6 ms·

Idk, where I live there are massive greenhouse operations that produce insane amounts of high quality food.

nandhinianand 6y ago
The 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 ago
  I 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 ago
  Certainly 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 ago
Yes - 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 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.
  - 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.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  potatoes?
- fogihujy 6y ago
  The big one would be soy beans or potatoes in vertical farms. I've seen some buzz about startups attempting it, but I am unable to find anyone who actually succeeded. But on the other hand, vertical farming could possibly increase yields for traditional greenhouse owners, and cheap lettuce and tomatoes are definitely not a bad thing.
the__alchemist 6y ago
I 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 ago
  If 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.
  - lmm 6y ago
    > If you’re pumping water at any volume you’re using electricity (or fossil fuels). Sure, but how much energy compared to also running grow lights?
  - Daho0n 6y ago
    Does LEDs work for growing food?
    - jhickok 6y ago
      Yes, vertical farms will typically use LED lights.
samvher 6y ago
Same 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 ago
  Nothin 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...

The 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 ago
I 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 ago
Certainly 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 ago

Yes - 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 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.
- 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.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
potatoes?
fogihujy 6y ago
The big one would be soy beans or potatoes in vertical farms. I've seen some buzz about startups attempting it, but I am unable to find anyone who actually succeeded. But on the other hand, vertical farming could possibly increase yields for traditional greenhouse owners, and cheap lettuce and tomatoes are definitely not a bad thing.

the__alchemist 6y ago

I 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 ago
If 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.
- lmm 6y ago
  > If you’re pumping water at any volume you’re using electricity (or fossil fuels). Sure, but how much energy compared to also running grow lights?
- Daho0n 6y ago
  Does LEDs work for growing food?
  - jhickok 6y ago
    Yes, vertical farms will typically use LED lights.

samvher 6y ago

Same 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 ago
Nothin 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...