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Organic and regenerative ag are built on the assumption that crops must be grown in open air soil. The reality is that crops can be grown in open air soil and,
by zachware 5y ago
Organic and regenerative ag are built on the assumption that crops must be grown in open air soil. The reality is that crops can be grown in open air soil and, if they are, regenerative ag in particular is significantly better for soil longevity.
That said it is not necessarily better to produce all crops in low density, high volatility, season dependent environments. Some material % of crops can move to more intelligent indoor settings where yields are higher, weather isn't a factor, and production yields can be scheduled without risk of weather impact. I'm actually a partner in one of these high volume operations in Montana (randomly). Uses less water, has zero soil impact, requires little to no chemical agents and is predictable.
What I hope will continue is crops that are capable of producing profitable and predictable yields in indoor environments will move more and more in that direction. This could serve to reduce soil stress and leave soil for crops that need more space (e.g. tubers) and livestock to aid in improving soil longevity.
Note this is not a plug for vertical farming. That's an entirely different mirage of financial engineering.
- jasonlaramburu 5y agoWhat criteria (crop type, geography, etc) are required for the benefits you outline of indoor ag to outweigh the energy cost of artificial lighting?
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago> What criteria (crop type, geography, etc) are required for the benefits you outline of indoor ag to outweigh the energy cost of artificial lighting? Massive amounts of government regulation that inflates the price. I.e. just weed so far.
- kickout 5y agoIt's mostly high margin vegetables and spices. Look up gotham greens for a successul and properly done indoor ag startup. Generally tomatoes and maybe peppers have enough margin and volume to be justify indoor settings. Things like nuts are a no-go or any sort of wheat/cotton/maize/soybean operation (even specialty applications like edamame have severe uphill battles to profitability)
- zachware 5y agoYou are 100% right on the grains.
- kickout 5y agoSweet, there is only approximately 300 million acres of cropland in the United States alone. Sun == free, rain == free How does indoor ag plan on scaling up for anything other than super high margin vegetables and spices when their competitor (outdoor ag) has no cost associated with sun or rain? Not even to mention soil. edit: I like indoor/vertical ag a lot (when applied correctly) When people try to propose producing things that have no chance of succeeding in our current Kardashev scale, it makes me think they are arguing in bad faith or with a fundamental lack of understanding of the problems faced in food production.
- devonbleak 5y agoBy providing predictability/consistency/efficiency. Yes you end up paying for things that are otherwise free, but those free versions are at the mercy of nature and nature isn't exactly getting more predictable/consistent. You can also create highly efficient watering systems where evaporation is nearly nonexistent and nutrients are easily distributed meaning you're making way better use of that water. And let's be honest - if you're working with 10" of rain per year you're not just relying on the free rain anyway. California's central valley is also a prime candidate for this sort of thing as they're pumping water out of the ground so fast it's sinking and the underground aquifers are getting destroyed meaning the groundwater can't replenish and they're unable to capture as much snowmelt. That's in addition to importing water from other regions that are on the brink of not being able to sustain those exports. Water's already expensive and about to get more expensive. And that's not even taking into consideration the higher density you can get indoors vs outdoors - the amount of land that is cleared for ag around the globe is staggering. Getting an order of magnitude more output from the same amount of land, but having to pay for water and light, is likely to make business sense and be better overall for the environment. Do the actual economics work out right this second? Maybe not. Will they in the not so distant future? I'd bet on it.
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- whatshisface 5y agoBad old farming: put plants in sun Good new farming: put solar panels in sun, connect lightbulbs to solar panels, put plants under lights. (Although it's not totally as daft as I make it sound, because it's theoretically possible to do frequency conversion in a way that makes all the energy of sunlight available to plants instead of everything but green.)
- shawn-butler 5y agoThat equation doesn’t balance out.
- whatshisface 5y agoThe physical limit to frequency conversion efficiency, whatever it is, is much higher than the efficiency of today's cost-effective solar panels plus cost-effective purple LEDs. So it may happen some day.
- lwb 5y agoInterested in links or books on this if you know any good ones. Don't you still have to use soil?
- Scoundreller 5y agoProbably hydroponics? Soil is adds more variables and can be a home to pests/microbes.
- pcmaffey 5y agoHydro grown plants are often more susceptible to pests and problems because they lack the natural fortifications provided by soil. Large scale living soil can still be done indoors though.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y agoCity boy here with no knowledge of farming. When you say "indoor" are you describing large greenhouses? Or growing crops using artificial light?
- zachware 5y agoI'm generally referring to float pond greenhouses though some variants are emerging that use artificial light in a vertical setting for the germination stage where loss rates are high and you can get extremely high density. The types of density you can't get in the overfunded vertical pipe dreams in VC. So that when you hit the float pond for a 12-16 grow cycle, there's marginal loss.
- samstave 5y ago>>*What I hope will continue is crops that are capable of producing profitable and predictable yields in indoor environments will move more and more in that direction. a* WTF - I hope ZERO of this happens... Don't attempt to think that youre smarter than ~5BILLION years of earths bio/eco balance until we were weaponized by fungi... We dont need "higher yields" -- we need more efficient consumption and distribution...
- azernik 5y agoPredictable yields at controllable times are how you get efficient consumption and distribution.
- daddylongstroke 5y agoI hope you realize that high yields are the problem, not the solution.
- prewett 5y agoWell, with low yields, financial viability is the problem. It's already difficult to make a living farming, unless maybe you're in an area with lots of rain or where you can mine groundwater.