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Sunlight is quite energetic (~1 kW per square meter) and free. Competing with it is an idea that has somehow managed to live longer than the few minutes it shou

Sunlight is quite energetic (~1 kW per square meter) and free. Competing with it is an idea that has somehow managed to live longer than the few minutes it should have taken to realize that. Completely idiotic.

John23832 2y ago
Indoor farming isn’t for “competition” with sunlight. The point is to give a controlled growing environment which reduces the need for open air pesticides, reduces contaminates, with the objective to yield.
- pxmpxm 2y ago
  That's usually called a greenhouse, and doesn't seem to be what Bowery was doing.
  - John23832 2y ago
    A greenhouse uses the sun. I never said that they were using a greenhouse. I described the purpose of their farming method.
trescenzi 2y ago
The pitch of indoor/vertical farming is to make for the extra cost of light by significantly reducing other (water/pesticide/fertilizer) costs and higher yields. The math is really hard to make work though like you’re saying.
mft_ 2y ago
(I’m not sure if there’s an established name for this but) What you’re doing isn’t just calling the concept idiotic, but assuming that a whole chain of people involved —presumably including domain specialists, financiers, banks, whoever— are also idiots. And assuming that you (who I assume have thought about this topic for about the two minutes it took to write your post, as otherwise you’d probably have declared the source of your wisdom) know better than all of those people. So you’re probably wrong. For clarity I’m not suggesting that the concept does make sense; but there are probably reasons to believe that it might make sense, if implemented properly.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  I can see entirely stupid ideas being build and getting some investment. Those who build it are happy to have a job even if product is questionable. And those doing funding have hopes they can extract value for themselves or flip it before it fails. There is enough people that are just happy getting paid or extracting their cut from some part of process... And then there is the dreamers, aka idiots who evangelise.
- nradov 2y ago
  Nah. Every ambitious indoor or vertical farming startup so far has failed, or is in the process of failing. Looks like @ahartmetz has it right and those "specialists" really were idiots. It's amazing that investors would put money into this space without seeing some evidence that costs could eventually be reduced with scale. Just another consequence of zero interest rates, I guess.
thebruce87m 2y ago
> Sunlight is quite energetic (~1 kW per square meter) Only 50% uptime on average (less if you count eclipses), with the duty cycle varying throughout the year. I’d have expected the producers of sunlight to have improved this by now!

John23832 2y ago

Indoor farming isn’t for “competition” with sunlight. The point is to give a controlled growing environment which reduces the need for open air pesticides, reduces contaminates, with the objective to yield.

pxmpxm 2y ago
That's usually called a greenhouse, and doesn't seem to be what Bowery was doing.
- John23832 2y ago
  A greenhouse uses the sun. I never said that they were using a greenhouse. I described the purpose of their farming method.

trescenzi 2y ago

The pitch of indoor/vertical farming is to make for the extra cost of light by significantly reducing other (water/pesticide/fertilizer) costs and higher yields. The math is really hard to make work though like you’re saying.

mft_ 2y ago

(I’m not sure if there’s an established name for this but) What you’re doing isn’t just calling the concept idiotic, but assuming that a whole chain of people involved —presumably including domain specialists, financiers, banks, whoever— are also idiots. And assuming that you (who I assume have thought about this topic for about the two minutes it took to write your post, as otherwise you’d probably have declared the source of your wisdom) know better than all of those people. So you’re probably wrong. For clarity I’m not suggesting that the concept does make sense; but there are probably reasons to believe that it might make sense, if implemented properly.

Ekaros 2y ago
I can see entirely stupid ideas being build and getting some investment. Those who build it are happy to have a job even if product is questionable. And those doing funding have hopes they can extract value for themselves or flip it before it fails. There is enough people that are just happy getting paid or extracting their cut from some part of process... And then there is the dreamers, aka idiots who evangelise.
nradov 2y ago
Nah. Every ambitious indoor or vertical farming startup so far has failed, or is in the process of failing. Looks like @ahartmetz has it right and those "specialists" really were idiots. It's amazing that investors would put money into this space without seeing some evidence that costs could eventually be reduced with scale. Just another consequence of zero interest rates, I guess.

thebruce87m 2y ago

> Sunlight is quite energetic (~1 kW per square meter) Only 50% uptime on average (less if you count eclipses), with the duty cycle varying throughout the year. I’d have expected the producers of sunlight to have improved this by now!