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Ask HN: What are the biggest obstacles to vertical farms?

27 points by TheUndead96 7y ago

I have been following the development of vertical farms and hydroponics for a little while, since the popular "food computer" TED Talk a few years ago [1]. I have seen some adoption, with some companies supplying limited produce to market [2]. Progress seems to slow to me. Why isn't this more prevalent? Why aren't hydroponics in general more prolific? Why is this not feeding developing countries? - [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEx6K4P4GJc - [2] https://boweryfarming.com/

troysk 7y ago
The cost of providing lights (even using LEDs) is still not economically cheaper than the sun in most cases. If hydroponics is done in open it would be interesting to see if there are actually any advantages given that hydroponic farms will be near city where land is more expensive than where the farmlands are. Also pests again become a problem. There is a reason that most hydroponic companies are targeting micro-greens and other leafy vegetables as they are easy to grow and also most of the produce is edible so less waste of area and electricity. In my experiments, I built multiple automated hydroponic setups and I have been able to grow only micro-greens and lettuce successfully and in a shorter cycle. All other experiments of growing strawberries and saffron failed.
- unlikelymordant 7y ago
  I'd love to hear your thoughts on why they failed. I'm interested in trying to automate some hydroponic ginger/turmeric, which is a year long growing cycle. Have you written about your experiences at all?
  - troysk 7y ago
    Saffron failed as it was my first try and had a completely unscientific approach. The fact that there are very few papers available didn't help. Strawberries failed as I was unable to regular the nutrient supply perfectly for the breed I had. They were too weak. By the time I figured out what nutrients were to be used, I had lost motivation. So I switched to easier experiments like grass and lettuce. I am not sure if rooted vegetables like ginger can even be cultivated successfully using hydroponics. That was my learning from saffron which has bulbs. What system do you plan to use NFT, DWC or drip? Some with ag background have done it; unfortunately, I know very less about plant biology. Haven't written much about it other than tweeting about it occasionally.
    - stephenSinniah 7y ago
      using a medium like coconut coir would help especially if you want want to grow rhizomes or bulbs
    - stephenSinniah 7y ago
      Also farming is hard, I've killed a shit load of plants when I started out, you gotta learn from those mistakes, keep at it and eventually you'll enjoy the fruits of your labour. Also if you're looking into hydrophonic growing do look into the Kratky method(non circulating) This is a video by Dr Kratky https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZZO1tYqcwk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZZO1tYqcwk, I cannot recommend it enough, This is my go to method for growing herbs, tomatoes, eggplants and chili.
      - troysk 7y ago
        Thats a very intriguing approach. I might give it a try. Farming looks easy but I find it hard.
- tom_mellior 7y ago
  One would hope that the "vertical" thing would take care of part of the land costs. Especially if you can stick your setup right on top of an existing building in a city.
  - troysk 7y ago
    Farm land is much much cheaper, atleast in my country. Moving the farm to the top would mean you can have just one floor of plants. Cooling costs will go up (many hydroponic farms are rather going underground) and so will electricity which is higher in the cities. Countering, lighting costs can be lowered by using sunlight to complement. CO2 levels are higher in city, might help plants grow faster (and maybe thinner?). Transportation costs of produce will go down as they don't need to be transferred 100s of kilometres. We need a few experiments to figure out the logistics and economics of it as there are multiple factors.
    - jplayer01 7y ago
      > Farm land is much much cheaper Farmland is only cheaper because externalities (financial, social, environmental) aren't reflected in the cost. Vertical farming is supposed to solve more problems than just "well, we have limited space in a city".
- GrumpyNl 7y ago
  Cant you use sunlight and guide it through mirrors with rotating shelf's?
  - gridlockd 7y ago
    You can guide sunlight anywhere you want, it's still the same amount of energy for the footprint (disregarding losses). The "vertical" in "vertical farming" solves a non-problem, for the most part. We have more than enough farm land.
    - Ma8ee 7y ago
      I don't think it is the lack of land in general that they are trying to solve. They are trying to solve that there's no land close to the consumers. Growing close to the consumers means fresher vegetables, less environmental impact from transports and making it possible to grow spieces that don't handle transport well.
  - troysk 7y ago
    You may but then you loose out on the advantage of accelerated growth because of artificial season cycles. LEDs are illuminated in such duration that the plant thinks flowering season has come even though it actually hasn't. A closed room is a VM for plants. Also, if you depend on sunlight, you can't grow all year around and can't charge premium for non-seasonal products making it uncompetitive against traditional agriculture.
- sylvinus 7y ago
  FYI https://en.agricool.co/ https://en.agricool.co/ are growing strawberries at scale in shipping containers but it took them a couple years of R&D.
  - troysk 7y ago
    Very cool! Thanks for sharing.
  - tom_mellior 7y ago
    Where can you buy them? I remember seeing their container in Paris two years ago and checking out their website. At that time it said they were trying to figure out how to distribute them. That's what their FAQ still say. I see no indication that their product really exists, let alone "at scale".
- StanleyYelnats 7y ago
  Yes, the electricity cost of cooling and lighting indoor farms is still too expensive. Another way of saying that they yield gains from farming indoors are not yet sufficient to offset the added costs. I am engineering varieties of tomatoes designed to be higher yielding indoors. P.S. you may also find this article informative. http://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/follow-the-food/the-clean-farming-revolution/ http://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/follow-the-food/the-clean-...
esailija 7y ago
> Why is this not feeding developing countries? Because that is not the problem, the problem is neocolonialism/imperialism the highest stage of capitalism[1]. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism,_the_Highest_Stage_of_Capitalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism,_the_Highest_Sta...
- TheUndead96 7y ago
  I can see how this is true of fast food, motor vehicles and electronics, not necessarily fresh produce. A South African winefarm can only make South African wine in South Africa. Coca-cola and Heineken can (and do) make their product the world over, wherever it is consumed. If anything, vertical farming should be able to produce the consistent "big mac" equivalent of the tomato/lettuce/potato? Am I incorrect in the sentiment of the capitalist argument here?
  - Arn_Thor 7y ago
    If wealth overall is being drained from the country that depletes the stock of resources that would otherwise have been reinvested locally in industry and agriculture. A simplification, of course, but the principle applies.
    - TheUndead96 7y ago
      Yes, I can definitely agree with this.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    Amartya Sen's Nobel-prize-winning work on famine is probably the best read here. He points out that the problem is rarely lack of food, but lack of claim on food. People end up unable to afford it, no matter how cheap it might be. "Solutions" which involve heavy capital investment and depend on imported items aren't going to make it cheaper. It's even possible to end up with situations where food is destroyed because it cannot economically be sold, while people are also starving. This is not about food but about power.
jjmellon 7y ago
In addition to cost of lighting, I've found that the cost of hydroponic fertilizer is also too high, at least for small growers buying it premixed. I've successfully grown hydroponic tomatoes following standard guidelines, and found that the cost of the fertilizer is roughly equal to the value of the tomatoes harvested.
aaron695 7y ago
The idea of a vertical farm is a brain scam. They make zero logical sense. A bit like subterranean levels on a house, everyone loves them because they seem 'free' because of lack of exposure. In reality they are the same as adding a level above a house, which everyone 'knows' is expensive. Anyway vertical farms don't work because if you add surface area with the same sunlight then it's obviously greatly reduced per plant, nothing is free. All the, "but, what if", are answered in longer blog posts. IE adding the word hydroponic doesn't change the fact they suck. Separately, hydroponic are great for high end rich person food. They don't add to food security. Land is cheap, sunlight is free, what's been happening for thousands of years is still the best, improving yields to these is what matters. One, if not the biggest issues with developing countries is lack of vitamins in kids 0-2 and pregnant women. This is what needs solving.
whazor 7y ago
It is very hard to commercially beat the Dutch greenhouses, which for decades have been the most efficient method of providing food both in summer and winter.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-agriculture-sustainable-farming/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-... is an interesting read on their farming.
contingencies 7y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISAKc9gpGjw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISAKc9gpGjw
Mvandenbergh 7y ago
The thing to compare vertical farms to is their horizontal greenhouse equivalents which are also closed systems with very high levels of control and yield per land area. Once you do that, the balance is basically between the greater capital and power costs of vertical farms vs being closer to urban markets. Transport is cheap so that never works out in favour of vertical. Also, developing countries with low agricultural yields would adopt technologies like drip irrigation, better fertiliser and pesticide management before greenhouses and greenhouse before vertical farms.
notjtrig 7y ago
Gravity is definitely the biggest obstacle to growing vertically, it takes a lot of capital to overcome gravity. I'm on a small farm with some buildings but I have no desire to grow indoors, there is an abundance of soil and light outdoors, my customers buy the type of food grown outdoors, the environmental impact is probably always going to be less, and vertical growing is only suited for a small amount crops. We can't feed people from vertical farms because they do not grow the types of food people eat the majority of, mostly cereal grains. Tomatoes, potatoes and larger vegetables are not viable so we're limited to salad greens, herbs, wheat grass ect.
innodb1 7y ago
We are a commercial agricultural producer using polyhouses in southern India; we have couple of playhouses so I am well aware of the nuances. polyhouses and any other associated with these like vertical farm,hydrophonics etc are firstly suited for specific set of plants. Not all plants and veggies can be grown , some plants cannot be grown inside polyhouses at all, i would say almost 70 % of veggies which are mass consumed can never be grown in polyhouses,hydrophonics etc. Just think of all the veggies you had today or yesterday and you will easily understand these cannot be grown in polyhouses let alone hydrophonics. there is no doubt significant increase in production, compared to outdoor farming. These are because of various factors. The main factors are we allow the plant to grow suitably thereby maximizing required production. For example in a capsicum polyhouse, there are nets which help the plant to climb, and almost everything is supplied to the plant on more than required basis. The capsicum plant is allowed minimal leaves so that max nutrition is allowed for the capsicum alone and not for the plant leaves etc. You can think of it it like a kid with a silver spoon, these plants get everything in return for capsisum and capsicum alone. ( who cares abt capsicum leaves BTW ) Secondly The price of capsicum is not determined by the buyer nor the producer , its determined by some trader who is totally unknown. This unknown person gets to decide on the price. You the end customer nor the farmer has any say in determining the price. This is especially difficult when the output is perishable. The farmer has to sell it at whatever the price which is offered or else his produce will rot. When you grow a bumper crop its all the more difficult to find that many no of traders , transport etc. Selling 1 Ton itself is difficult enough, imagine the complexity when you have 10 tons from the same farm. You would need more resources to manage everything. The trader will never offer the same rate as he would have offered for 1 ton since he knows very well that you would never be able to sell 10 tons. No country has the ways and means to distribute all the produce effectively across to its citizens. The problems with polyhouses compound when other methods are introduced ( think hydrophonics,aerophonics,vertical farming etc), There is no economics involved in these. Unless you do it as a passion. its never profitable to grow brocolli or lettuice in hydrophonics. The trader will never give you the right price if you have an huge quantity. Its very easy to say brocolli sells for $X and we can do this and that and reduce it by $y in reality no one can control every aspect of the food chain. Isreal does it becuase of its limited land availabilty , not with the case of India ,china and USA. I am not sure if I had explained the whole correctly but Hydroponics + etc is only a hobby never commercially viable.
Quequau 7y ago
Surely a significant part of the problem is subsidies for entrenched, petroleum centric, industrial agriculture. Subsidising already successful business as usual corporations has got to make improvements through external disruption extremely difficult.
VBprogrammer 7y ago
There was a really interesting link on a related subject a while back where they were using solar concentration to generate heat, power and desalination for use by the attached greenhouse. To me that's a much more impressive use of technology. Edit: I think this was it http://www.sundropfarms.com/sundrop-system/ http://www.sundropfarms.com/sundrop-system/
elhenrico 7y ago
My take is that more complex cultures need a symbiotic relationship with bacteria, fungi and insects to thrive.

PaulAJ 7y ago

Except he turned out to be wrong.

esailija 7y ago
I don't see a single prediction in the summary that isn't spot on about current affairs.
- benj111 7y ago
  It misses out the service economy. Yes you can point to cobalt being extracted in Africa or wherever. But that misses out the money being made in finance. It misses the Googles making billions from advertising. Look at the richest GDP per capita countries [1] Luxembourgs wealth isnt based on digging rocks out the ground. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(no...
  - esailija 7y ago
    > It misses out the service economy. No it doesn't, labor aristocracy is literally one of the predictions on the summary. > But that misses out the money being made in finance. It misses the Googles making billions from advertising. None of those produce anything, they are entirely dependent on actual production. > Look at the richest GDP per capita countries [1] GDP per capita is just the GDP divided by population, and GDP itself is not necessarily about production at all.
    - benj111 7y ago
      We still have farms, most economies aren't regarded as agrarian as most of the money is made elsewhere. "None of those produce anything, they are entirely dependent on actual production" They might not produce something physical, but then neither does a musician, or a writer. They're a part of the economy though, my entire point is that your link ignores non physical bits of the economy, but that is now the dominant part of the economy, so the theory is at least outdated. "GDP per capita is just the GDP divided by population, and GDP itself is not necessarily about production at all" How would you like to measure production then? Cars per person? Per nation? Is a Tata equivalent to Ferrari? I know what GDP per capita is, that's why I used it, have you got any particular reason why I should be using absolute GDP figures?
      - esailija 7y ago
        > They might not produce something physical, but then neither does a musician, or a writer. No I mean they do not literally produce anything. A musician or writer produces music or writings. An ad is like a mudpie, nobody wants it. Does ads maximize profits in capitalist economy? Yes but that requires the assumption of capitalist economy. In real terms it is pure overhead and does not achieve any social or environmental need. If you need ads to buy something you don't need it by definition. > They're a part of the economy though, my entire point is that your link ignores non physical bits of the economy, but that is now the dominant part of the economy, so the theory is at least outdated. No actual production is the dominant part of the real economy, but money hides it because imperialism allows super explotation where the real producers are paid virtually nothing compared to the value produced. E.g. 1000 trillion worth of value is bought at 2 trillion. You cannot at the same time acknowledge the exploitation and think that some bullshit rent-seeking is what is producing most value in economy. > I know what GDP per capita is, that's why I used it, have you got any particular reason why I should be using absolute GDP figures? You should not be using GDP or any monetary value at all to measure anything real. Behind it is the assumption that money is same as social or environmental value, but the relationship is often not there or inversed.
        benj111 7y ago
        " An ad is like a mudpie, nobody wants it." Except the people who pay for them. Google isnt some tech unicorn which might make money one day, it's one of the biggest companies in the world, it's one of the biggest companies in the world because it sells a valuable service. "1000 trillion worth of value is bought at 2 trillion" Who decides that? Someone is more than welcome to come along and pay 3 trillion. And looking at it from the other side am I being exploited for paying 1000 trillion for 2 trillion worth of goods? Why don't I go to the producer directly? What's a reasonable price? Am I being exploited when I buy an iphone? It's twice the price as an android phone for the same amount of material? The fact is that the west at least is immensely wealthier than the 1800s and most of us don't build anything anymore. The most practical job I've had is serving drinks, which isnt exactly making things, and the chances are, you don't make anything either. "No actual production is the dominant part of the real economy" "You should not be using GDP or any monetary value at all to measure anything real. Behind it is the assumption that money is same as social or environmental value" If you want to talk about the real economy, I'm going to (legitimately) talk about GDP. If you want to talk about some softer measure then fine let me know what that is, and I will bet now Luxembourg does better than the average.

gridlockd 7y ago

Pretty ironic, given that Soviet Russia ended up far more imperialistic than any so-called capitalist nation.

esailija 7y ago
I don't know what that has to do with anything. But it's interesting that you think Soviet Union had megacorporations exploiting other countries for superprofits and did it even better than current megacorporations.
- gridlockd 7y ago
  You may then be surprised to hear that the word "imperialism" has a meaning that does not imply capitalism or corporations of any form: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism
  - esailija 7y ago
    I searched the article and the word capitalism appears 13 times on it so it's hard to see how it doesn't refute your own claim. Also capitalism implies imperialism, not the other way around.
    - gridlockd 7y ago
      Maybe you should have read the article instead, or at least the introductory paragraph, which states: "Imperialism was both normal and common worldwide throughout recorded history, the earliest examples dating from the mid-third millennium BC, diminishing only in the late 20th century." I am not aware of any capitalists or corporations predating the Iron Age, but perhaps you can enlighten me there. > Also capitalism implies imperialism, not the other way around. I would disagree that capitalism implies imperialism, but let's put that aside. My claim was exactly that imperialism doesn't imply capitalism, so I guess we agree on that? Non-implication is not exclusion, mind you. The Soviet Union was imperialist, but not capitalist. Having said, that, I'm sure there is a fruitless debate to be had with those Trotzkists that would claim that the Soviet Union was imperialist, capitalist and fascist[1]. [1] https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-3/iwk-ussr.htm https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-3/iwk-ussr.htm
- piokoch 7y ago
  Soviets didn't have megacorps, they (that is soviet government) were just forcing Eastern Block countries to provide food, clothes and whatever they could produce paying for that with fake currency called "transfer ruble" that could have been exchanged for Soviet tanks or guns. That's why Eastern Block suffered from food and other daily usage products shortage. In fact Russians suffered the same due to massive waste, economy inefficiencies, continuous arm race with the West and madman project like White Sea-Baltic channel (Belomorkanal), agriculture "inventions" by Lysenko and thousands of similarly idiotic ideas.