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>> all the fancy Startup babble does conveniently ignore that you lose access to thousands of dollars worth of free services provided by nature: irrigation, fer

by tivert 4y ago

>> all the fancy Startup babble does conveniently ignore that you lose access to thousands of dollars worth of free services provided by nature: irrigation, fertility, pest control, sun light for crying out loud. > By this reasoning, why would we need to do anything to grow food? Why not relax and enjoy nature's bounty? The GP got a couple things wrong (e.g. nature doesn't provide free pest control), but one thing very, very right: plants need lots and lots of sunlight that we can get for free with horizontal farming. Vertical farming throws all that away, and therefore is mostly nonsense. IIRC, all it can manage is low-calories crops like lettuce. You're not getting industrial-scale, vertically-farmed potatoes without a bunch of generators powering tons of floodlights.

Gordonjcp 4y ago
All over Scotland - which is kind of centred around 55°N, way further north than these guys with their vertical farms - potatoes grow like crazy. Some types do well in Ayrshire, some do well up here in Angus (yes, like Aberdeen-Angus cattle). Different types of soil work well for different plants. You'd need literally megawatts of power to provide the same amount of light. Where are you going to get that from? Solar panels...?
- vidarh 4y ago
  In Norway, Potatoes are grown as far north as the Northernmost region of Finnmark, around 70°N, and Norway is able to produce more potatoes than are eaten by people (Norway still imports potatoes because the growing season is short).
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  > Where are you going to get that from? Solar panels...? The usual answer is: nuclear power that is too cheap to meter. Still waiting for it…
AYBABTME 4y ago
It's mostly non-sense in North America. In places like Japan, Korea, it makes a ton of sense. High population density, with relatively little arable land.
- tfourb 4y ago
  Japan has about half the arable land per person as the Netherlands [1] but the Netherlands is the worlds #2 food exporter [2]. Japan could probably be more or less self-sustainable in terms of food production, if they made it a political priority, even without any fancy vertical farming. In fact, they already import less foodstuffs than German, at about 1.5 times the population [3] (to be fair, Germanys central position in the EU's free trade area makes importing food a cheap thing to do). [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.ARBL.HA.PC?locations=JP-NL https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.ARBL.HA.PC?locat... [2] https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0712/top-agricultural-producing-countries.aspx https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0712/top-agricul... [3] https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/foodstuffs https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/foodstuffs
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tfourb 4y ago
Functioning ecosystems do provide pest control, otherwise there would not be ecosystems at all, because some pest would just destroy the entire thing. There are very well established agricultural systems that use that principle and employ it to enable commercial farming without pesticides and herbicides while retaining high productivity. Search for syntropic agriculture and New Forest Farm (Mark Shepard).
- tivert 4y ago
  > Functioning ecosystems do provide pest control, otherwise there would not be ecosystems at all, because some pest would just destroy the entire thing. Yeah, but a natural ecosystem isn't agriculture, and the concept of a "pest" doesn't even make sense in one. Agriculture is engineering an unnatural surplus for human consumption, and keeping everything else from eating that surplus. "Pests" are non-human organisms that want to take advantage that unnatural surplus for themselves. > There are very well established agricultural systems that use that principle and employ it to enable commercial farming without pesticides and herbicides while retaining high productivity. Search for syntropic agriculture and New Forest Farm (Mark Shepard). That's kind of off topic, but I'm skeptical those have compatible productivity to typical commercial farming techniques. Either the "high productivity" is quite a bit less that the productivity for traditional farming, or it requires far more labor input than is practical for modern society.
  - tfourb 4y ago
    > Agriculture is engineering an unnatural surplus for human consumption, and keeping everything else from eating that surplus. If that is the case (and there were no other alternatives) the dominant form of agriculture (industrialized monoculture) is more or less tailor made to be attractive to pests and an enormous amount of energy and labour has to be employed to keep them out, much more than in the regenerative systems I've highlighted. > I'm skeptical those have compatible productivity to typical commercial farming techniques Way to be skeptical without even bothering to do a Google search. Mark Shepard claims (and has 20 years of data to back it up) that his system is of a comparable productivity in terms of human-usable calories to an industrialized corn operation. Syntropic agriculture was developed on a plot of land that was degraded by conventional agricultural methods to the point that it was given up and it now provides the basis for a commercially successful farm. Plenty of other examples around as well. > […] or it requires far more labor input than is practical for modern society. "Modern" societies employ between 0.5 and 3% of their workforce in agriculture [1]. If we'd tripple the share of agricultural workforce but in return drastically reduce the energy use and make farming a net carbon sink instead of a substantial contributor to global warming, I think it would be very much "practical". As things stand, we could pull the required labour simply from people doing tele-marketing and nothing of value would be lost ;-) [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS?locations=JP-DE-US-FR https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS?location...

by tivert 4y ago

Gordonjcp 4y ago

All over Scotland - which is kind of centred around 55°N, way further north than these guys with their vertical farms - potatoes grow like crazy. Some types do well in Ayrshire, some do well up here in Angus (yes, like Aberdeen-Angus cattle). Different types of soil work well for different plants. You'd need literally megawatts of power to provide the same amount of light. Where are you going to get that from? Solar panels...?

vidarh 4y ago
In Norway, Potatoes are grown as far north as the Northernmost region of Finnmark, around 70°N, and Norway is able to produce more potatoes than are eaten by people (Norway still imports potatoes because the growing season is short).
Scoundreller 4y ago
> Where are you going to get that from? Solar panels...? The usual answer is: nuclear power that is too cheap to meter. Still waiting for it…

AYBABTME 4y ago

It's mostly non-sense in North America. In places like Japan, Korea, it makes a ton of sense. High population density, with relatively little arable land.

tfourb 4y ago
Japan has about half the arable land per person as the Netherlands [1] but the Netherlands is the worlds #2 food exporter [2]. Japan could probably be more or less self-sustainable in terms of food production, if they made it a political priority, even without any fancy vertical farming. In fact, they already import less foodstuffs than German, at about 1.5 times the population [3] (to be fair, Germanys central position in the EU's free trade area makes importing food a cheap thing to do). [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.ARBL.HA.PC?locations=JP-NL https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.ARBL.HA.PC?locat... [2] https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0712/top-agricultural-producing-countries.aspx https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0712/top-agricul... [3] https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/foodstuffs https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/foodstuffs

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

tfourb 4y ago

Functioning ecosystems do provide pest control, otherwise there would not be ecosystems at all, because some pest would just destroy the entire thing. There are very well established agricultural systems that use that principle and employ it to enable commercial farming without pesticides and herbicides while retaining high productivity. Search for syntropic agriculture and New Forest Farm (Mark Shepard).

tivert 4y ago
> Functioning ecosystems do provide pest control, otherwise there would not be ecosystems at all, because some pest would just destroy the entire thing. Yeah, but a natural ecosystem isn't agriculture, and the concept of a "pest" doesn't even make sense in one. Agriculture is engineering an unnatural surplus for human consumption, and keeping everything else from eating that surplus. "Pests" are non-human organisms that want to take advantage that unnatural surplus for themselves. > There are very well established agricultural systems that use that principle and employ it to enable commercial farming without pesticides and herbicides while retaining high productivity. Search for syntropic agriculture and New Forest Farm (Mark Shepard). That's kind of off topic, but I'm skeptical those have compatible productivity to typical commercial farming techniques. Either the "high productivity" is quite a bit less that the productivity for traditional farming, or it requires far more labor input than is practical for modern society.
- tfourb 4y ago
  > Agriculture is engineering an unnatural surplus for human consumption, and keeping everything else from eating that surplus. If that is the case (and there were no other alternatives) the dominant form of agriculture (industrialized monoculture) is more or less tailor made to be attractive to pests and an enormous amount of energy and labour has to be employed to keep them out, much more than in the regenerative systems I've highlighted. > I'm skeptical those have compatible productivity to typical commercial farming techniques Way to be skeptical without even bothering to do a Google search. Mark Shepard claims (and has 20 years of data to back it up) that his system is of a comparable productivity in terms of human-usable calories to an industrialized corn operation. Syntropic agriculture was developed on a plot of land that was degraded by conventional agricultural methods to the point that it was given up and it now provides the basis for a commercially successful farm. Plenty of other examples around as well. > […] or it requires far more labor input than is practical for modern society. "Modern" societies employ between 0.5 and 3% of their workforce in agriculture [1]. If we'd tripple the share of agricultural workforce but in return drastically reduce the energy use and make farming a net carbon sink instead of a substantial contributor to global warming, I think it would be very much "practical". As things stand, we could pull the required labour simply from people doing tele-marketing and nothing of value would be lost ;-) [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS?locations=JP-DE-US-FR https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS?location...