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Also, indoor and especially vertical farming can save precious land. Maybe the US has enough land for farming, other countries certainly do not. Rain forests bu
by dx034 6y ago
Also, indoor and especially vertical farming can save precious land. Maybe the US has enough land for farming, other countries certainly do not. Rain forests burned to make space for soy or palm oil are proof of that.
- vkou 6y agoWhat is the calory output of vertical farming? The only things I ever see grown in those vertical farms are low calory, short-shelf-life leafy greens, and the occasional bland tomato. Greens are nice and all, but calories are what keep us alive. Until they can produce calories, I will continue seeing them as a pointless distraction.
- dzdt 6y agoI had the impression indoor farming is heavily hoping to pivot to marijuana.
- vsareto 6y agoThat's easier to secure vs. a field of marijuana so there might be other reasons besides growing.
- SuoDuanDao 6y agoCalory-dense foods are more economic to ship long distances though. From a 'power plant to plate' energy conversion viewpoint, leafy greens that don't ship well are probably the best things to grow in urban farms, assuming people will eat them anyway.
- BurningFrog 6y agoOutside of North Korea, humanity in 2020 has no shortage of calories.
- vkou 6y agoI believe that in 2020, we may have a shortage of calories if we were growing all of them in a sustainable manner. I will also note that in 2020, we have no shortage of leafy greens.
- BurningFrog 6y agoI think this all hinges on your definition of "sustainable". If you count using fossil fuels to make fertilizer as unsustainable, you're probably right. But that is very debatable.
- vkou 6y agoSure, we can quibble about all day. But consider my second point. If there is no caloric crop sustainability crisis in our future, then there is definitely no leafy green sustainability crisis looming on the horizon. The problems that vertical farming of kale solves are... Not very impactful ones. If all the kale in the world disappeared tomorrow, most of us wouldn't even notice.
- BurningFrog 6y agoI think we can agree to be unconvinced about vertical farming.
- Aunche 6y agoRain forests are being burned down because these areas are poor and farming is the simplest way to make money starting from scratch. Multi-million dollar vertical farms don't help.
- newyankee 6y agoForget even about money, sometimes if you cannot participate in the 'official' economy and have no prospects, you need bare minimum capacity to cultivate land and feed yourself and your family. This is what happens in developing countries.
- kickout 6y agoSave land? Most land in the US is doing NOTHING, or has little potential for anything other than carbon sequesteration
- imtringued 6y agoThat land is quickly abandoned. Rain forests are burnt because once you drain the soil of nutrients (takes less than 3 years) you can just move on to a different plot. Conventional farming reuses soil by adding fertilizer to artificially replace the missing nutrients.
- dx034 6y agoIf you look at satellite images of Indonesia, you'll see that much of it is now just palm oil. Most of that area was burned at least a decade ago. It would be nice if they'd abandon it, presumably a new rain forest could grow over the next century or so. But they continue to grow monocultures.