4 ms·

I like how this whole yield paper and model is based on the results of a 3'x3' trial area... "With artificial lighting increasing the intensity and duration of

I like how this whole yield paper and model is based on the results of a 3'x3' trial area... "With artificial lighting increasing the intensity and duration of light beyond what can be captured from the sun in a field, the short indoor growth cycle produced mean grain yields of 14 ± 0.8 t/ha per harvest at 11% grain moisture based on a 1-m2 edge-protected experimental area" How tf can you say your yields are going to extrapolate from that tiny space to a hectare scale facility? It's ridiculous. We have a huge problem achieving lab-theoretical yields on working farms, outside of the super optimized and most destructive conventional agriculture methods. They didn't even do a full greenhouse trial. Come on guys, you can say it's promising but to say you can get 1000+t/ha out of a vertical farm because of this is fantasy.

MaximumYComb 6y ago
The light reaching the most centred wheat would barely be reduced in a 1mx1m vertical farm. Scale this to 100mx100m and it would be nearly dark without artificial light in the centre.
- zdragnar 6y ago
  Isn't one of the primary benefits of indoor growing the influence you have over all of the growing conditions? Ostensibly you would be able to do all sorts of shenanigans with light tubes for natural light and LEDs for artificial lighting regardless of the size of the facility.
- mlyle 6y ago
  > without artificial light in the centre. The whole point of this paper is about having high intensity artificial lighting on the crop. So-- I'm not sure what your comment means.
tomrod 6y ago
I'd like to see the yields in practice. This is necessary information if we look to grow crops in environments like Mars or Luna.
roenxi 6y ago
Agronomics baffles me, so I'll admit to not having read the paper. But for those of us just reading the comments, can someone expound on the complaint? If the yields only work in tiny spaces, why can't the hectare scale facility be divided up into tiny spaces? These are indoor farms, can't they just replicate the lab conditions? I can understand the argument "it isn't economic", but the process to make something economic is do it once -> do it many times -> do it many times cheaply, so the paper could be part of the process that ends with mass vertical farming at absurd yields.
- peterwwillis 6y ago
  I think what you're asking is, couldn't a Beowulf Cluster of wheat be as efficient as a Mainframe of wheat? And I think that it could be, but there's so many "ifs" involved there it's crazy to speculate at the moment. We might get flying cars before we get massively parallelized vertical underground farms.
  - sushshshsh 6y ago
    No need to speculate, just need to try :) Everyone just needs to share their results and let the risk takers and builders do what they do best. If they fail, in this scenario, the only thing wasted are time and money, and the only thing gained is knowledge.
  - roenxi 6y ago
    But this is the other way around; if I wanted to draw a computing analogy it would be arguing that if I wanted to provide massive cloud storage then the physical volume density of information (bytes/m3, a funny but practical measure to talk about) can't approach the density of 1Tb consumer grade hardware. And that would be true, but it could still be a good target within an order of magnitude, because it could be set up as a very big RAID array. There would losses due to cooling and power and space between the drives and whatnot, but to a first approximation (Facility Volume / 1Tb density * 50% fudge factor) will be pretty reasonable; especially if someone really tried to engineer clever heating solutions. So the paper gets (checks) ~1,300t/ha lab conditions. Why, in theory, can't they just replicate the lab environment as many times as fits in a big facility? I can see practical impediments like cost, I can't see theoretical ones if it is decided that This Must Be Done. I'd expect reasonable yields of 650 t/ha. That improves on 17 t/ha farming practice [0]. Point is that sort of calculation is totally routine when looking at academic results and I don't see what the problem is using a 3'x3' lab environment then extrapolating with a fudge factor. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat#Yields https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat#Yields
pkphilip 6y ago
As someone who works with farmers, I completely and totally agree. This is like saying that you can grow X goldfishes in your tiny little aquarium and therefore it should be possible to grow X * FACTOR in a lake which is FACTOR size bigger.
- polycaster 6y ago
  Naive question from someone not the least involved in fish farming: why would this assumption fail? Sounds reasonable. Works with humans, too, btw. See skyscrapers.
  - akiselev 6y ago
    The vast majority of the energy in the food chain of a body of water comes from the sun so the bigger it becomes, the more volume of water there is relative to the surface area exposed to the sun. You can try to multiple the number of fish by the number of aquariums that would fit into a lake but the vast majority of those fish would starve competing for the limited amount of energy coming hitting the surface.
    - polycaster 6y ago
      Thanks for pointing that out. Moving away from skyscrapers you could still successfully scale in 2 dimensions? Which I assume is what fish farming is primarily about, right? Depth brings more limitations like pressure, behavior of gases etc.
  - pkphilip 6y ago
    A open lake is not a controlled environment - unlike a person's house. You cannot change out the water in a lake, it is exposed to all sort of weather and climatic conditions, fauna and flora etc. The same applies to open farming vs growing something indoors. Now coming to this example about vertical farming - at much larger scale you will not get the sort of yield/sq.ft you get at a much smaller scale - even in indoor farming.
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
Yes. Surely a better measure than 'per hectare' is for instance, 'per dollar'. Until we run out of hectares, space isn't not the limit on annual crop. Where space would definitely limit 'indoor' total yields.

MaximumYComb 6y ago

The light reaching the most centred wheat would barely be reduced in a 1mx1m vertical farm. Scale this to 100mx100m and it would be nearly dark without artificial light in the centre.

zdragnar 6y ago
Isn't one of the primary benefits of indoor growing the influence you have over all of the growing conditions? Ostensibly you would be able to do all sorts of shenanigans with light tubes for natural light and LEDs for artificial lighting regardless of the size of the facility.
mlyle 6y ago
> without artificial light in the centre. The whole point of this paper is about having high intensity artificial lighting on the crop. So-- I'm not sure what your comment means.

tomrod 6y ago

I'd like to see the yields in practice. This is necessary information if we look to grow crops in environments like Mars or Luna.

roenxi 6y ago

Agronomics baffles me, so I'll admit to not having read the paper. But for those of us just reading the comments, can someone expound on the complaint? If the yields only work in tiny spaces, why can't the hectare scale facility be divided up into tiny spaces? These are indoor farms, can't they just replicate the lab conditions? I can understand the argument "it isn't economic", but the process to make something economic is do it once -> do it many times -> do it many times cheaply, so the paper could be part of the process that ends with mass vertical farming at absurd yields.

peterwwillis 6y ago
I think what you're asking is, couldn't a Beowulf Cluster of wheat be as efficient as a Mainframe of wheat? And I think that it could be, but there's so many "ifs" involved there it's crazy to speculate at the moment. We might get flying cars before we get massively parallelized vertical underground farms.
- sushshshsh 6y ago
  No need to speculate, just need to try :) Everyone just needs to share their results and let the risk takers and builders do what they do best. If they fail, in this scenario, the only thing wasted are time and money, and the only thing gained is knowledge.
- roenxi 6y ago
  But this is the other way around; if I wanted to draw a computing analogy it would be arguing that if I wanted to provide massive cloud storage then the physical volume density of information (bytes/m3, a funny but practical measure to talk about) can't approach the density of 1Tb consumer grade hardware. And that would be true, but it could still be a good target within an order of magnitude, because it could be set up as a very big RAID array. There would losses due to cooling and power and space between the drives and whatnot, but to a first approximation (Facility Volume / 1Tb density * 50% fudge factor) will be pretty reasonable; especially if someone really tried to engineer clever heating solutions. So the paper gets (checks) ~1,300t/ha lab conditions. Why, in theory, can't they just replicate the lab environment as many times as fits in a big facility? I can see practical impediments like cost, I can't see theoretical ones if it is decided that This Must Be Done. I'd expect reasonable yields of 650 t/ha. That improves on 17 t/ha farming practice [0]. Point is that sort of calculation is totally routine when looking at academic results and I don't see what the problem is using a 3'x3' lab environment then extrapolating with a fudge factor. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat#Yields https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat#Yields

pkphilip 6y ago

As someone who works with farmers, I completely and totally agree. This is like saying that you can grow X goldfishes in your tiny little aquarium and therefore it should be possible to grow X * FACTOR in a lake which is FACTOR size bigger.

polycaster 6y ago
Naive question from someone not the least involved in fish farming: why would this assumption fail? Sounds reasonable. Works with humans, too, btw. See skyscrapers.
- akiselev 6y ago
  The vast majority of the energy in the food chain of a body of water comes from the sun so the bigger it becomes, the more volume of water there is relative to the surface area exposed to the sun. You can try to multiple the number of fish by the number of aquariums that would fit into a lake but the vast majority of those fish would starve competing for the limited amount of energy coming hitting the surface.
  - polycaster 6y ago
    Thanks for pointing that out. Moving away from skyscrapers you could still successfully scale in 2 dimensions? Which I assume is what fish farming is primarily about, right? Depth brings more limitations like pressure, behavior of gases etc.
- pkphilip 6y ago
  A open lake is not a controlled environment - unlike a person's house. You cannot change out the water in a lake, it is exposed to all sort of weather and climatic conditions, fauna and flora etc. The same applies to open farming vs growing something indoors. Now coming to this example about vertical farming - at much larger scale you will not get the sort of yield/sq.ft you get at a much smaller scale - even in indoor farming.

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

Yes. Surely a better measure than 'per hectare' is for instance, 'per dollar'. Until we run out of hectares, space isn't not the limit on annual crop. Where space would definitely limit 'indoor' total yields.