4 ms·

Why not corn? My understanding is that it’s one of the most efficient crops in calories/acre terms (which is presumably what you actually care about, not kg/acr

Why not corn? My understanding is that it’s one of the most efficient crops in calories/acre terms (which is presumably what you actually care about, not kg/acre).

yazaddaruvala 6y ago
My guess is that counterintuitively but unsurprisingly, you actually want to use crops that were previously inefficient to grow. Low yields per acre crops are more suitable to indoor vertical farming because of the benefit climate control, and lack of pests provides.
- Armisael16 6y ago
  I don’t understand why those would preferentially help low yield crops more than high yield crops. That would be very surprising to me.
  - yazaddaruvala 6y ago
    My thoughts: If a crop is easy to grow, that means it’s able to handle: 1. Variable sunlight conditions; 2. Variable water conditions; 3. Handle bugs, viruses; and 4. Variable climate conditions. Low yield crops are problematic because they cannot handle variability. Using an indoor facility is equally expensive if you program the conditions to be variable or to be relatively strict. Additionally, a low yield crop is typically more expensive than a high yield crop. As such, you would rather program the indoor facility’s conditions to be relatively strict and grow a typically low yield crop, get significantly better yield and compete on price.
    - Armisael16 6y ago
      > Low yield crops are problematic because they cannot handle variability. Is this generally the cause for their lower yields? I would assume they just aren’t genetically programmed to grow as much (useful stuff, at least).
      - yazaddaruvala 6y ago
        Oh, yeah, I'm sure that is also a problem. I don't think vertical farming can really help enough with that problem. Vertical farming can definitely help problems like: https://extension.umd.edu/hgic/topics/low-yields-undersized-fruits-vegetables https://extension.umd.edu/hgic/topics/low-yields-undersized-... And most specifically, for crops that are just plain picky: https://www.rliland.com/difficult-crops-grow/ https://www.rliland.com/difficult-crops-grow/

Why not corn? My understanding is that it’s one of the most efficient crops in calories/acre terms (which is presumably what you actually care about, not kg/acre).

yazaddaruvala 6y ago

My guess is that counterintuitively but unsurprisingly, you actually want to use crops that were previously inefficient to grow. Low yields per acre crops are more suitable to indoor vertical farming because of the benefit climate control, and lack of pests provides.

Armisael16 6y ago
I don’t understand why those would preferentially help low yield crops more than high yield crops. That would be very surprising to me.
- yazaddaruvala 6y ago
  My thoughts: If a crop is easy to grow, that means it’s able to handle: 1. Variable sunlight conditions; 2. Variable water conditions; 3. Handle bugs, viruses; and 4. Variable climate conditions. Low yield crops are problematic because they cannot handle variability. Using an indoor facility is equally expensive if you program the conditions to be variable or to be relatively strict. Additionally, a low yield crop is typically more expensive than a high yield crop. As such, you would rather program the indoor facility’s conditions to be relatively strict and grow a typically low yield crop, get significantly better yield and compete on price.
  - Armisael16 6y ago
    > Low yield crops are problematic because they cannot handle variability. Is this generally the cause for their lower yields? I would assume they just aren’t genetically programmed to grow as much (useful stuff, at least).
    - yazaddaruvala 6y ago
      Oh, yeah, I'm sure that is also a problem. I don't think vertical farming can really help enough with that problem. Vertical farming can definitely help problems like: https://extension.umd.edu/hgic/topics/low-yields-undersized-fruits-vegetables https://extension.umd.edu/hgic/topics/low-yields-undersized-... And most specifically, for crops that are just plain picky: https://www.rliland.com/difficult-crops-grow/ https://www.rliland.com/difficult-crops-grow/