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At first glance. I challenge you to find a technique (Being executed commercially, demonstrated in a paper, or clearly described) where high-calorie foods are g
by the__alchemist 6y ago
At first glance. I challenge you to find a technique (Being executed commercially, demonstrated in a paper, or clearly described) where high-calorie foods are grown indoors.
I'm not trying to be snarky; I'd love to see something like this, but the comment you reply to is my conclusion as well. I used to be very excited about this stuff, but the only viable crops are leafy greens sold at a high price.
I own a business selling sensors for use in hydroponics. I started because I wanted to make an impact in food availability. I've abandoned that, and continue because hobbyists, and companies like this have a use.
- thisisnico 6y agoIdk, where I live there are massive greenhouse operations that produce insane amounts of high quality food.
- nandhinianand 6y agoThe question is "Is the (total) cost of those high quality food from greenhouse ops cheaper than same quality food from traditional land agriculture?"
- thisisnico 6y agoI think a lot of it is based on locale. Many of the foods may not be easy or possible to grow local, imports are expensive, food grows faster in greenhouses, additionally you can have many grow cycles over the entire year including winter, where that may not be possible with just typical land. They are growing greenhouse operations exponentially, it is a multi-billion dollar business in our locale.
- arcticbull 6y agoCertainly in any remote or isolated community. Definitely in Hawaii - and in Northern Canada (where fresh produce is flown in by air every day, and a head of lettuce goes for over $7 and a thing of orange juice for $26 [1]). [1] https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/margaret-whitley/food-prices-canada-north_a_23552084/ https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/margaret-whitley/food-prices-c...
- sonotmyname 6y agoYes - likely growing lettuce, cabbage, tomatoes, cucumbers, maybe some simple berries... That’s the same stuff that’s been growing in hothouses for over a century. I think GPs point is that those aren’t the high-calorie, high value crops needed to make this a real revolution in food production. Show me vertical vineyards, maize, grains, stone fruits, apples etc.
- taneq 6y agoIt seems to me that vineyards should be the easiest thing to 'verticalize' since you're growing vines anyway. You should be able to cover the entire sunward side of a skyscraper with vines and harvest the grapes using a robot hanging off a crane.
- Melting_Harps 6y ago> It seems to me that vineyards should be the easiest thing to 'verticalize' since you're growing vines anyway. You should be able to cover the entire sunward side of a skyscraper with vines and harvest the grapes using a robot hanging off a crane. Except when you realize that the most highly valued added product (wine) relies on soil/region specific soil (terroir). No one buying table grapes, even at Whole Foods, is going to spend the kind of money to make something like that at scale. I've worked in a vineyard for a Summer in Croatia, it's how I got run my own Kitchen in Italy soon after as it crated a good 'marketing hook' for a chef, and I can go into why that skyscraper idea is impractical for anything fruit bearing but suffice it to say: it won't work unless you want a small, low yield plaything that can be outperformed from anything in most common grape growing regions even if hyper-local expenses are removed. Hell, even using them as a cover crop/ornament on a trellis in a backyard garden may yield better results. Cash crops, as specified, are based on economies of scale for a reason and are actually very efficient when properly done and have 10,000+ years of refinement behind them--crop rotation, efficient irrigation, cover crops in the off season, livestock grazing for fertility and micro-organism replenishment. With the advent of more automation, and no till methods we are seeing increases in yield, despite global climate change. Water scarcity, irrigation and water table replenishment and growing organically is something I wished we placed a greater focus on and would do more good for us and our Ecosystem as a whole than anything else hindering cash crop modality if I'm honest. I sincerely wish people were forced to have to farm as part of their formal education, and continued gardening as their is so much deadly ignorance in regards to where our food comes from and the maladies it creates as a result of being so far from it: obesity and heart disease kills more in the West than anything else. With that said, I see this as very good data for Mars colonization and food production; but for terrestrial purposes its absurd for anything but Hype/Marketing an expensive and impractical bridge with fanciful ideas of 'closing the gap between food deserts' when urban farming is the real answer in the US (see: Detroit). This model only semi-worked when they were aligned to expensive fine dining restaurants, now that those have been systemically destroyed and may never come back, I don't see it having much if any potential as I've eaten greenhouse stuff that aren't herbs or salad from Holland and its awful! We could honestly make more headway in solving hunger, food scarcity if they just allotted community gardens in vacant land not in use and mandated fruit bearing trees be used instead of ornamental ones in urban landscaping and reinstated gleaning as a form Community Supported Agriculture.
- the__alchemist 6y agoI should have clarified re indoors: My comment was about setups like in the article, which are reliant on electric lights. One of the biggest limitations they have is electricity cost.
- gonzo 6y agoIf you’re pumping water at any volume you’re using electricity (or fossil fuels). You can build head with a windmill, but moving water (gpm) requires horsepower. Also: LEDs are very efficient vs other types of lighting.
- samvher 6y agoSame here (Netherlands) but it’s important to realize that greenhouses make a lot of use of natural light and soil and are therefore not entirely the same as indoor/vertical farming.
- hef19898 6y agoNothin wrong with greenhouses at that scale, for obvious reasons more often than not these vegetables are what I eat. You can taste the difference so between greenhouse stuff that never saw true dirt to grow in and things from your own garden or that grew in actual soil I was quite amused when i saw tomatoes and so on grow in soil and small plantations in fron tof a farm house in the Netherlands surrounded by greenhouses. And still, this industrial style of grwing food is what enables our high living standard. if we now could just figure out how not have too much food in Europe and not enough in other places...
- fudged71 6y agoHow about cricket farming for use in livestock feed? It's a high protein source that uses fewer resources than traditional feedstock. Sure, it's a secondary product, but could have large impacts.
- chrisco255 6y agoFrom what I understand about chicken and pig feed, soy meal is typically used, and it's from the part of the bean that humans don't use, since the oil is the key ingredient in so many foods consumed by people. Is cricket farming more efficient than soy farming? Seems like the economies of scale for soy are so much greater.
- stjohnswarts 6y agoI think we're talking about veggies here, no? I think at some point we'll have to turn to insects for our protein needs though.
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- yreg 6y agoWe can get all the protein we need from plants if we want to.
- ada1981 6y agoMushrooms are a protein dense food that can be grown indoors with little energy needs.
- kaba0 6y agoThough mushrooms contain large amounts of chitin which we can’t really digest, so I’m not sure they would be a good fit as base food.
- cageface 6y agoPlant protein is easier to grow and perfectly adequate for human nutrition. This obsession with animal protein is unscientific.
- pc86 6y ago> I challenge you to find a technique...where high-calorie foods are grown indoors. The GP isn't saying this is happening, though. They're saying that selling rich people overpriced kale and strawberries can fund further research and innovation. Maybe the next step is corn. Maybe it's bankruptcy. But it has cash flow to invest in the research to see which one it is, in part from growing and selling the less impactful stuff now.
- ardy42 6y ago> The GP isn't saying this is happening, though. They're saying that selling rich people overpriced kale and strawberries can fund further research and innovation. Maybe the next step is corn. Maybe it's bankruptcy. But it has cash flow to invest in the research to see which one it is, in part from growing and selling the less impactful stuff now. Something about vertical farms for staple foods just doesn't pass the smell test. One big aspect of farming is the conversion of solar energy to edible chemical energy. Assuming natural plants and some efficient way of using natural light, stacking farmland vertically just means less energy per acre. And barring some new kind of clean energy like fusion, using artificial light will just introduce conversion inefficiencies and expense, at best.
- quantified 6y agoRight. Would it go too far to say that the conversion of solar to chemical energy is the biggest aspect of farming? I’d like to see the accounting for how much of the “100% renewable” energy is actual production and how much is an accounting practice that involves offsets somewhere. Maybe it is, plants don’t need lighting at night so you could use solar. But the efficiency of sun -> cell -> transmission -> LED -> plant is much less than sun -> plant, it’s not a winner there. Are they attached to the grid and push more electricity to it than they draw? Balancing production costs vs the carbon chain of transport is good to look at. Our springtime apples come from Chile, New Zealand, and other far-flung places. How many joules of energy went into getting that kale to your Boston store from California vs from Worcester in January? If the energy to grow to harvest is less than the energy to transport, and people really really need that fresh-picked kale in January, it’s a niche win. I’m doubtful you can make much of a dent in New England’s produce needs using New England’s available renewable energy during wintertime. But gathering evidence is better than listening to my doubt. Vertical orchards- I don’t see that happening. So my apples will still be imported from across the globe.
- m463 6y agoI think a comparison to tesla is a red herring, the analogy doesn't hold up to food. Where I suspect this kind of growing technique would work is probably the spices aisle of the grocery store, and they have always been pretty high margin.
- spacecity1971 6y agoCultured/printed meat.