3 ms·

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

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.
  - Natsu 11y ago
    > 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). Couldn't you improve upon things by redirecting the light with fiber optics? Of course, I suspect there's a surface area problem with scaling something like that, so perhaps not.

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.
- Natsu 11y ago
  > 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). Couldn't you improve upon things by redirecting the light with fiber optics? Of course, I suspect there's a surface area problem with scaling something like that, so perhaps not.