8 ms·

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 centu

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.
  - marcus_holmes 6y ago
    > we are seeing increases in yield, despite global climate change I'm ignorant about this. I want to learn more. I've read that increasing CO2 %, increasing temperature, and increasing water availability will improve plant yields. Is this true? I also understood that one of the positive feedbacks for the climate response is the increased amount of water vapour in the atmosphere, water vapour being a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. I'm confused about how we can have more water vapour in the atmosphere and yet less water availability, presumably because less rain - these things appear to be conflicting. I understand that the change in climate will change the established weather patterns that we're used to now, and create drought in areas that are currently wet. I don't understand why we can't adapt to this and move our farms to where the water is. In short: I keep hearing this, that global climate change will reduce our ability to grow plants, and I don't understand why this is true or how the science for it works. Can anyone shed some light on it, please?
    - Melting_Harps 6y ago
      > I've read that increasing CO2 %, increasing temperature, and increasing water availability will improve plant yields. Is this true? Depends on the crop/cultivar and where and when it is being grown, but I distinctly recall 2019's Peach bumper crop in Colorado as I made a peach salad on my station that sold like crazy which was used as a sauteed fruit with our pork chop entree!, too and we still had more come in than we could use And this was sold alongside a melon and heirloom tomato salad that also sold well, but was always constantly running out sooner into service because of the immense surplus of peaches we had that year [0]. Looking deeper into that later in the Fall after we looked over the (record breaking) numbers I looked back at the reasons why which included the weather in the Western Slope: no snap frosts, very little hail and warmer/balmier albeit wetter weather in the Summer in Colorado. This was true for almost all stone-fruit that year, too. Whereas the heirloom tomatoes were limited in the early Summer hit a snag because they kept bursting due to the extra rain or had to be grown in lower elevation counties in Boulder, Weld, Ft Collins and in the Southern Counties. This would get better, as one who has farmed/gardened would predict, in the later Summer to Fall despite the rain as more plants were planted and were maturing to uptake the water. > I understand that the change in climate will change the established weather patterns that we're used to now, and create drought in areas that are currently wet. I don't understand why we can't adapt to this and move our farms to where the water is. This is my biggest concern (one that I understand well) as our prediction models and the Ag supply chains and distribution models we've created and been reliant on and how fragile they are under simple variable changes as proven by COVID this year. We could, should and WILL HAVE TO adapt but the issue is that we have such a centralized food system that its so monolithic with massive labour shortages and is hard to correct that without a local system to meet the demand (which is the case for most city dwellers) is exactly how Society breaks down. > I keep hearing this, that global climate change will reduce our ability to grow plants, and I don't understand why this is true or how the science for it works. Can anyone shed some light on it, please? Its way more complex than that, and is really impossible to give a complete answer as countless books are written on specific topics that range from: water depletion due to lack of rain and drought, soil erosion, bee/pollinator collapse etc... I can help if you narrow down what specific aspect you're asking, but essentially what you're describing is the fear of ecological collapse as much of Man's intervention and actions have led to immense consequences we never took into account. I also think that the Sun's activity is playing a bigger part in weather, specifically the role cloud formation has on rising temperature as a result of cosmic ray ejection, that we do not speak about enough. https://coloradosun.com/2019/05/29/western-slope-peaches-bumper-crop-worker-shortage/ https://coloradosun.com/2019/05/29/western-slope-peaches-bum...
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.

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.
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  > we are seeing increases in yield, despite global climate change I'm ignorant about this. I want to learn more. I've read that increasing CO2 %, increasing temperature, and increasing water availability will improve plant yields. Is this true? I also understood that one of the positive feedbacks for the climate response is the increased amount of water vapour in the atmosphere, water vapour being a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. I'm confused about how we can have more water vapour in the atmosphere and yet less water availability, presumably because less rain - these things appear to be conflicting. I understand that the change in climate will change the established weather patterns that we're used to now, and create drought in areas that are currently wet. I don't understand why we can't adapt to this and move our farms to where the water is. In short: I keep hearing this, that global climate change will reduce our ability to grow plants, and I don't understand why this is true or how the science for it works. Can anyone shed some light on it, please?
  - Melting_Harps 6y ago
    > I've read that increasing CO2 %, increasing temperature, and increasing water availability will improve plant yields. Is this true? Depends on the crop/cultivar and where and when it is being grown, but I distinctly recall 2019's Peach bumper crop in Colorado as I made a peach salad on my station that sold like crazy which was used as a sauteed fruit with our pork chop entree!, too and we still had more come in than we could use And this was sold alongside a melon and heirloom tomato salad that also sold well, but was always constantly running out sooner into service because of the immense surplus of peaches we had that year [0]. Looking deeper into that later in the Fall after we looked over the (record breaking) numbers I looked back at the reasons why which included the weather in the Western Slope: no snap frosts, very little hail and warmer/balmier albeit wetter weather in the Summer in Colorado. This was true for almost all stone-fruit that year, too. Whereas the heirloom tomatoes were limited in the early Summer hit a snag because they kept bursting due to the extra rain or had to be grown in lower elevation counties in Boulder, Weld, Ft Collins and in the Southern Counties. This would get better, as one who has farmed/gardened would predict, in the later Summer to Fall despite the rain as more plants were planted and were maturing to uptake the water. > I understand that the change in climate will change the established weather patterns that we're used to now, and create drought in areas that are currently wet. I don't understand why we can't adapt to this and move our farms to where the water is. This is my biggest concern (one that I understand well) as our prediction models and the Ag supply chains and distribution models we've created and been reliant on and how fragile they are under simple variable changes as proven by COVID this year. We could, should and WILL HAVE TO adapt but the issue is that we have such a centralized food system that its so monolithic with massive labour shortages and is hard to correct that without a local system to meet the demand (which is the case for most city dwellers) is exactly how Society breaks down. > I keep hearing this, that global climate change will reduce our ability to grow plants, and I don't understand why this is true or how the science for it works. Can anyone shed some light on it, please? Its way more complex than that, and is really impossible to give a complete answer as countless books are written on specific topics that range from: water depletion due to lack of rain and drought, soil erosion, bee/pollinator collapse etc... I can help if you narrow down what specific aspect you're asking, but essentially what you're describing is the fear of ecological collapse as much of Man's intervention and actions have led to immense consequences we never took into account. I also think that the Sun's activity is playing a bigger part in weather, specifically the role cloud formation has on rising temperature as a result of cosmic ray ejection, that we do not speak about enough. https://coloradosun.com/2019/05/29/western-slope-peaches-bumper-crop-worker-shortage/ https://coloradosun.com/2019/05/29/western-slope-peaches-bum...

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.