3 ms·

Maybe this works for a 1 week market where hydroponic can be competitive for some small % of supply but the hydroponic costs are like 10-500x the cost of tradi

by jdross 3y ago

Maybe this works for a 1 week market where hydroponic can be competitive for some small % of supply but the hydroponic costs are like 10-500x the cost of traditional modern farming of specialty crops (think lettuces, berries, leafy greens) and worse for row crops. Also the effectiveness of electrolysis of the soil also varies greatly based on CEC (cat-ion exchange capacity) — which is the water holding capacity of soil profile — which in the right range is what allows the increased microbial activity which is what increases the root uptake of nutrients.

fnordpiglet 3y ago
Does the economics improve with scale? A lot of things can easily improve costs by 10-500x when produced in extreme scales, which would be necessary to feed any meaningful percentage of the population. But it does seem hard to imagine beating soil growth for economics, unless climate change or some other environmental issue plays havoc. The obvious answer to my mind is feeding colonies. All elemental nutrients can be sourced out of the regolith, as well as glass and metals for building materials. Other nutrients can be densely shipped from earth. Electricity is plentiful. Soil is expensive to move to space.
- fullspectrumdev 3y ago
  The economics vary heavily location to location. In some areas, well designed hydroponics or aeroponics “cost less” due to density - if good lands expensive. If land with decent soil (and keeping the soil good) is inexpensive, traditional soil based farming is superior. Restoring or amending super overworked or “poor” soil is both expensive and time consuming. A lot of those interesting vertical farming startups fail miserably because they are outcompeted by relatively nearby, lower cost soil based production - the whole location part of the equation simply doesn’t work. There’s also fun questions about if you can reliably do hydro/aqua “organically” to appease the granola crowd, it turns out that soil has certain advantages if treated right such as having various fungi etc that help fight crop disease/pests etc.

by jdross 3y ago

fnordpiglet 3y ago

Does the economics improve with scale? A lot of things can easily improve costs by 10-500x when produced in extreme scales, which would be necessary to feed any meaningful percentage of the population. But it does seem hard to imagine beating soil growth for economics, unless climate change or some other environmental issue plays havoc. The obvious answer to my mind is feeding colonies. All elemental nutrients can be sourced out of the regolith, as well as glass and metals for building materials. Other nutrients can be densely shipped from earth. Electricity is plentiful. Soil is expensive to move to space.

fullspectrumdev 3y ago
The economics vary heavily location to location. In some areas, well designed hydroponics or aeroponics “cost less” due to density - if good lands expensive. If land with decent soil (and keeping the soil good) is inexpensive, traditional soil based farming is superior. Restoring or amending super overworked or “poor” soil is both expensive and time consuming. A lot of those interesting vertical farming startups fail miserably because they are outcompeted by relatively nearby, lower cost soil based production - the whole location part of the equation simply doesn’t work. There’s also fun questions about if you can reliably do hydro/aqua “organically” to appease the granola crowd, it turns out that soil has certain advantages if treated right such as having various fungi etc that help fight crop disease/pests etc.