A new vertical farm, with a footprint of less than an acre, can produce 1.8 million kg of fruit annually.
A new vertical farm, with a footprint of less than an acre, can produce 1.8 million kg of fruit annually.
Major steps towards better, sustainable and affordable food production free of environmental challenges have been taken, with the "world's first farm to grow indoor, vertically farmed berries at scale" opening in Richmond, VA. It's backed by an international team of scientists that see this new…
I really do want to like the idea of vertical farms, and hydroponics in general as there are lots of benefits versus wild growing, but whenever I see some article claiming sustainability or a reduction in climate impact, it's total bullshit.
All of these systems require massive amounts of nutrients to keep the plants alive and producing, and that essentially means all kinds of mining. The byproducts of these facilities are also toxic, and there is no regulation about how they have to manage that...yet. Essentially they are just taking the farm runoff problem and moving it from rural areas where it's already bad, and transplanting it to denser urban areas.
If they could find better ways to streamline the acquisition of the fertilizer components needed for these facilities, and also the treatment or or disposal of the byproduct, these would be a much better idea.
There's no reason it couldn't be a closed system, where any fertilizer that doesn't become part of the crop biomass is recycled.
Could be, but isn't, which is where some regulations probably need to come in. I'm familiar with the systems Plenty uses, and it's all automated.
Prime > start > feed > dump once dead
I've not seen another of these large scale startups doing anything different as of yet, which does make sense cost-wise. Any crop you grow won't ever use an exact amount of nutrients at cycle end with a completely neutral byproduct, and trying to reuse what is left would require a lot of expensive lab efforts which they don't care to invest in.
Example: say you start with a 9N-12P-34K solution, and after a month it degrades to 0-0-12. You can't just refill the nutrients with that same mixture you started with, or you'll damage or risk killing the crop with too much Potassium. You'd need to analyze the loop nutrients to know what level you're at for each nutrient, and adjust to get the mixture right to recharge properly. Currently all these systems just dump and recharge because it's cheap (for now) and easy, but these high concentrations of the various components just end up saturating an area the same as farm runoff. Even if you filter, that filtered medium needs to go somewhere.
There are fancier methods of nutrient filtration extraction and recapture just starting to become more feasible, and we should be looking at making sure these are being used for these large operations.
Runoff from a facility like this would be, in theory, easier to manage since it would be a concetrated source. A pipe of nutrient-rich water rather than a dozen contaminated streams and ponds. That also makes it feasible to recycle a lot of those nutrients, something that isn't practical in a field.
Where I am from, farmland is cheap because of restrictions that prevent development or building on the land to preserve the areas ability to produce food.
But this doesn't prevent the building of greenhouses, since it's considered agriculture.
This results in many hundreds of acres of perfectly fine agricultural land being dug up and covered in gravel and concrete to build greenhouses.
It would be the same for vertical farms I imagine.
That's fucked up. I can see it tolerated at very small scale, but if it goes above 10 acres in any state or small country, it's a bit more than I'm comfortable with.
you forgot to mention energy use. we have to simulate the sun and that aint cheap.
Well the power usage can vary depending on the setup. Some of these bigger facilities actually use sunlight, and there are other configurations that I've seen that plan to convert rooftops into growing spaces. The pump equipment takes quite a bit as well.
And just like that... berries became "woke". That's good, though. More for me!
To be fair anything that is:
“backed by an international team of scientists”
Requires:
“temperature, light and humidity controlled”
And:
“the culmination of 200 research trials”
Is probably a bit sensationalist.
With temperature, light and humidity controlled across 12 growing 'rooms,' pollination of plants has also been engineered to be more efficient than bees.
I need more details on this "more efficient than bees" claim. I grow a couple of hydroponic strawberry plants for fun, and every strawberry is a result of my swirling a toothbrush around a flower. I am having a hard time imagining scaling that up without bees.
Two words my friend: robot
beestoothbrushesOr they use bees but surgically attach toothbrushes to make them even more efficient.
Here is a great reply from the Low-Tech Magazin.
They’re great thoughts though I’d like to point out that most human made structures do no make use of the sun and so their complaint about having solar panels take up the same space is somewhat dubious.
The other comment I’d make is that they chose to highlight an experiment utilizing wheat. Mostly because we use a lot of it. However, humans could modify their diets to consume less wheat if we wanted to. There is nothing mandatory about consuming wheat and so we could focus on plants that need less light to grow.
I’d also like to note that the vertical farming stuff has very little innovation going on in the space because there is no demand for it at all currently. If there were demand, you may see alternative technologies taken up.
Alternative technologies like using mirrors to harvest the UV light and transport it without electrical costs and losses in reproducing it. Or mutating the plants in some ways. Or making better use of UV light by only targeting the leaves or such. Plenty could be done to innovate.
That all being said, I think vertical farming has absolutely no future. Mostly because the alternatives are so good. We could redo an entire farming setup. Or we could cut down on food waste. And cut down on meat consumption. And invest in lab grown meats. Lab grown meats that have a large potential to turn food waste into usable food. All of those are far better tech and this is a dead end concept I’m afraid.
Wheat is an amazing "invention" because it is so calorie dense compared to other crops, I would imagine (just guessing, no expertise in the area) that plants that grow with less sun don't get to be as calorie dense because they have lower input energy - and ultimately the conservation of mass/energy is a physical law.
Maybe I'm miles off with this guess - so don't take it as fact.
Great repy!
I don't get lab grown meat, though. It is still super expensive, after years and years of research. Plant based alternatives are on the marked for years and already frighteningly close to meat made from animal tissue. These plant protein alternatives are great for the planet, water soil, co2, pretty healthy and don't need stem cells or sterile labs to grow. To me, lab grown meat feels like an excuse for people to keep eating animal meat, because the real alternative is not there yet. But it is, just stop making excuses and adapt your accustomed taste a tiny bit.
I have bo frame of reference for this, is it a lot? is it little? I have no idea I know an acre is big but I also know a million is big.
We're talking 4 million pounds of produce. LOL, that's such a wild number it cannot be possible.
https://www.gardensofeden.org/04 Crop Yield Verification.htm
I was skeptical of what you just said but they are claiming a yield of approximately 250x the traditional yield per acre for strawberries. Even if I give them 10x for the vertical height and another 10x for automation they're still falling short. Just more scams.
The Richmond farm uses 97% less land
Sounds too good to be true. Does this account for land use of the electricity production system?
For every 10sqm saved in farm area, how many extra sqm does the energy production require?
I know it's possible to put solar on rooftop. But it's also possible to have a greenhouse on the rooftop or last floor of a building, and greenhouses need almost no energy in comparison.
Solar over normal farmland used for hand/robot-picked plants that like a certain amount of shade is also an option. I'm curious how many acres of solar you'd need to support one acre of this scale of vertical farming.
I don't see how vertical farming can make sense. There is only so much sunlight striking the ground and you just changed the angle and so shaded something else.
Artificial lighting exists.
Sure, but where does the energy for that light come from? If the answer is burning things (this is the most likely answer today!) then you are making the world worse. Renewable answers all go back to the sun so why not use the sun directly and avoid all the inefficiencies from turning the sun into electric and then back into light? Which leaves nuclear - which is dieing because of expense.
Let's assume the energy for lighting comes from solar. Panels are only 20% effective. Now your vertical farm needs 5x the space of a basic farm, and you still have to pay for power instead of using free sunlight. There is some video on YouTube from a salt lake city university professor who works for nasa on growing plants in space about this topic.
Vertical farming can make sense. Effectively you capture energy from places or sources unsuitable for farming, and focus it into a small area optimised for farming.
E.g. farming on the side of a building doesn't make sense. Covering the sides in solar panels however is fine. Wind can't grow crops directly. Wind powered grow lights can.
your intuition about insolation is correct, but plants are largely not sunlight limited, rather they are nutrient limited. a vertical farm increases soil density and is also an engineered greenhouse.also in this case the light is from grow lights, so can be powered by say, wind, or nuclear.
some plants are light energy limited but these are often not major crops.
And it's all growing the bland tasteless strawberries from Spain 🤢
For real though gimme good cheap strawberries, can't get enough of it