4 ms·

Vertical farms don't feed people. They are basically a solution to just in time delivery for restaurants and nothing else. all They grow are great salad crops.

Vertical farms don't feed people. They are basically a solution to just in time delivery for restaurants and nothing else. all They grow are great salad crops. Thats about it. If you're going holistic, you can farm fish at the same time. But that introduces a load of complications. Look, if you want to make the world a better place you need to: 1) come up with a simple system that can create good quality soil (think Terra preta, but different blends for different regions of the world) 2) make a multch that is cheap, safe and sustainable, so normal farmers can reduce water loss 3) create a cheap fast robot that can remove weeds 4) same again but for pests. 5) make a system of payments that allows both mixed crops (ie fruit/lumber/nuts) as well as livestock and arable. Out of all of them 5 is the hardest. Its also the one that will have the biggest impact on climate (mixed land holds the most water, regulates heat and captures the most carbon, it also can have the lowest yield.)

rplnt 6y ago
6) reduce waste, stop feeding meat instead of people
- roebk 6y ago
  Ain't this the truth. It's an incredibly inefficient way to feed the human race. And to boot, there's fewer starving livestock then there are starving humans.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Northern Europeans and many steppe peoples exist largely because livestock can be raised on terrain that's not suitable for animal farming.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      Factory farming uses almost no land. The animals never leave the building or their cage.
    - esarbe 6y ago
      I don't quite get the point you are making. Can you rephrase it?
      - dsrees 6y ago
        You can't plow a mountain side and grow acres of corn or build a feedlot. But you can run cattle and sheep over it which are able to forage the grasses while climbing the terrain. So mountainous people are able to obtain calories from animals in places otherwise unsuitable for more conventional farming methods.
        rplnt 6y ago
        No one is trying to force people to abandon their locally sourced food. The problem is with people in developed nations who live in cities. Also the point is you wouldn't need to expand the farmlands, quite the opposite.
        esarbe 6y ago
        Thanks for clarifying. Letting cattle and sheep and goats forage in terrain unsuited for agriculture is fine. I still think we should stop feeding that 1/3rd of our grain to cattle.
- KaiserPro 6y ago
  Sorry, yes I should have put these two points in. Waste is a big fucker, as is the over supply of meat. However where I diverge is that I still think livestock have a strong role to play in established and subsistence agriculture. I mean this in the way that fish can be put in the loop for hydroponic, chickens to reduce pests, or pigs/sheep used to rotivate fields. Not in the way that we devote vast amounts of land to pasture. (although there are questions to answer about how to manage rich grasslands that are carbon sinks.)
jacquesm 6y ago
Vertical farms start with salads ('crunchy water') because they are easy crops to start such a process with. Once established and verified they will for sure move away from just leafy greens. The typical plan for a startup in this domain runs in the decades, not just a few years, and they're pretty capital intensive compared to software start-ups. Think of the salad producing vertical farm as you would of an MVP for a SaaS company and it makes more sense.
- 0xFluegel 6y ago
  Can you give me a reference? I am somewhat interested and my current information is that they are generally trying to work around the disadvantage of giving up scale compared to traditional farms.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    I would not compare a vertical farm to a traditional farm but to a greenhouse and then the comparison is quite favorable. Effectively it is a more acreage efficient version of the greenhouse at a somewhat higher energy expense per kg of produce.
- roel_v 6y ago
  Other crops are not just scaled up versions of salads. Bulk foods (wheat, potatoes, sugar beets, cassava, rice) cannot be grown efficiently in such vertical farms, at any scale, with current technology. Having lots of multi-story greenhouses does not contribute to developing the sort of radical innovative tech that would be required for staple foods.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    > Other crops are not just scaled up versions of salads. I didn't claim they were. But Salads are a good way to get a whole pile of principles figured out (contamination, environmental effects on the gear, basic robotics, deals with potential customers and so on). > Bulk foods (wheat, potatoes, sugar beets, cassava, rice) cannot be grown efficiently in such vertical farms, at any scale, with current technology. That's true, but that's also not where the next move would be. Bulk foods (more properly called staple foods) do just fine in regular soil where ever they are being grown, and do so reasonably efficiently. But for cucumbers, tomatoes and a whole pile of other veggies vertical farming quite probably will work just fine and cost competitive with normal greenhouses. A vertical farm does not compete with in soil agriculture in open air, it competes with greenhouses. Staple foods are an entirely different class of problem. In IT terms: don't complain that the more efficient CPU factory doesn't make your memory faster, it isn't meant to do that.
johnchristopher 6y ago
> 5) make a system of payments that allows both mixed crops (ie fruit/lumber/nuts) as well as livestock and arable. I don't understand that statement. Is that a tech/internet software payment solution ? Or do you mean that a farmer/breeder should be able to use his fields/pastures for either livestock and agriculture ?
- pjc50 6y ago
  It's a political kind of payment: the shape of farming in the "first world" is determined by what gets subsidised.
Manheim 6y ago
Let us not make the best an enemy of the good. The overall benefits from vertical farming are good when implemented correctly. Sure it isn't a perfect solution that solves everything, but it is on the road to better solutions. And in my opinion a part of our future farming solutions.
akudha 6y ago
6) Eat less meat. Shit ton of land, water and other resources are used to grow grains just for the meat industry. If a portion of those resources are used to grow food for humans instead of animals, it would reduce a ton of waste and pollution.

rplnt 6y ago

6) reduce waste, stop feeding meat instead of people

roebk 6y ago
Ain't this the truth. It's an incredibly inefficient way to feed the human race. And to boot, there's fewer starving livestock then there are starving humans.
- pjc50 6y ago
  Northern Europeans and many steppe peoples exist largely because livestock can be raised on terrain that's not suitable for animal farming.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    Factory farming uses almost no land. The animals never leave the building or their cage.
  - esarbe 6y ago
    I don't quite get the point you are making. Can you rephrase it?
    - dsrees 6y ago
      You can't plow a mountain side and grow acres of corn or build a feedlot. But you can run cattle and sheep over it which are able to forage the grasses while climbing the terrain. So mountainous people are able to obtain calories from animals in places otherwise unsuitable for more conventional farming methods.
      - rplnt 6y ago
        No one is trying to force people to abandon their locally sourced food. The problem is with people in developed nations who live in cities. Also the point is you wouldn't need to expand the farmlands, quite the opposite.
      - esarbe 6y ago
        Thanks for clarifying. Letting cattle and sheep and goats forage in terrain unsuited for agriculture is fine. I still think we should stop feeding that 1/3rd of our grain to cattle.
KaiserPro 6y ago
Sorry, yes I should have put these two points in. Waste is a big fucker, as is the over supply of meat. However where I diverge is that I still think livestock have a strong role to play in established and subsistence agriculture. I mean this in the way that fish can be put in the loop for hydroponic, chickens to reduce pests, or pigs/sheep used to rotivate fields. Not in the way that we devote vast amounts of land to pasture. (although there are questions to answer about how to manage rich grasslands that are carbon sinks.)

jacquesm 6y ago

Vertical farms start with salads ('crunchy water') because they are easy crops to start such a process with. Once established and verified they will for sure move away from just leafy greens. The typical plan for a startup in this domain runs in the decades, not just a few years, and they're pretty capital intensive compared to software start-ups. Think of the salad producing vertical farm as you would of an MVP for a SaaS company and it makes more sense.

0xFluegel 6y ago
Can you give me a reference? I am somewhat interested and my current information is that they are generally trying to work around the disadvantage of giving up scale compared to traditional farms.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  I would not compare a vertical farm to a traditional farm but to a greenhouse and then the comparison is quite favorable. Effectively it is a more acreage efficient version of the greenhouse at a somewhat higher energy expense per kg of produce.
roel_v 6y ago
Other crops are not just scaled up versions of salads. Bulk foods (wheat, potatoes, sugar beets, cassava, rice) cannot be grown efficiently in such vertical farms, at any scale, with current technology. Having lots of multi-story greenhouses does not contribute to developing the sort of radical innovative tech that would be required for staple foods.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  > Other crops are not just scaled up versions of salads. I didn't claim they were. But Salads are a good way to get a whole pile of principles figured out (contamination, environmental effects on the gear, basic robotics, deals with potential customers and so on). > Bulk foods (wheat, potatoes, sugar beets, cassava, rice) cannot be grown efficiently in such vertical farms, at any scale, with current technology. That's true, but that's also not where the next move would be. Bulk foods (more properly called staple foods) do just fine in regular soil where ever they are being grown, and do so reasonably efficiently. But for cucumbers, tomatoes and a whole pile of other veggies vertical farming quite probably will work just fine and cost competitive with normal greenhouses. A vertical farm does not compete with in soil agriculture in open air, it competes with greenhouses. Staple foods are an entirely different class of problem. In IT terms: don't complain that the more efficient CPU factory doesn't make your memory faster, it isn't meant to do that.

johnchristopher 6y ago

> 5) make a system of payments that allows both mixed crops (ie fruit/lumber/nuts) as well as livestock and arable. I don't understand that statement. Is that a tech/internet software payment solution ? Or do you mean that a farmer/breeder should be able to use his fields/pastures for either livestock and agriculture ?

pjc50 6y ago
It's a political kind of payment: the shape of farming in the "first world" is determined by what gets subsidised.

Manheim 6y ago

Let us not make the best an enemy of the good. The overall benefits from vertical farming are good when implemented correctly. Sure it isn't a perfect solution that solves everything, but it is on the road to better solutions. And in my opinion a part of our future farming solutions.

akudha 6y ago

6) Eat less meat. Shit ton of land, water and other resources are used to grow grains just for the meat industry. If a portion of those resources are used to grow food for humans instead of animals, it would reduce a ton of waste and pollution.