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The other thing to remember is that there is a lot of land that isn't suitable for farming for one reason or another that can be used for solar.
by tux1968 6y ago
The other thing to remember is that there is a lot of land that isn't suitable for farming for one reason or another that can be used for solar.
- airza 6y agoIt's such an important point that's the core value proposition of vertical farming. Arable.land is unlikely to keep up with the combination of population growth and climate change. That's the whole point of the exercise! Solving that problem!
- xchaotic 6y agoNot solving it unless you solve the other problems such as where the energy comes from how do you deal with waste where do you get the water from.
- Shivetya 6y agodoubtful, as little far back as a decade there was considered to be over 2.7 billion hectares of land available that would was considered usable, this is mostly in areas like South America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Central America. Global Warming may actually open areas previously unsuited for certain crops; evidence pointed to much warmer climates in Europe with grapes further North in mans short existence, and the impact on existing uses is not fully understood. The simple fact is, every time someone suggest were are running out of food or have too many people or water is not wet anymore we find out that it simply is because we don't look further than we are standing. The biggest reason people starve today is repressive governments that respect neither the person or private property. that one percent, the ruling elite of the world, loses its grip in highly informed, rights driven parts of the world but they sure do fight to keep the pie to themselves even there.
- wongarsu 6y agoWorld popolation is around 7.8 billion, and is projected to peak around 11 billion. Given that of all agricultural land only 23% is used for non-feed crops (producing 82% of global calorie supply) that doesn't sound like an existential problem, even if you assume that climate change makes much more land unarable than it makes arable.
- AngryData 6y agoFarmland utilization is on the downtrend everywhere except Africa though.
- jpadkins 6y agobut isn't aquafarming vastly superior to vertical farming for that problem statement?
- hinkley 6y agoOr restoring native habitat.
- Retric 6y agoYou can’t put solar on land while restoring native habitat. Wind power is much closer to minimal impact outside of bats and birds.
- reportingsjr 6y agoVery important point. Included in this land, which a lot of people seem to forget about, is the roofs of buildings! This is currently a huge amount of area that just absorbs sunlight and converts a good chunk in to heat.
- charlesju 6y agoThere is also a lot of land used for something else that can also be used for solar, ie. house roofs, roads, parking lots.
- xchaotic 6y agoSurely it is easier and cheaper to make the land arable or a greenhouse or whatever than equivalent vertical farm + solar. KISS
- tux1968 6y agoHow exactly do you do that in say the desert? Solar is KISS in many situations.
- Ekaros 6y agoSome type of semi-reflective coating to keep heat low and closed loop systems? I wonder how expensive and actually complex would it be to find nano-scale substance that would reflect most of wasted light spectrum while allowing the one needed...
- sampo 6y agoOr a solar panel that is transparent to red and blue, and only captures green light?
- ben_w 6y agoAre greenhouses in deserts harder to build or maintain than PV farms and power lines in the same desert? Not a rhetorical question, I genuinely don’t know. I assume it varies by desert, but farming and power are both way out of my domain.
- _carbyau_ 6y agoMy understanding was that you put the solar in the desert, so that you can put the vertical farm somewhere else where soil, water, transport logistics is easier. So the question is whether a greenhouse/farm in the desert is easier than solar in the desert connected through grid to vertical farm somewhere else. I have no data. My guess is the ongoing logistics of piping electricity out of the desert is easier than fertiliser into the desert and produce out to where people live.
- dragontamer 6y ago> lot of land that isn't suitable for farming We're talking about powering a hydroponic greenhouse. The alternative to "Solar Powered LEDs" isn't "plant things in the ground". Its "make a glass window on your roof". -------- "Plant things in the ground" is also cheaper, though it does suffer from potentially poor soil conditions. Still, it seems to me that spreading fertilizer across soil (and conditioning the soil into a growable state) would be cheaper and easier than making large-scale indoor hydroponics.
- dathinab 6y ago> "make a glass window on your roof". Doesn't work as you can't stack plants with it nor can you grow them underground.
- dragontamer 6y agoWhere are you placing these solar panels? Why can't those locations be rooftop hydroponic farms instead?
- tux1968 6y agoBecause rooftop hydroponic farms have to be tended to almost daily, or at least for planting/harvesting. Solar panels don't need nearly as much maintenance and allow you to concentrate the actual growing operations for the economies of scale. Do you mind if I ask why you're so against the idea?
- dragontamer 6y ago> Do you mind if I ask why you're so against the idea? Because it is clearly inefficient to convert sunlight -> electricity -> simulated sunlight.
- tux1968 6y agoBut you're ignoring the inefficiency of building separate hydroponic operations on individual rooftops and driving around to all of them, etc. Also as SamBam mention above, you don't have to make a simulated sun. Instead it can work as sun -> electricity -> narrow-spectrum-light-that-plants-convert-at-higher-efficiency. You might even genetically modify plants to be more productive with the smallest spectrum possible.
- dathinab 6y ago> can be used for solar. And there are many other renewal energy sources. Like geothermal power in some areas or water (fall or tide) based power in other areas. And you can put this power sources in a lot of places which are fully unusable for farming.
- mytailorisrich 6y agoConsidering the pressure on the environment and biodiversity, and the disappearance of wilderness, I think we don't necessarily want to exploit more land. IMHO a key point of the article is that solar is not really a suitable source of electricity for vertical farming. There are other sources of clean electricity that more suitable in order to reap the benefits of vertical farming (less transport and less use of land, and also less water and pesticides).
- jmchuster 6y agoRight, which is why it doesn't make sense yet for countries like the US, where there is enough open land and connective infrastructure to grow plants with free sun energy. If you were to use solar, then you'd need a country that has a lot of land that would be better used on solar panels rather than farmland, so maybe one that is mostly tundras or deserts.
- tux1968 6y agoI was really only addressing the notion that vertical farming took up more land. If we have as much extra land as you say, the point is irrelevant anyway. But you need to remember that there are real costs to industrial farming on land. The use of pesticides, fertilizers and topsoil loss. There are a lot of benefits to vertical farming if it can be made to work economically.
- jmchuster 6y agoWell, the primary costs today are water and labor. Fertilizers and such don't really cost much, which is why we always just overfertilize and now are causing runoff problems.
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- godelski 6y agoThis is a surprising concept missed by many, especially in energy. Since places solar is the best. Some wind. Some hydro. Some nuclear. The world isn't homogeneous. I see the same thing with farming. Indoor and vertical farming allows you to farm in the middle of the dessert. In Africa where hippos eat your crops. Closer to population centers where you reduce emissions from transportation and increase food security (longer roads mean more chance of food trucks getting stopped, due to accidents, climate, whatever). You can't compare these things on singular metrics. You have to look at the whole picture. In some instances things will be better, other instances worse. You have to balance complex equations.