get. You have this free, abundant source of energy needed to grow plants, and you don't use it... why? Seems like a massive inefficiency. Indoors is fine to protect the crops and control the environment, but why not above ground with a clear roof to let sunlight in?

orthecreedence 11y ago
Oddly enough, and this is completely anecdotal, I've had much better luck growing outdoor plants than indoor plants. If an indoor plant gets some kind of pest (spider mites, aphids, etc) then you pretty much have to sit around spraying it and its peers with oils or alcohol day after day until you're confident the infestation is gone. With outdoor plants, there are so many natural predators to pests that things tend to form a balance. In addition to that, yes, there is the world's most abundant (and inexhaustible) energy source just sitting there waiting to be used. So I'd be really interested to know the benefits of indoor growing as well (besides the obvious reasons with regards to not wanting DEA aircraft spotting your crops).
- IanCal 11y ago
  Predators are used in large greenhouses: http://www.thanetearth.com/faqs-pesticides.html http://www.thanetearth.com/faqs-pesticides.html > With outdoor plants, there are so many natural predators to pests that things tend to form a balance. Although you're not looking for balance, you're looking for a huge abundance of a single crop. > In addition to that, yes, there is the world's most abundant (and inexhaustible) energy source just sitting there waiting to be used. That energy source doesn't work quite so well if you start stacking things vertically and isn't necessarily reliable. Reducing inefficiencies in growth may be more beneficial than saving some power.
- lovemenot 11y ago
  Fujitsu runs a similar farm. For them, one of the advantages was that because they were growing in a disused clean room, formerly a fab, they could control air quality such that bacteria were negligible. This led to produce which could sit on shelves much longer without spoiling. Fujitsu charged a premium since retailers typically lose a portion of their lettuce value to spoilage or discounting. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/22/fujitsu_grows_lettuce_in_chip_factory/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/22/fujitsu_grows_lettuc...
- rorykoehler 11y ago
  Pro tip: forget the sprays to deal with pests. Buy ladybugs and let them loose. They will do a far more effective job in a much more efficient manner.
Tsagadai 11y ago
Physical space is often a constraint. Green houses which cover large areas which are needed in areas where it gets cold in winter and you want certain types of food. The other is that the quantity of sunlight varies throughout the year in everywhere that isn't on the equator. Grow lights allow you to go from seed to harvest faster. Consider that the earth is not infinitely large and there is already a substantial portion of arable land covered in crops and there are few ways to increase productivity while still planting in the ground. Also consider costs of managing land with a limited staff and transportation.
- ValleyOfTheMtns 11y ago
  >The other is that the quantity of sunlight varies throughout the year in everywhere that isn't on the equator. Grow lights allow you to go from seed to harvest faster Why not have both? Grow lights when the sun isn't optimal, and the sun when it is. Wouldn't it be a huge cost saving measure to use free light instead of burning energy on grow lights when you don't need it?
  - bobbles 11y ago
    If you want to grow vertically, you need to be able to control light as your own farm will be blocking the sun from half or more of the crops
  - Swizec 11y ago
    I'm sure they ran the calculations and decided that electricity is cheaper than sunlight. An immediate guess would be that with artificial lighting you can stack fields one on top of another. Something you cannot do with sunlight.
  - lotyrin 11y ago
    If you want to use the sun, you'd farm outdoors traditionally. You're right at the core of it, that's why most farming still happens outside. Building a specialized building is a compromise putting you into an uneconomical position, you'd only provide additional light to the top-most layer of plants (small operating savings) at the cost of building specialized architecture (large capital expense). From what I understand, the vertical indoor farms are mostly low-calorie high-moisture crops so far like lettuces. Compared to many crops, energy is not the primary input, it's water, space and time. These vertical indoor farms economize by controlling the environment they grow in to avoid wasting water, accelerating growth cycle with grow lighting to avoid wasting time, and stack plants vertically to avoid wasting space. Supposedly it makes sense to pay the premium for electrical energy to be able to save on the other inputs. For higher-calorie crops I imagine the math works out to be quite far from break-even. This is also why these vertical farms aren't about to solve social issues that people attach hope to them for, low calorie vertical farm produce isn't going to provide for the dietary needs of enough people to impact the the problem of transporting foods from agricultural areas to metropolitan areas basically at all.
MicroBerto 11y ago
Not a farmer, but the risk of natural disasters or a crazy early freeze would make sense to completely control it in the long run.
andrewtbham 11y ago
See this article... the artificial light helps them grow the food faster and the lights are very efficient. http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/former-semiconductor-factory-becomes-worlds-largest-indoor-farm.html http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/former-semiconduc...
Nutmog 11y ago
Indoor offices also use artificial lights despite the workers usually only being there during the day. It's probably because the sun is unreliable and expensive to direct into all the spaces that aren't on the roof directly exposed to the sky.
- polm23 11y ago
  Thinking of vertical farms as offices for plants makes a lot of sense.
theothermkn 11y ago
At least partially because you don't have to reproduce the whole spectrum of sunlight, but just those portions that are used by the plants for photosynthesis. Even after solar cell efficiency and other losses, you might still be able to deliver more of the light you want to the plants, in addition to being able to control the day/night cycle.
Animats 11y ago
Some vegetables can be overclocked, with a faster day/night cycle than 24 hours. Lettuce can be forced to grow about twice normal speed.
- SixSigma 11y ago
  You don't need the night cycle at all for the vegetation stage, just flowering, so run these suckers 24/7 and you get more crops, more often.
paulsutter 11y ago
Do you really think they would invest this much R&D, yet somehow never thought to consider the cost or efficiency advantages of piping natural light? I'm no expert but lighting has gotten a lot more efficient recently: http://www.designrecycleinc.com/led%20comp%20chart.html http://www.designrecycleinc.com/led%20comp%20chart.html LEDs are also well suited to farming because you can tune their output spectrum: http://www.lighting.philips.com/main/products/horticulture/city-farming.html http://www.lighting.philips.com/main/products/horticulture/c...
- thangalin 11y ago
  Light-emitting plasma (LEP) and white lasers are also making waves. LEDs suffer from narrow beam and canopy penetration, which can be compensated using a rail system. See: http://plantozoid.com/plasma-grow-light-revolution/ http://plantozoid.com/plasma-grow-light-revolution/
rorykoehler 11y ago
You can stack fields so you grow 20X the amount per square meter/foot/whatever than you would with sunlight. True there are vertical solutions that use mirrors but these become unwieldy to design and maintain (cleaning the dust off the mirrors etc) so it's simpler to just go with the led shelf solution. Adding to that, this allows you to grow vast amounts of food in urban environments meaning that it is a cheaper/shorter journey from field to table. Logistics is a major expense in farming and a huge harm factor in relation to our environment.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  I could see a more distributed food production, avoiding the production madness on natural soil. So country side could be countryside again, farmers could get a healthier life style while cities get cost less food with less pesticides too. I also wonder if this would be interesting on a per-house basis.
lhopki01 11y ago
Most plants photosynthesise on a very narrow band of light. It's actually more efficient to generate electricity using solar panels and reemit using specific wavelength leds. Plants are around 2% efficient while solar panels are around 20%. Also as has been said below it allows you to stack plants in a way that would be impossible if you were using sunlight. Additional thoughts are that greenhouses are terrible at retaining heat (interestingly the origin of greenhouses used to have a thick southern facing brick wall to act as a heat soak to maintain an even heat throughout the night) and so if you're trying to keep a certain heat level having glass might end up costing you way more in energy because of the need to heat than you gain from the sun.
- dwc 11y ago
  People still do good things with greenhouses. I recently watched a video from a guy growing veggies through the winter in his greenhouse. He did have a non-glass southern wall but it wasn't the type for storing heat. Instead, he was using drums of water inside the greenhouse as thermal mass, which kept the temperature up during the night.
  - lhopki01 11y ago
    And people still grow plants by hand. The future is still going to be automated farms just as the present day is mechanised farms. The advantages that automated warehouse farms give will be too great to not do. Faster grow cycles, no need for fertiliser, pesticides, or herbicides, closer to consumers, space efficiencies and so on.
- Retric 11y ago
  First, sugar cane converts 8% of the light absorbed by the plant is preserved as chemical energy. Second, photosynthesis is actually fairly efficient, the issue is plants are living organisms and we only care about energy stored not energy used. Net result, plants still need about 45% of sunlight even if you stick with the 'perfect' bands.
  - lhopki01 11y ago

orthecreedence 11y ago

Oddly enough, and this is completely anecdotal, I've had much better luck growing outdoor plants than indoor plants. If an indoor plant gets some kind of pest (spider mites, aphids, etc) then you pretty much have to sit around spraying it and its peers with oils or alcohol day after day until you're confident the infestation is gone. With outdoor plants, there are so many natural predators to pests that things tend to form a balance. In addition to that, yes, there is the world's most abundant (and inexhaustible) energy source just sitting there waiting to be used. So I'd be really interested to know the benefits of indoor growing as well (besides the obvious reasons with regards to not wanting DEA aircraft spotting your crops).

IanCal 11y ago
Predators are used in large greenhouses: http://www.thanetearth.com/faqs-pesticides.html http://www.thanetearth.com/faqs-pesticides.html > With outdoor plants, there are so many natural predators to pests that things tend to form a balance. Although you're not looking for balance, you're looking for a huge abundance of a single crop. > In addition to that, yes, there is the world's most abundant (and inexhaustible) energy source just sitting there waiting to be used. That energy source doesn't work quite so well if you start stacking things vertically and isn't necessarily reliable. Reducing inefficiencies in growth may be more beneficial than saving some power.
lovemenot 11y ago
Fujitsu runs a similar farm. For them, one of the advantages was that because they were growing in a disused clean room, formerly a fab, they could control air quality such that bacteria were negligible. This led to produce which could sit on shelves much longer without spoiling. Fujitsu charged a premium since retailers typically lose a portion of their lettuce value to spoilage or discounting. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/22/fujitsu_grows_lettuce_in_chip_factory/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/22/fujitsu_grows_lettuc...
rorykoehler 11y ago
Pro tip: forget the sprays to deal with pests. Buy ladybugs and let them loose. They will do a far more effective job in a much more efficient manner.

Tsagadai 11y ago

Physical space is often a constraint. Green houses which cover large areas which are needed in areas where it gets cold in winter and you want certain types of food. The other is that the quantity of sunlight varies throughout the year in everywhere that isn't on the equator. Grow lights allow you to go from seed to harvest faster. Consider that the earth is not infinitely large and there is already a substantial portion of arable land covered in crops and there are few ways to increase productivity while still planting in the ground. Also consider costs of managing land with a limited staff and transportation.

ValleyOfTheMtns 11y ago
>The other is that the quantity of sunlight varies throughout the year in everywhere that isn't on the equator. Grow lights allow you to go from seed to harvest faster Why not have both? Grow lights when the sun isn't optimal, and the sun when it is. Wouldn't it be a huge cost saving measure to use free light instead of burning energy on grow lights when you don't need it?
- bobbles 11y ago
  If you want to grow vertically, you need to be able to control light as your own farm will be blocking the sun from half or more of the crops
- Swizec 11y ago
  I'm sure they ran the calculations and decided that electricity is cheaper than sunlight. An immediate guess would be that with artificial lighting you can stack fields one on top of another. Something you cannot do with sunlight.
- lotyrin 11y ago
  If you want to use the sun, you'd farm outdoors traditionally. You're right at the core of it, that's why most farming still happens outside. Building a specialized building is a compromise putting you into an uneconomical position, you'd only provide additional light to the top-most layer of plants (small operating savings) at the cost of building specialized architecture (large capital expense). From what I understand, the vertical indoor farms are mostly low-calorie high-moisture crops so far like lettuces. Compared to many crops, energy is not the primary input, it's water, space and time. These vertical indoor farms economize by controlling the environment they grow in to avoid wasting water, accelerating growth cycle with grow lighting to avoid wasting time, and stack plants vertically to avoid wasting space. Supposedly it makes sense to pay the premium for electrical energy to be able to save on the other inputs. For higher-calorie crops I imagine the math works out to be quite far from break-even. This is also why these vertical farms aren't about to solve social issues that people attach hope to them for, low calorie vertical farm produce isn't going to provide for the dietary needs of enough people to impact the the problem of transporting foods from agricultural areas to metropolitan areas basically at all.

MicroBerto 11y ago

Not a farmer, but the risk of natural disasters or a crazy early freeze would make sense to completely control it in the long run.

andrewtbham 11y ago

See this article... the artificial light helps them grow the food faster and the lights are very efficient. http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/former-semiconductor-factory-becomes-worlds-largest-indoor-farm.html http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/former-semiconduc...

Nutmog 11y ago

Indoor offices also use artificial lights despite the workers usually only being there during the day. It's probably because the sun is unreliable and expensive to direct into all the spaces that aren't on the roof directly exposed to the sky.

polm23 11y ago
Thinking of vertical farms as offices for plants makes a lot of sense.

theothermkn 11y ago

At least partially because you don't have to reproduce the whole spectrum of sunlight, but just those portions that are used by the plants for photosynthesis. Even after solar cell efficiency and other losses, you might still be able to deliver more of the light you want to the plants, in addition to being able to control the day/night cycle.

Animats 11y ago

Some vegetables can be overclocked, with a faster day/night cycle than 24 hours. Lettuce can be forced to grow about twice normal speed.

SixSigma 11y ago
You don't need the night cycle at all for the vegetation stage, just flowering, so run these suckers 24/7 and you get more crops, more often.

paulsutter 11y ago

Do you really think they would invest this much R&D, yet somehow never thought to consider the cost or efficiency advantages of piping natural light? I'm no expert but lighting has gotten a lot more efficient recently: http://www.designrecycleinc.com/led%20comp%20chart.html http://www.designrecycleinc.com/led%20comp%20chart.html LEDs are also well suited to farming because you can tune their output spectrum: http://www.lighting.philips.com/main/products/horticulture/city-farming.html http://www.lighting.philips.com/main/products/horticulture/c...

thangalin 11y ago
Light-emitting plasma (LEP) and white lasers are also making waves. LEDs suffer from narrow beam and canopy penetration, which can be compensated using a rail system. See: http://plantozoid.com/plasma-grow-light-revolution/ http://plantozoid.com/plasma-grow-light-revolution/

rorykoehler 11y ago

You can stack fields so you grow 20X the amount per square meter/foot/whatever than you would with sunlight. True there are vertical solutions that use mirrors but these become unwieldy to design and maintain (cleaning the dust off the mirrors etc) so it's simpler to just go with the led shelf solution. Adding to that, this allows you to grow vast amounts of food in urban environments meaning that it is a cheaper/shorter journey from field to table. Logistics is a major expense in farming and a huge harm factor in relation to our environment.

agumonkey 11y ago
I could see a more distributed food production, avoiding the production madness on natural soil. So country side could be countryside again, farmers could get a healthier life style while cities get cost less food with less pesticides too. I also wonder if this would be interesting on a per-house basis.

lhopki01 11y ago

Most plants photosynthesise on a very narrow band of light. It's actually more efficient to generate electricity using solar panels and reemit using specific wavelength leds. Plants are around 2% efficient while solar panels are around 20%. Also as has been said below it allows you to stack plants in a way that would be impossible if you were using sunlight. Additional thoughts are that greenhouses are terrible at retaining heat (interestingly the origin of greenhouses used to have a thick southern facing brick wall to act as a heat soak to maintain an even heat throughout the night) and so if you're trying to keep a certain heat level having glass might end up costing you way more in energy because of the need to heat than you gain from the sun.

dwc 11y ago
People still do good things with greenhouses. I recently watched a video from a guy growing veggies through the winter in his greenhouse. He did have a non-glass southern wall but it wasn't the type for storing heat. Instead, he was using drums of water inside the greenhouse as thermal mass, which kept the temperature up during the night.
- lhopki01 11y ago
  And people still grow plants by hand. The future is still going to be automated farms just as the present day is mechanised farms. The advantages that automated warehouse farms give will be too great to not do. Faster grow cycles, no need for fertiliser, pesticides, or herbicides, closer to consumers, space efficiencies and so on.
Retric 11y ago
First, sugar cane converts 8% of the light absorbed by the plant is preserved as chemical energy. Second, photosynthesis is actually fairly efficient, the issue is plants are living organisms and we only care about energy stored not energy used. Net result, plants still need about 45% of sunlight even if you stick with the 'perfect' bands.
- lhopki01 11y ago