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Vertical farming does not save space

• novembermike 6y ago
  This ignores nuclear power. It also ignores the fact that you can put solar panels in places that you can't put farms such as the desert.
  • mannerheim 6y ago
    You can put farms in the desert. Some of the most productive farmland is in deserts. Arizona and California are both noted for producing large quantities of high-quality cotton.
    • Grakel 6y ago
      Incredible amount of lettuce is grown in Arizona as well!
    • wernercd 6y ago
      and those productive farms also use copious amounts of water that isn't available otherwise. (IE: piped in from rivers far away causing no shortage of ancillary problems: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/magazine/the-water-wars-of-arizona.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/magazine/the-water-wars-o... )
      • mannerheim 6y ago
        It comes with its own set of problems, but deserts are not dealbreakers for agriculture as the GP suggests.
      • dv_dt 6y ago
        Which also brings up a question if indoor farms recycle their water? At the very least, I might expect the transpiration rate to be lower, lowering water use.
  • high_byte 6y ago
    exactly... you can have a farm in the middle of the city and a solar farm in the middle of the desert...
    • vondur 6y ago
      We also have problems with environmentalists who oppose solar in the desert here in California. I don’t think they have been successful judging by the amount of solar installations I’ve seen here.
      • distribot 6y ago
        Is this a substantial number of environmentalists? I've never encountered the sentiment.
    • yongjik 6y ago
      You can also have an airport in the middle of a city and an apartment complex in the middle of the desert - there's nothing that stops them technologically. The problem is that they don't make economical sense.
      • osacial 6y ago
        Vertical farm in a city fits in economical sense, as their market is there, while farmers have to haul their product to consumers.
        • Ekaros 6y ago
          I wonder does it actually do make economic sense? Like will the net from selling produce be larger than just renting the same floorspace for some other use? Be it residential, office, shops or manufacturing...
          • osacial 6y ago
            There are many empty spaces created because of factories moved to China or because people are ordering from amazon(and supermarkets have closed down) and even in covid times people need to eat, while rest of the business in city has been shut down. It does not make much sense to grow wheat, but it makes sense to grow spices or other products that are transported from afar and which can be grown local indoors instead. Also, those vertical(and indoor) farms use LEDs, that consume much less energy - not to mention, that plants do not need that much light, than what is needed for humans to feel comfortable.
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • Groxx 6y ago
    nuclear, geothermal, loads of other power sources yeah. I think vertical farming is fairly ridiculous in practice, but this article is fighting against a very obvious strawman.
  • shagie 6y ago
    The idea of growing something from grow lights powered by only nuclear power is intriguing to me as it is food that never got its energy from our sun. Instead, that power came from cast of atoms from merging neutron stars billions of years ago.
• tt433 6y ago
  "Vertical Farming Does Not Save Space [when exclusively considering solar power]"
  • onethought 6y ago
    (And wheat) - do the same calculation with rice or potatoes and I’m sure he’d have different results.
    • SrslyJosh 6y ago
      Yeah, my first reaction was, "Who's actually trying to grow wheat indoors at scale???"
    • tt433 6y ago
      And the suggestion that one can live on a loaf of bread, using that price to extrapolate a yearly cost, it's a true worst case scenario.
• ironmagma 6y ago
  This is why we have the electrical grid.
  • WJW 6y ago
    Quite a lot of their pages are about doing away with the electric grid, in increasingly unpractical ways btw. This article is quite on-message actually.
• kibwen 6y ago
  > Artificial lighting saves land because plants can be grown above each other, but if the electricity for the lighting comes from solar panels, then the savings are canceled out by the land required to install the solar panels. This doesn't have to be the case. Plants don't use all the sunlight that hits them, because available light isn't generally the bottleneck in plant growth. Note how most plants are green, which is to say they're content with reflecting the most energy-dense range of the visible spectrum. Solar panels can in theory (and possibly in practice, I'm unsure of the current state of the art) yield more efficient utilization of solar energy than plants do. (Of course we also need to consider efficiency losses from reconverting the energy back into light, but I recall the reading that the overall system efficiency can still beat direct sunlight in theory (consider that the grow lights can be precisely tuned to only emit energy in the frequencies that plants crave).)
  • Nition 6y ago
    Say a plant needs 1/10th of actual full sun during the day, could you theoretically remove the electricity step entirely but "just" (putting "just" in quotes because I'm sure it wouldn't be easy) having some sort of fancy mirror setup on a 10 storey building to send 1/10th of the sunlight hitting the roof to each floor?
    • macspoofing 6y ago
      Mirrors take up space too.
      • deleted 6y ago
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      • Nition 6y ago
        Might be significantly higher efficiency overall though vs. putting solar panels on the same roof?
        • macspoofing 6y ago
• mssundaram 6y ago
  > the sun provides free energy and the clouds free water This is somewhat tangential to the author's point, however considering the resources from the Earth as free (not the sun) has been a disaster - environmentally, socially and economically. It's like double entry accounting but only entering on one side.
  • ravi-delia 6y ago
    That being said, exactly 0 of the listed examples are actually bad to consider free. If you don't collect rain coming down, it'll just come down anyway.
    • manicdee 6y ago
      If you collect the rain coming down, someone downstream ends up with no water. Water is not free.
      • ravi-delia 6y ago
        Not really, since other than the small amount of water that gets shipped out in the plant, the rest is just released right back out. Besides, as long as you're only collecting the water that falls directly on you as rain, you're not taking any more than your lot; someone 'downstream' can also collect water that falls directly on them.
        • wainstead 6y ago
          If you’re talking rain barrels, sure. But some states in America make it illegal for you to collect rainwater on your own property because it legally belongs to someone else.
        • manicdee 6y ago
          That's great if the entire river system is continually receiving decent amounts of rain. In most real world scenarios there's a rain-rich area in the top of the watershed, then a less rain-rich but flood-prone area, then a bit more rain closer to the seashore, then the river delta. In Australia for example there's a practise of "flood water harvesting" where you build large earth walls along your property boundary, and collect all the water that falls on your land. Combined with irrigation downstream this means the river dries up in the space of a hundred kilometres. There's very little water released back into the river, since that's basically wasting water as far as the agriculture industry is concerned.
• Klwohu 6y ago
  It doesn't grow many crops, either. I can see it being useful for restricted spaces like balconies or roof top gardens in cities, also because unlike soil gardening the weight is much less even accounting for the hydroponic growing solution. And of course, the gem of the new "industry," the place in Jackson which is a special case, tucked away up in the mountains where it can be hard to get in and out without delays, but wealthy enough to have practically every luxury brand in the world operating a store or two. To me though the issue with hydroponically grown produce, vertical OR horizontal, is they taste insipid. I'm not sure if anybody's done a study on, say, lycopene in tomatoes grown hydroponically vs. conventionally but I'd guess there's less of everything in the hydros. This is a known problem in the normal supermarkets and people have been complaining about bland veggies for many years. I will admit it's useful and can make money in certain situations. And it's funny as a gag, too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En3TYdWfwaw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En3TYdWfwaw
  • abeppu 6y ago
    My understanding was part of the reason we get bland veggies in the supermarket is that selection has been for being able to stay good for a longer period and not be damaged during shipping. If vertical farms have less time between harvesting and actual eating, maybe we can pick tastier varietals?
    • klodolph 6y ago
      That may be the reason for bland veggies in the supermarkets, but my personal experience with hydroponics is that they’re noticeable blander than what you get at the supermarket. If your goal is better veggies, it is often possible to source them just by trying different grocery stores. Some grocery stores rely heavily on larger (national) distributors, and other stores reliably provide a decent selection of locally sourced foods.
    • Klwohu 6y ago
      What if the taste of the particular strain isn't what causes blandness, but growing it in water with plant food mix instead of soil is? It might be possible to develop choose tastier breeds for hydroponic use but it's likely that even they would taste even better if grown in real soil on a farm, with all the added nutrient intake that sustains. So far the most success has been with fast-growing salad mixes and such, and to me it resembles an offshoot of the fresh sprout industry more than a heavy lifting type of agriculture meant to sustain the billions.
• mattferderer 6y ago
  An interesting proposal was discussed by some people on Twitter recently. They discussed it around using Bitcoin mining to create a larger demand for electricity when prices are cheap. Then when an event happens such as in Texas recently, electricity prices would go up, causing mining rigs to turn off since it's no longer economical. There would then be more available electricity for heating homes & businesses. One would assume vertical farming could be discussed in the same situation. Plants, like mining rigs could go offline for a few days without a major impact I assume, when prices sky rocket due to a major event such as a heat wave or blizzard. Keeping the vertical farm building at a reasonable temperature would be another factor here.
  • cool_dude85 6y ago
    So, burn tons of fossil fuels to mine bitcoin, thus forcing tons of fossil fuels to be burned to build new generating capacity? Nope, can't think of any issues with it.
    • mattferderer 6y ago
      We waste tons of energy every day on useless things. I'm not trying to argue Bitcoins energy usage vs alternatives. To me the thought provoking part is increases demand but for things that could be turned off for a while. I think vertical farming is especially interesting in that case. Yes we want things to use less energy & be more efficient. I hope that goes without saying.
      • deleted 6y ago
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• villasv 6y ago
  Vertical Farming saves space at the expense of electricity. I think the argument against them has to be along the lines of this trade-off >>possibly<< being a net negative for the environment. No one cares if the net result is using more space if this means farms closer to the city and larger solar farms far away.
  • macspoofing 6y ago
    >No one cares if the net result is using more space if this means farms closer to the city and larger solar farms far away. Solar energy is highly diffuse, so you need huge swaths of land to collect it, which has detrimental impact on any ecosystem you place them in.
• klysm 6y ago
  Assuming it has to be powered by solar panels is a bad assumption.
  • macspoofing 6y ago
    What else is there? Nuclear? I'm with you but it'll take decades before we realize that solar and wind just don't scale and decades more to rebuild and expand nuclear infrastructure. In the short term, it's either natural gas, wind/solar, and hydro (if your geography allows for it).
• deleted 6y ago
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• dr-detroit 6y ago
  How can you farm vertical if the earth is flat? This is the article the libtards don't wan you to click on because it will finally own them.
• 0wis 6y ago
  A more long term viewpoint would be interesting. All the affirmations in the article are done with the current state of the art. Extensive farming has improved for thousands of years. Vertical farming is very new and room for improvement in a controlled environnement could be huge. Moreover, the main critic compare solar to fossil energy costs (in dollar and space). What about going nuclear ? Moreover we always learn a lot when we go sideways. What about useful discoveries for space exploration ?
• worker767424 6y ago
  Vertical farming mostly feels like a solution in search of a problem. It uses relatively expensive technology to produce low-value products. Putting seeds in the ground, tilling, and waiting is absurdly cheap compared to building growhouses. For some perspective, what farms actually do extend growing seasons is put "greenhouses" around cold-sensitive crops like tomatoes, but a "greenhouse" in this case is a wire hoop with clear plastic around it. It's interesting if you want to support 50B people on Earth, but the resources required to build it out mean it isn't really even a viable solution for restoring farmland to wildland without massive amounts of mining.
  • pydry 6y ago
    It's a solution for taking trucks off the road and avoiding waste from spoiled produce. It's not a solution for saving land.
    • farisjarrah 6y ago
      If a vertical farm scales up and sells their produce to a super market, dont they still have to package up all the food and ship it on trucks before it gets to the end user?
      • kapp_in_life 6y ago
        Yes but the idea is you are now shipping it 5 miles instead of 500 miles.
        • JamesBarney 6y ago
          Isn't using an electric truck powered on solar or nuclear a far easier and more cost effective solution than vertical farming?
      • eightysixfour 6y ago
        My local supermarket has hydroponics on site and sells them there.
• SimianLogic2 6y ago
  This article is more about indoor farming than vertical farming (is it even vertical if there's only one row?). I grow lettuce indoors. It serves as a nice houseplant and fresh source of salad greens for lunch. It's fairly new, so the cost isn't that much different than just buying lettuce. Once I start building my own "pods" instead of buying the brand-name pods, though, I expect it'll be a bit cheaper than buying 4 bags of lettuce every week (although it doesn't produce enough to fully replace buying greens). Mine produced ~4 bags over 6 weeks for an energy cost of ~$5 and a negligible amount of water. I think I can get the per-plant cost down to ~$0.50 once I start using my own seeds, so around $10 over 6 weeks to replace 4 bags of salad at around $3 each... a grand savings of $2. We're moving around 4 bags of greens a week between 2 adults, so I'd need to 6x that to replace all the greens we're eating, which gets the savings up to ~$2/week. The cost savings is negligible -- I do it because it's neat and I like having a houseplant I can eat. It's also MUCH easier for a residential system to offset its energy usage than a commercial setup (I have way more square footage on my roof than I would ever "grow" inside my house). The calorie argument is more compelling, but how many thousands of years did it take for people to get wheat so calorically dense? I think it's going to take time to develop nutrient-rich crops specifically tailored for indoor farming.
  • golemiprague 6y ago
    You didn't calculate the cost of your work and time, isn't it worth more than $2 per week?
  • jseliger 6y ago
    Have you written comprehensively about the system you've set up and how it works? I've thought about a Zipgrow system or similar: https://shop.zipgrow.com/products/small?variant=31680916422758 https://shop.zipgrow.com/products/small?variant=316809164227..., but, as you can see, it's fairly costly to set up. I don't think it'll be cheaper than the grocery store, but it also seems fun and like the final product may taste better.
    • SimianLogic2 6y ago
      I'm just using a 9-plant Aerogarden Bounty right now (think it was ~$175 on Black Friday). My wife says I can upgrade to an indoor Tower Garden or Lettucegrow if I do 3-4 cycles on this thing without getting bored. I also built six 4ftx4ft raised (dirt) beds in our back yard a few years back. I plant fairly densely (usually using 1x1 squares for most things, 2x2 for tomatoes) and I'm thinking about trying one of the tower gardens as a replacement for a single 4x4 bed this growing season. It's been a minute since I ran the numbers, but I think you can plant 20-25 plants on one tower vs maybe 4-16 in a single bed and theoretically not have to weed/water as much (but then you get pump maintenance/ph balance/feeding/cleaning instead).
• abeppu 6y ago
  I feel like whenever I hear about people interested in vertical farming, it's typically centered around greens, or something where freshness is highly important. Is this responding to some group of people who are actually enthusiastic about indoor vertical farming of cereal crops? Notably absent from this is discussion of transport, storage and refrigeration. People have long complained about the 3000 mile ceasar salad. Is it better to grow lettuce and tomatoes far away and ship them to mostly urban consumers, or is it better to grow those in/near urban areas for local consumption? This is a real question; if someone has numbers on the per-serving energy cost of refrigerated shipping, and how they compare to the lighting energy cost, I think that would be an important comparison.
• neonbjb 6y ago
  There are other reasons to farm indoors (or in vertical farms) than electricity and water too. Pests are one such reason. They are extremely difficult to control outdoors, but far simpler to do so inside. Both fertilizer and pesticide treatments (if necessary) can be far more specific - e.g. less wasteful and environmentally damaging) when done indoors. Similarly, inclement weather generally does not affect indoor farms. There's also my favorite argument: if we're ever going to try to colonize space or other planets, we better be damned good at growing plants artificially. IMO every dollar spent improving this space gets us one step closer to unlinking our future from Earth's.
• gm 6y ago
  This is one of those headlines that are missing the word "yet" at the end. All of the problems brought up are solvable, given enough time and resources. Also given some f-ing ingenuity. This quote is just disingenuous: "the savings are canceled out by the land required to install the solar panels". Can't you just install solar panels vertically as well? A single web search for "vertical solar panels" brings up alternatives and even this article from 2017: https://offgridworld.com/3d-solar-panel-towers-increase-energy-output-up-to-20-times/ https://offgridworld.com/3d-solar-panel-towers-increase-ener... . I'm sure a thorough search will solve that problem right away. I just think the author has a beef against this type of farming and is playing dumb to validate his opinion.
  • Majromax 6y ago
    > This quote is just disingenuous: "the savings are canceled out by the land required to install the solar panels". Can't you just install solar panels vertically as well? More to the point, solar panels don't need to be installed on arable land. Solar panels can be installed in low-fertility areas like deserts; offshore wind turbines are absolutely not displacing farmland.
    • hctaw 6y ago
      On the homes, offices, and industrial parks surrounding the vertical farms as well.
    • Ma8ee 6y ago
      One suggestion I like a lot is making walls with solar panels along highways. They'd reduce sound pollution, hinders wild animals to run into the road while at the same time producing electricity in a space not used for anything else.
      • e_y_ 6y ago
        It wouldn't be particularly efficient, given that most of the day less than half the panels would be receiving direct sunlight. I think a more practical option would be to put the solar panels above the road, such as https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jun/06/tunnel-solar-belgium-rail https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jun/06/tunnel-s... or https://renewsable.net/2017/06/28/south-korean-bike-highway-solar-panels-stretching-20-miles/ https://renewsable.net/2017/06/28/south-korean-bike-highway-...
• pwinnski 6y ago
  An inefficient art installation uses a lot of electricity and water to grow wheat in a single layer (where's the "vertical" part?), but I'm not seeing what that has to do with any actual efforts at vertical farming.
• maxharris 6y ago
  Artificial lighting saves land because plants can be grown above each other, but if the electricity for the lighting comes from solar panels, then the savings are canceled out by the land required to install the solar panels. The vertical farm is a paradox unless fossil fuels provide the energy. In that case, there’s not much sustainable about it. This entire piece is based on the assumption that the only sources of energy are solar panels and fossil fuels. This is false. According to the US Department of Energy, 19.6% of the energy produced in 2019 is nuclear. In that same year, 7.1% was from wind, 7.0% was hydroelectric, 1.4% from biomass, 0.4% geothermal. Only 1.7% was photovoltaics! https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427 If we look into the relatively near future, fusion energy is going to account for a rapidly increasing share of energy production by the end of this decade. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4
  • nfin 6y ago
    One more thing it saves: Transportation (!) from miles away, as a skyscraper could feed a city or a part of it.
  • cbmuser 6y ago
    Yeah, don’t bother with reading articles that exclude the largest source of clean energy in US. Such articles have an ideological bias.
    • tomcooks 6y ago
      No problem with nuclear until you have a problem, then it's a catastrophe
    • throwaway894345 6y ago
      They might have an ideological bias, but if the prevailing ideology is anti-nuclear then ignoring that bias isn't going to get you very far. Biden has committed us to moving the energy sector off of carbon in the next 15 years, which means we're going to build a lot of $CleanEnergy really soon, and if the ideological landscape doesn't change it very likely will be a whole lot of solar and wind (what is 15 years minus the amount of time it takes to build out a nuclear power plant?).
• tekno45 6y ago
  But how much space would you save if all the veggies that are vertical farming friendly are moved indoors? Does everything have to grow indoors? no, but we need to save the space for crops that need it.
  • airhead969 6y ago
    Consider countries like Spain where outdoor farming is no longer possible due to climate change. Indoor ag, of whatever kind, will likely be essential in many places.
• chiefalchemist 6y ago
  Vertical farming isn't necessarily about saving space. It's also about using typically urban spaces to grow food, where before there was none. It's about pest and predator mitigation. And so on.
• deleted 6y ago
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• kazinator 6y ago
  > Artificial lighting saves land because plants can be grown above each other, but if the electricity for the lighting comes from solar panels, then the savings are canceled out by the land required to install the solar panels. Solar panels don't have to be on land; they can be on buildings. Moreover, they don't have to be on land that is arable. Moreover, solar is not the only way to avoid fossil fuels in the quest of electricity. Also, it's cheaper to transport electricity from a distant electric farm, than vegetables from a distant vegetable farm.
• OliverGilan 6y ago
  A lot of people seem to be misunderstanding the goals of vertical farming. It’s not to save space, we have more than enough of that. It’s to stop produce from being shipped hundreds of miles on trucks which greatly increases greenhouse emissions and results in less fresh produce. Transportation is the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in our food’s supply chain. When you hear about beef having such a big carbon footprint it’s also accounting for the massive footprint of transporting all that beef as well as it’s food. If you can cut that down you would be greatly reducing the carbon footprint of your food.
  • ratsforhorses 6y ago
    So wouldn't urban agriculture be a "wiser" more "open access" way forward?https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_agriculture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_agriculture I enjoy the idea of mixed companion planting combined with a pick and pay system ....we could even do it labyrinth style :-)
  • JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    That's an uphill battle. Been mostly solved - truck and train transport is pretty cheap per item. They're refrigerated and probably spend less time in the truck, than in the store and your fridge. Bit Ag is ... BIG. We're not gonna beat it at scale with a few pods on the balcony. Better find a different reason.
• KorematsuFred 6y ago
  This classic example is why some journalists need some real good education in Economics. How many sq feet of land do you need to grow say 1000KG of wheat ? That number would widely vary. In Nevada that number would be really really huge compared to say fertile soil of Kansas. But with a vertical farming that number can be made much more uniform all across the geography. With a vertical farm someone in Nevada might put to use the vast empty land they have to produce wheat. At the end of the day, success of vertical farming would come from such efficient usage of land and in my opinion even if authors narrow case of growing wheat using solar panels comes to fruition would still lead to more efficient use of land
• aaron695 6y ago
  Making thousands of commuters drive past your 'city' farm to get to work burns a lot of fuel too. It's hard to know what to do with people who don't get even that. I guess get them to pay $$$ for their energy intensive crops in their fancy cafes. Which if they are happy doesn't make that bad. The environmental movement doesn't help the environment, but it does make people happy, if they would just stop proselytizing it'd be ok.
• nostromo 6y ago
  > Artificial lighting saves land because plants can be grown above each other, but if the electricity for the lighting comes from solar panels, then the savings are canceled out by the land required to install the solar panels. Is this true? Plants use specific ranges of light (narrow bands of red and blue). Solar panels absorb a broad array of wavelengths. So isn't it at least possible that one solar panel could produce more than its size worth of productive sunlight for the purposes of photosynthesis?
• deleted 6y ago
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• darth_avocado 6y ago
  >Vertical Farming Does Not Save Space Vertical farming in its current form doesn't save space. I use regular recycled containers, milk jugs, cans etc. with a DIY mount on one of the walls of my house. Last season's harvest was about 80-90 pounds of tomatoes, multiple harvests of beets, lettuce, spinach and herbs. The wall is almost 20 ft x 20 ft. Even if my spacing is double that of regular farming, that's still a lot of space saved. Sure, not all crops can be vertically farmed, but plenty of them can be and thereby saving precious land.
• LatteLazy 6y ago
  I feel like this whole thing is like arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. We have a shit tonne of land. And we already grow vastly more food than we need. So why do we care? Aside from maybe building farms on Mars, what is the expected use of this tech?
  • ratsforhorses 6y ago
    Lack of diversity and vegetables are expensive ; the former leads to overuse of all those "-ides"(and fertilizer) and the 2nd to the obesity epidemic, because derivatives from corn are so much cheaper...
• kumarski 6y ago
  LCOE and chemical footprint of vertical farming probably only makes sense if you're growing non-calorically dense foods.
• dathinab 6y ago
  > paradox unless fossil Or some of the other many non solar panel renewable energy sources, like gaining electricity from water (fall or sea tide) wind or geothermal sources. And while atom power is human unfriendly (i.e. humans are weak against it) it not so much climate unfriendly and even nature itself can live fairly fine with the radiation pollution they might cause in the worst case. Sure humans are not fine, we have societies and are long lived enough so that the cancer caused from such radiation poltion is a serious problem.
• User23 6y ago
  Chloroplasts are a pretty efficient way to capture and store solar energy already and they don’t produce nearly as much toxic waste as solar panel manufacturing.
• jzer0cool 6y ago
  The blog appears to be talking about 2 very different things, space utilization and the tradeoff of electricity consumption. I have to disagree about the statement it does not save space. Vertical farming is a means to utilize space in a new dimension, hence the word, vertical.
• carapace 6y ago
  One thing to look at for any agricultural system is the long-term effect on soil fertility. Are you building up healthy soil and biomass over time, or diminishing it?
• ftr45 6y ago
  >If the electricity for a vertical farm is supplied by solar panels so use nuclear
• changoplatanero 6y ago
  Do they really need 600 watts of light for one square meter?
• CapitalistCartr 6y ago
  There is lots of land, at least in the USA, covered in parking lots, buildings, roads that would be excellent places for solar panels. But acreage of cultivated land peaked in the Fifties. We could till far more land than we do now. In the USA, vertical farming is a solution in search of a problem.
• betwixthewires 6y ago
  *using solar as a power source. I wish they'd include those important parts in the title.
• choeger 6y ago
  Vertical farming will almost certainly not generate the mass of calories to feed the world. But that doesn't mean it cannot be useful. Many vegetables are already grown under very controlled conditions and it doesn't take much fantasy to consider, e.g., tomatoes from a nearby vertical farm more environmentally friendly than their counterparts grown in some remote sunny place. But of course, logistics might get cheaper as well with clean energy, so it's not guaranteed, either.
  • airhead969 6y ago
    Why can't large grocery stores be built taller to grow vegetables horiz/vertical airoponically on an upper level? No need to raise disgusting "pretty" vegetables that are picked green, artificially-ripened, and driven thousands of miles.
    • choeger 6y ago
      Oh they certainly can. But they have to compete against huge greenhouse complexes. So basically you are trading logistics vs. economics of scale. I don't know who would win in every case.
• bigdollopenergy 6y ago
  Ugh. This is really shallow analysis. * Solar is the only form of renewable energy where this is a potential problem and there are already solutions that actually exist. Solar farms can also be vertical (look up 3D solar farms) or even on water (look up floating solar farms), which avoids this supposed land problem altogether. * Even if we use traditional "2D" solar farms on land, space is not all equal and most of it isn't arable. With vertical farming, all that previously non-arable land is now usable for farming indirectly via solar panels. We still get desired effect of increasing our capacity to grow food in the face of shrinking available arable land, which is the whole point. While I think this is an early technology that will be pretty niche for a long time, i'm glad it's being developed and has potential applications today. It's my view that vertical closed system farming and fusion power (for desalinization in particular) becoming practical on an industrial scale is vital for our survival as a species in the coming centuries. If the predictions on topsoil erosion and climate change are even partially correct we're going to need this technology figured out.
• Daho0n 6y ago
  >"Artificial lighting saves land because plants can be grown above each other, but if the electricity for the lighting comes from solar panels, then the savings are canceled out by the land required to install the solar panels" Seems disingenuous. 1) Solar panels can take up space in areas not useable for farming, like areas with too little water and too much sun. 2) Wind energy is moving offshore taking no space from farming at all.
• mediaman 6y ago
  Vertical farm companies attract a lot of attention from tech people who love the idea of hermetically sealed crop growing, but it's not where the action is. That's because climate controlled hydroponic greenhouses get you most of the way there - no need for arable land, faster crop turns, ability to plant in more climates - but use free energy, at vastly lower capital and operating costs. The vertical farm premise is that we really need to do climate-controlled growing very close to city centers, using warehouses or something. But the math just doesn't pencil out. Climate controlled is a benefit. But there's very few tradeoffs to putting it 200 miles outside of a city center where real estate is cheap anyway. And that's where the smart money is going - right now, millions of square feet of climate controlled greenhouse space is being built across North America to service regional population hubs, at a cost of billions of dollars. Vastly more produce will be made in these greenhouses than vertical farms.
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• mtnGoat 6y ago
  i think one thing the author is missing is that power is much easier and cheaper to transport than either food or water. the best places to grow food are not always near people and a lot of unused land has reasons for its state. installing solar power to create production in the desert is vastly cheaper then pumping water there, and then transporting the food back to populated areas. i can think of about 50 other inputs the author failed to include, i don't think it's as simple as comparing square footage efficiency.
• guhcampos 6y ago
  You can place solar panels in urban areas, even sidewalks and streets are being tested, besides solar roofs. You can use nuclear, fission or fusion. You can use tidal, geothermal, wind energy. You can concentrate-then-diffuse sunlight with parabolic mirrors and optical fibers. You can place solar panels in deserts and transmit energy to vertical farms. You can distribute multiple crops in multiple floors depending on their water, light and soil needs. You can farm fish and chicken on the ground level of the same vertical farms and use their waste as fertilizer. You can do all that, or you can keep chopping down the Amazon rainforest to plant soybeans.
• dfinr 6y ago
  Weed. They grow weed like that. Not wheat.
• dmingod666 6y ago
  Even after decoupling energy acquisition and production if you don't use your resources well, blame the guy planning it.
• fredgrott 6y ago
  something interesting from biology that no one is aware of... plants that do photosynthesis can be stacked if they are different enough to grab different parts of the visual spectrum...it happens in oceans and tropics etc. metal only get's electron excited in the uv light range and thus cannot be stacked. Vertical farms do not stack those plants that grab different areas of visible spectrum as plants generally are dominant in one visible spectrum area more than the other one..red vs blue vs green whereas algae specialize by the visible spectrum they grab for photosynthesis ie red, blue, and green algae...color reflected form them is not the color they use to photosynthesis ie red algae do not use red but a different color to photosynthesis We are doing it wrong we should build a bio-battery film of different algae and stack them to generate electricity from the sun instead of metal solar panels. Even transparency and other improvements only gets solar to 45% effectiveness...with algae we could get much higher
• jesstaa 6y ago
  > These companies are profitable, but only because the process relies on a supply of cheap fossil fuels. If solar panels supplied the energy, the extra costs and space for the energy supply would again cancel out the savings in terms of space and costs. Given that solar has become so cheap that new solar is able to compete with existing fossil fuel power this conclusion seems outdated. Solar can be placed in many places where it's not possible to plant in to the ground and it also doesn't account for power from other renewable energy sources that aren't available to plants in a field ie. Wind and Hydro
• elihu 6y ago
  > All this criticism also applies to vertical farms where lettuce and tomatoes are grown. In this case, there is a significant reduction in water use. These companies are profitable, but only because the process relies on a supply of cheap fossil fuels. If solar panels supplied the energy, the extra costs and space for the energy supply would again cancel out the savings in terms of space and costs. The only advantage of a vertical farm would then be the shorter transport distances. Still, we could just as well make transport between town and countryside more sustainable. This may be true, but I'm having trouble reconciling it with the notion I've read elsewhere that solar farms are producing some of the cheapest energy prices per KW/h. (Though maybe once you factor in energy storage it comes out more expensive than natural gas or coal?) Anyways, if these companies are currently profitable at current energy prices, that seems to imply that being profitable on 100% renewable energy isn't that much of a stretch. (Though the criticism that lettuce and tomatoes aren't a good source of calories/fat/protein and aren't enough to feed a population, if that was your goal, remains valid.)
• de6u99er 6y ago
  IMO the real problem is the decline of fertile soil.
• SomewhatLikely 6y ago
  For anyone who wants to get into the technical details on efficiency of growing crops under lighting, here's an informative talk from Bruce Bugsbee of Apogee Instruments: https://youtu.be/wsaufB5F8dk https://youtu.be/wsaufB5F8dk He shows that wheat, which was the example used in the article, would cost 100x more growing under lighting, but for greens and microgreens the lighting costs are only a few percent of the market value of the crop so those are very viable as indoor crops.
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• aussieguy1234 6y ago
  The Article said space is only saved if cheap fossil fuels are used instead of solar panels. If the vertical farm is powered by wind, the land the turbines are on can be used for other purposes like non vertical agriculture.
• ianai 6y ago
  I'm going to stop reading these vertical farming "hit pieces" as informative about farming and, instead, informative of how worried incumbent agribusiness is about any entrants to their markets.
• modriano 6y ago
  Judging vertical farming based on the performance of wheat is not valid. When I saw the test crop was wheat, I scrolled to see if there were any other crops, saw that there weren't, and abandoned the article because wheat has among the worst yields per area (in terms of kg of edible product per sq meters). Since the pandemic started, I started experimenting with hydroponics and I've been growing basil, kale, mint, chard, carrots, tomatoes, radishes, and a bunch of herbs, all in about a 60cm x 60cm x 120cm grow tent. It's much less efficient than it could be (if I had much more space), but it's still extremely productive. My setup draws about 80 watts for 18 hours a day (vegetative growth phase) or 12 hours of day (flowering stage) and I've been able to prolong the gap between grocery store trips because this produces enough to eliminate the need to buy vegetables. This article is just ridiculous.
  • tvanantwerp 6y ago
    As a new homeowner who has never gardened before, I'm curious how to get started doing something like your hydroponics setup.
    • modriano 6y ago
      For someone looking to get started, with the knowledge I've gained over the past year, I'd recommend starting with a Kratky grow [0]. It's extremely simple and extremely inexpensive (you basically just start some seedlings in rockwool [1], then when seedlings are an inch or two tall, transplant them into a container with nutrient solution in it. A lot of videos and online articles are very finicky, but from trial and error, the only things I've discovered that really matter are A) the pH of your water (pH impacts plants ability to absorb nutrients [2], anywhere in the range of 5.0 to 6.5 has been fine for me), and B) the amount of light your plants get (suspend your light(s) so you can always keep it a few inches above your plants). To do any kind of hydroponics grow, you'll need (and you can pick up most of this locally (for far less than on Amazon) at a garden center or hydroponics store if available): - a way to measure pH (you can get strips for next to nothing, or an electric meter (~$15 for a cheapo one, maybe $40 for a reliable one)) - a way to adjust the pH [3] - nutrients (I have just used FloraDuo 5-0-6 [4] without issue, 2ml per liter of water has been perfect) - a way to start your seedlings (I've used rockwool [5] in a clear rubbermaid bin) - lights (doesn't have to be fancy [6]) - containers for nutrient solution (could be a bucket from home depot with a hole drilled in the top for net cups [7]) - seeds (any home improvement store with a garden center will have a stand with all kinds of seeds to pick from) Things that make it much nicer (but are unnecessary if you don't know if you want to stick with this hobby): - Timers for your lights [8] - Basically everything in this kit [9] except for the netting, grow bags, and "odor control filters" (unless you want to grow that specific plant with the very particular and easily identifiable odor, and you don't want the odor). Regarding my own build, the setup I built was needlessly complicated, as I'm an engineer and I tried to automate as much as possible. I made a germination station (with a heating pad and tray [10] with a temperature controller [11]) for seedlings, and I picked an aeroponics setup (aeroponics is a form of hydroponic growing where plant's roots dangle above the nutrient solution and are intermittently sprayed or trickled on; this is approximately the build [12]), and if I hadn't been in my house all the time, I probably would have abandoned it in June (but I'm really glad I didn't, it's been a lot of fun). After I got everything built, it's been maybe 40 minutes of work a week (mostly checking the nutrient levels, mixing up nutrient solution, and harvesting plants). Maybe someday I'll make an even more automated system like this [13] where I don't even have to think about pH level and nutrient solution is automatically mixed and added. [0] https://youtu.be/5z0NaYpVHMs?t=7 [1] https://youtu.be/AMlCdm_yVvc [2] http://rodsgardening.com/pH.htm [3] https://www.amazon.com/General-Hydroponics-pH-Control-Kit/dp/B017XTFKE6/ [4] https://www.amazon.com/General-Hydroponics-FloraDuo-Mineral-Nutrient/dp/B004PPY750 [5] https://www.amazon.com/Rockwool-Starter-Twin-Canaries-Chart/dp/B07KJVQ6T5 [6] https://youtu.be/lT8acb5WTT0 [7] https://www.amazon.com/xGarden-Lightweight-Economy-Hydroponics-Aquaponics/dp/B07W9H8ZRH [8] https://www.amazon.com/Century-Indoor-24-Hour-Mechanical-Outlet/dp/B01LPSGBZS [9] https://www.amazon.com/Spider-Farmer-Complete-Spectrum-Compatible/dp/B088R3JHHD [10] https://www.amazon.com/CK64050-Germination-Station-Listed-72-Cell/dp/B000HHO1RO/ [11] https://www.amazon.com/Century-Thermostat-Controller-Germination-40-108°F/dp/B01I15S6OM [12] https://youtu.be/edtYDsMthC4?t=67 [13] https://youtu.be/nyqykZK2Ev4
• soheil 6y ago
  It may not save space overall, but does it save horizontal space in favor of vertical?
  • Ekaros 6y ago
    No, that is entirely the point. It does at point of production. But as overall it uses lot more horizontal space. And also space used is much more infrastructure intensive.
• olliej 6y ago
  @maxharris pointed out the article’s fib about power generation, but the ignore the other important aspect. Vertical farming does not require the farm be in the same location as the power generation. This allows production closer to population centers, and in climates where production would be otherwise non viable.
• mortdeus 6y ago
  isn't vertical farming just moving land that was in the horizontal direction, into the vertical direction then creating a complication where the plants grown under the top rows need to be fed by an artificial source of light? I mean I think this is actually pretty logical because you can't place the solar panel above the top plants because then you are losing the advantage typical horizontal farming gets from being able to directly be fed by the sun, so then you have to place the solar panel next to the plant? The real question is whether this can save space, is whether you can generate more energy from a solar panel that takes up the same amount of space a plant would require if planted horizontally, than said plant could absorb from the sun directly. Plants take up much more space than one would expect because their roots branch out further than the actual circumference of the actual plant body itself. So in that way a lot of sunlight is wasted because it hits the extra area of soil the roots need but the actual plant body doesn't. Now if instead of hitting soil, it is instead hitting a solar panel then the general question is whether or not this is creating more efficient use of the sun, because even with a minor improvement in efficiency you should "theoretically" be able to save a considerable amount of space when growing at scale. Whether it will be cheaper to grow this way, probably not because with vertical farming obviously will come with a ton of logistical problems when it comes to harvesting or maintenance/construction of infrastructure. But I don't see how growing three plants vertically with a solar panel that feeds the bottom two is technically not saving space unless you need more area of solar panels sitting next to them than all 3 plants would consume had you just planted them all next to each other. In other words would you need 2 or more solar panels + the sun to feed 3 horizontal plants? If so then just plant them horizontally and let the sun do all the work.
• pilord8 6y ago
  This article makes a mistake by assuming that an installation (TheFarm) represents the best we can do with vertical or indoor farming. Of course an exploratory art installation isn't going to be particularly cost conscious - it's not designed for that, not really. Instead, the obvious counterpoint is to look at currently vertical farming installations. The one I'm most aware of is Plenty, which has 350x the yield of standard outdoor farming. At that level, it's leafy green products are organic and cost competitive (i.e., the same price) as other organic spinach/kale/arugula brands. This is really substantially understating the case for Plenty, but I don't think I can say much more and I would encourage anyone interested to just go look up what they and other vertical farming operations are doing.
• JackPoach 6y ago
  Vertical faming has very little appeal to anyone, other than a small percentage technophiles. I don't think it's the future, and it's fine. It's good to have vertical farms, but there's nothing wrong if traditional agriculture supplies most food. Vertical farming is successful for a handful of items. There are products, like tomatoes or strawberries, where hydroponically grown vegetables don't taste as well. So, this shouldn't be either or discussion. All methods of agriculture have the right to exist.
• wwosik 6y ago
  It might be the same space needed, but in another area. It's much easier to transport electricity than goods and definitively better for the air quality. If you can produce electricity 50 km away and then produce produce in the city center, you are sparing the transport costs.
• NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
  I do not want to repeat what other said but I do not see this as problem there are deserts in the world, which are not used for food production and they are have not been use for anything else in that sense. Nothing lives there so there is nothing that could be endangered. Total area needed to power entire world with solar would be ~ 532,900 square kilometres (square with sides 730 km) roughly area of Spain. Space of just 3 deserts is: Sahara 9,000,000+ Australian Desert 2,700,000 Arabian Desert 2,330,000 Gobi Desert 1,295,000 Further more, vertical farms are not just about space, correct me if I am wrong but vertical farm use less water and they have a better control of pests without usage of chemicals, they are easier to work with and automate food production.
• raverbashing 6y ago
  > but if the electricity for the lighting comes from solar panels, then the savings are canceled out by the land required to install the solar panels Yes but you don't need to install your solar panels in arable land. In fact it's better than you don't, because it's cheaper (duh!) Or you're running it on wind or other power sources. It's actually not surprising that "biological solar power" will kinda match the "electrical solar power" but that should not be the downside of vertical farms (and you know, you can have your solar power come through... windows) And yes nobody is growing wheat on indoor farms. TL:DR; the conclusion of the article is "The problem with agriculture is not that it happens in the countryside. The problem is that it relies heavily on fossil fuels. " which is a much more valid point than "vertical farms don't save space"
• kebman 6y ago
  I think there are several misconceptions in this article, the first of which is the assumption that a prototype will be as efficient as the final product. Sure, the prototype does seem to use a lot of energy, but will that be the case for later iterations? Surely it would be the first things engineers would try to minimize, since it's a direct cost associated with production. More importantly, it does not really matter much if the area used for the production does not save on space. That's not really the point, although it would be nice. The point is to bring agricultural production closer to urban environments, in order to save on the energy cost related to the shipping of said product, and possibly to bring far fresher products to customers. The article seems to portray that as a pipe dream. Again, these are things that can surely be minimized in order to compete with shipping between rural and urban areas. With that out of the way, yes, currently urban farms do seem pretty ineffective and useless. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't explore and develop these ideas. Once upon a time cars were pretty inefficient toys of the ultra rich too.
• nindalf 6y ago
  This article seems to be making a few assumptions that might not be correct. It assumes that all land is the same so it doesn’t matter if agriculture is replaced by solar panels. But this isn’t true. Some land is fertile, other land might not be. So if fertile agricultural land is replaced by vertical farming powered by solar panels in the desert, that fertile land can now be reclaimed. It could be used to grow a forest, certainly something you couldn’t do in the desert. Secondly, it assumes that there’s some limit on vertical farming. But it’s possible to build several storeys on the same land.
• nxpnsv 6y ago
  It may save transports though. Trucks and associated infrastructure takes space. Not sure how the equation works out though.
• joe-collins 6y ago
  > The vertical farms that have been commercially active for several years all focus on the same crops. These are agricultural products with a high water content, such as lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and herbs. However, these are not crops that can feed a city. They contain hardly any carbohydrates, proteins, or fats. To feed a city, it takes grains, legumes, root crops, and oil crops. They may not "feed a city" in a raw caloric/survival sense, but they're certainly consumed in cities and if that continues to be true, they'll be grown somewhere. The question shouldn't be "can we grow subsistence crops vertically?" Rather, the question is whether vertical farming can provide any crop more efficiently along any of several axes (and at sufficient scale for us to bother talking about). If something can be usefully grown vertically, netting us realizable gains in terms of cost, land use, freshness, price, carbon, or some other metric, then by all means, why not?
• mingh 6y ago
  It gives the possibilities to re-purpose the space.
• gdubs 6y ago
  One form of vertical farming that does save space is Agroforestry, in which traditional crops are grown in a system with trees. Plants have various solar requirements — some are shade tolerant. This means you can have crops, shrubs, trees, all occupying an area of land. This was first explored in the book Tree Crops: A permanent Agriculture, in the 1930s. If you lookup closely at that subtitle, you’ll see the roots of the word Permaculture.
• AtlasBarfed 6y ago
  The headline seems poor, the article not well structured. Space isn't necessarily the major conservation of vertical farms. As stated in the article, water, soil, transport are all concerns in the total cost compensation, as are the current externalized costs in traditional agriculture loss of biodiversity destruction, soil erosion, and pesticide introduction. Finally... they're growing crops totally indoors? Um... windows? Solar panels can be placed on unused land (rooftops, deserts, etc), the false conclusion is that solar would be used on farmland or high biodiversity. And there's wind. What a train wreck. Almost a hit piece.