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I am extremely skeptical that this type of agriculture will ever make up significant portion of food produced. Pick a random spot in the middle of the US on goo
by seiferteric 12y ago
I am extremely skeptical that this type of agriculture will ever make up significant portion of food produced. Pick a random spot in the middle of the US on google maps and zoom in, it will most likely be agricultural fields. USDA says ~51% or 2.3 BILLION acres of land is used just in the US for Ag. Much of that relies on "free" resources like rain and sun shine to be economical. The cost of creating the infrastructure to replace even a tiny fraction of this land would be huge. Plus now you want to replace sunshine with artificial light? Where does this energy some from? Maybe there is some application for this in cities for fresh produce, but I don't see it for staple crops. The only reason it works for marijuana growers is due to the extremely high price they can sell their "crop" for.
- klibertp 12y agoThere are countries where land is more scarce than in the US where area efficiency is more important than water/light efficiency.
- seiferteric 12y agoYes and a lot of those countries import a lot of food from elsewhere because they cannot produce enough (or would be more expensive to do so). Japan for instance only produces ~39% of its own food on a calorie basis.