[HN Gopher] Vertical farms grow veggies on site at restaurants a...
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Vertical farms grow veggies on site at restaurants and grocery
stores
Author : tolbish
Score : 139 points
Date : 2021-01-20 19:52 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newatlas.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newatlas.com)
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Glad there are a lot of people questioning the economic
| fundamentals of this stuff. The real problem is the agricultural
| policy which is doubling down unhealthy things. These technical
| gimmicks which are dubious as to whether they deliver real value
| to not help with that.
| kakoni wrote:
| So container size farms. Is there something smaller in this
| vertical farming space, household scale?
| gt565k wrote:
| Are there any startups that offer containers like that which
| allow people to drop it in their backyard and do some uban
| farming for themselves? I've been interested in permaculture and
| hope to start gardening once I get a house.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| These article talk about 'veggies' - but nearly all these
| vertical farms seem to be growing fairly low calorie/nutrient
| rich vegetables: leafy greens, herbs and some fruits etc.
|
| There's no root vegetables, grains which make up the cornerstone
| of our diets.
| samstave wrote:
| how can i architect my own vertical garden that "covers the
| ground" of the diet I am used to?
| pvaldes wrote:
| That depends on your diet and place.
| cstejerean wrote:
| I grew up having to grow pretty much everything we ate (by
| necessity as you couldn't buy anything in stores). And
| whatever we didn't grow ourselves we helped relatives or
| neighbors with and shared in harvest.
|
| I personally don't understand the appeal of going back to
| that. I'm so glad I can just buy whatever I want at the
| grocery store these days and don't need to spend all my free
| time on harvesting calories.
| three_seagrass wrote:
| Reminds me of my reaction to that one Robert Heinlein quote
| about how "Specialization is for insects." Sounds romantic
| but also exhausting, unnecessarily so.
| vkou wrote:
| Robert Heinlein's life and career was made possible by
| those incredibly focused 'insects'. It's a nice
| platitude, but in its strong form, it seems quite myopic,
| and more than a tad out-of-touch.
| ketamine__ wrote:
| Where was this?
| bserge wrote:
| It will never cover your whole diet, but it is a good way of
| growing some of it yourself. And that's not as time intensive
| as the other commenter says. If you use soil, have the lights
| on a timer and use auto-irrigation, it's pretty much hands
| free. A few weekends to set up, then months of marveling at
| how plant life works heh.
| vkou wrote:
| Step one is to quit your day job.
|
| Step two is to put in ~12 hours a day, 7 days a week of work
| into homesteading.
|
| Step three is to dip on your savings to buy farming
| equipment, consumable inputs, and groceries for the remaining
| half of your food that you won't be able to grow yourself.
|
| If you'd like to try before you buy, my parents' homestead up
| in Canada could always use another pair of hands. Money's a
| bit tight, but they can pay you with food and a couch to
| sleep on. You'll have to share the room with ~15-30 baby
| chicks, though. You'll quickly get used to the smell.
|
| I understand that this won't give you a vertical garden, but
| unlike a vertical garden, it _will_ go most of the way to
| meeting your daily caloric and nutritional needs.
| sethhochberg wrote:
| Grains and root vegetables are generally far easier to store
| and transport and keep from rotting than leafy greens, herbs,
| etc.
|
| I'm most interested in tech like this as a tool for minimizing
| food waste. Your lettuce won't wilt and rot while it is sitting
| on the shelf if it is still alive.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Keep in mind that lettuce must be collected at a specific
| time to be good. If you wait too much, it gets spoiled.
|
| In fact, it probably lasts for longer in a fridge than in
| fertile ground with sunlight.
| bserge wrote:
| The energy use of the LEDs for a live lettuce plant and a
| fridge is about the same (or even lower), so you could keep
| it fresh for a few weeks more in a small indoors farm I'd
| say.
| pvaldes wrote:
| You can also harvest the leaves and eating always fresh cut
| lettuce leaves one at a time, for several weeks
| jmartrican wrote:
| Once vertical farming can tackle rice, wheat, corn, and
| potatoes, then I will be more excited about it.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Vertical 'farming' would be revolutionary if we would accept
| its dark and real hidden nature. Food production is not the
| real goal here.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| We just need to get the price of energy down
| https://www.pnas.org/content/117/32/19131
| jfim wrote:
| I'd be quite the opposite, honestly. Cropland area in the US
| covers 367 million acres in the US [0]. Even assuming that
| vertical farming is 10x more land efficient, the amount of
| resources (steel, power, plastics, etc.) needed to convert 36
| million acres of land into vertical farms would have a
| staggering ecological impact.
|
| Just covering that area with a 22 gauge corrugated steel
| roof, without any supporting structure, would be about 1.35
| billion tons of steel [1], or about 75% of the entire world's
| steel production for a year.
|
| There are definitely products that would make sense to grow
| in vertical farms (eg. high value crops like tomatoes or bell
| peppers, which are already grown in hothouses in certain
| areas of the country), but staple crops tend to preserve for
| a long time, and wouldn't see as much of a benefit from
| vertical farming.
|
| [0] https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/main/national/t
| ech...
|
| [1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=36000000+acres+*+(9
| .28...
| bserge wrote:
| Yeah, tbf I'm not seeing this as viable for industrial
| level production. But it does seem like a good fit for
| individual farms, even in a personal backyard.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| > but nearly all these vertical farms seem to be growing fairly
| low calorie/nutrient rich vegetables
|
| Yup. Any article about this type of thing needs to include
| calorie math. How many calories can you grow per installation /
| sqft / acre / etc.
| chris_va wrote:
| Grains are staples because they provide a lot of calories.
|
| More calories means more photosynthesis, so more incident
| light. The marginal energy cost would thus be a lot higher. The
| cost for lettuce, however, is probably dominated by
| refrigeration/shipping/logistics. So, from a fundamental cost
| standpoint (unless you have very low cost energy), that's
| likely going to be a while.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| It's more simple than that even, grains are simply more
| portable and last longer. Those two properties are the major
| reasons they are the staples of our diets. There's little
| sense in growing and processing them on site at food
| distribution centers. Growing and storing them within a
| reasonable distance of food distribution facilities is
| sufficient for sustainable reliance on grains.
|
| I believe rice can be stored safely for years given the right
| conditions. There are no sustainable conditions under which
| leafy greens can be stored for as long as rice.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Leafy greens are the best for these in their current iteration,
| they can be grown in fairly shallow dirt or even none using
| aeroponics and grow pretty quickly so operators can get regular
| harvests.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| This is where e-farming can own its niche. Cut out all the
| agricultural overhead, grow what you need on demand _at the site
| of the demand_ , perhaps at a premium quality for a premium
| product. You can't get more 'local' than that!
| gtvwill wrote:
| Yeah your premium product in a greenhouse is missing the thing
| that makes veggies premium...which is terroir. Trust me you can
| grow great food, it'll just have the same terroir/character as
| anybody else on the same nute regime as you. Premium comes from
| the ground and it's also cheaper and easier to produce.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Premium can come from the variety. Most varieties are not
| available at any price - just the commodities?
|
| And suppose we find the nute program that makes them taste
| good. Then its a good thing they taste the same as everybody
| else - they taste good! That's the goal, not just some
| exclusive hipster cachet.
| hahla wrote:
| Has anyone looked into the viability of something like this from
| the restaurants perspective (costs aside)? I would image a busy
| restaurant would need more than 90kg/200lbs of produce each
| month?
| waiseristy wrote:
| A busy restaurant could consume 200lbs of produce in a day!
| offby37years wrote:
| You'd need an entire farm.
| nipponese wrote:
| No mention of power consumption...
| [deleted]
| three_seagrass wrote:
| They're using LED right? Shouldn't be that bad
| Xcelerate wrote:
| People like to criticize efforts like these, but have you tasted
| the produce? When I was in the Bay Area, I frequently bought the
| greens by Plenty, and I thought they tasted fantastic. When
| family came to visit, they asked where I found such a great
| tasting mizuna mix.
|
| I don't know if these farms will replace traditional ones, but I
| think there's at the very least a niche for optimizing produce
| with tons of flavor.
| scsilver wrote:
| Just watched an interview with someone from Appharvest, a
| vertical farm company. One of the most interesting advantages
| of these grow operations is that they can develop seeds for
| taste and nutrients, rather than for transport or pest
| resistance. The billions in research that have gone into
| developing resistant and durable produce can be channeled into
| developing the best tasting and looking products.
|
| As we see a hugely growing demand for quality in food options
| by the middle and upper classes, the product offering the best
| taste will have a large leg up on the cheap mass produced
| produce.
|
| This demand is not limited to individual consumers, restaurants
| and chefs, who already seek quality ingredients by sourcing
| from local trusted growers, will likely put additional demand
| on these low/no pesticide, and taste optimized produce.
|
| I cant wait to taste the best tomatoes of my life.
|
| Im lucky enough to have traveled to places like Bali and Italy,
| where the local produce is unconstrained by bean counting hyper
| optimization. It tastes better and quality of life is better
| because of it.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| I'm interested in seeing if there are benefits to nutrient-
| dense and microbiome-boosting vegetables from these types of
| grow operations. So much has been sacrificed upon the goal of
| transport-sturdy vegetables, I have to wonder if taste was not
| the only factor we lost over the decades.
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| Taste aside, what was the cost of produce?
|
| Other articles I have seen that actually included price [1]
| showed that the vertical farming produce was 3x the price of
| what you could get at Whole Foods. And that is for organic
| presumably high quality produce. Cost compared to Walmart was
| something like 10x as much.
|
| https://www.eater.com/2018/7/3/17531192/vertical-farming-agr...
| aphextron wrote:
| I think you've nailed what this is. Much like the "robot burger
| chain" and other such ventures, it's another niche novelty for
| the rich.
| baxtr wrote:
| Didn't literally anything common nowadays start out exactly
| like this?
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| The thing is, burgers are the same everywhere. Minimal wage
| isn't.
|
| So once there's a robot that can cook burger in SF and break
| even, it works pretty much everywhere else where the minimum
| wage is greater or equal. Just take a look at Miso robotics.
| wavefunction wrote:
| I find myself patronizing the fast-food locations that
| offer food prepared from fresh potatoes sliced every
| morning and grass-fed beef that apparently pay their
| workers a decent wage while costing about the same as the
| places that don't. The difference I suppose is that the
| local chains are not satisfying profit motives of stock
| speculators.
| bluGill wrote:
| Once the robot exists you can duplicate it cheaper. Once it
| works in SF with high wages it works in Montana with low
| wages. It may eventually not work out in poorer countries.
| wernercd wrote:
| What's available to the rich today becomes available to all
| tomorrow. Cars, TVs, Cell phones...
| adamnemecek wrote:
| I mean so is all new tech. Over time the price will go down
| and be affordable by more people.
| stretchcat wrote:
| Why would the price of food from a 'vertical farm'
| (shipping container in a parking lot) go down relative to
| the price food from regular farms? Even if it made sense to
| grow using LEDs instead of direct sunlight, that could be
| done on rural land instead of urban parking lots. I don't
| think you'll ever get enough food grown in shipping
| containers in urban parking lots to be anything other than
| a curiosity for the wealthy.
|
| These things are small by _garden_ standards, let alone
| farm standards. How many people could one of these shipping
| containers keep fed? How many shipping containers would you
| need to feed a city of a million people?
| Funes- wrote:
| >How many shipping containers would you need to feed a
| city of a million people?
|
| I guess the aspiration for the people behind this kind of
| vertical farming companies is to have as many containers
| out there as possible. It seems like proximity of supply
| is one of their main purported selling points. It makes
| sense from their standpoint.
| airstrike wrote:
| Shipping costs virtually zero
| stretchcat wrote:
| A single truck can ship more food in one trip than one of
| these containers could produce in a year.
| pydry wrote:
| The same way any new tech goes down in price -
| commoditization, automation and economies of scale.
|
| It's unlikely they'll feed a million people all the food
| they'll need but it's likely they could feed a million
| people all of the leafy greens they need.
| stretchcat wrote:
| _" commoditization, automation and economies of scale."_
|
| Traditional farms have the clear and overwhelming
| advantage in all three of these. And they aren't standing
| still either, they benefit from the advance of technology
| too.
| monadic3 wrote:
| In this case it seems directly proportional to the cost of
| energy, barring a solution where you use passive ways (like
| mirrors) to redirect light into the building.
| busterarm wrote:
| The sun delivers several orders of magnitude more energy
| and is free...
| monadic3 wrote:
| Not inside it doesn't. This understanding is quite clear
| in my comment. Greenhouses can only grow so far
| vertically without increasing energy costs.
| blackearl wrote:
| Most of the examples in the articles are grocery stores. The
| one restaurant mentioned looks like a burger joint, an
| upscale one, but a burger joint nonetheless. The gap between
| a whole foods vs a stop n shop is not that large, certainly
| nothing like the gap between a mcdonalds and a black tie
| restaurant.
|
| If this reduces our carbon footprint and gives us fresher
| food as a bonus I'm all for it.
| ameister14 wrote:
| Yes, you nailed it - White Castle is a niche novelty for the
| rich.
| neartheplain wrote:
| Whoah, I hadn't heard of White Castle's kitchen-bot. Pretty
| cool.
|
| Initial trials went well, now they're rolling it out to 10
| more locations:
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/white-castle-adds-more-
| flipp...
| stretchcat wrote:
| Factory produced white castle burgers have been in
| supermarket freezers for years (and aren't much worse
| than the 'fresh' ones, which are themselves firmly in the
| realm of junk food.) Machines making food is nothing new,
| but it seems a lot of people are keen on 'inventing' it.
| Remember the pizza company that wanted to use robots to
| make delivery pizzas? And the results were worse than
| frozen Red Baron pizzas that have been around since the
| 70s.
| ameister14 wrote:
| There's a pretty significant difference between robot
| made to order and robot made to freeze.
|
| As you said, the latter has been around for a long time.
| That doesn't make the former any less of an achievement.
| This is robotics directly replacing employees in store.
| stretchcat wrote:
| There really isn't much difference, the quality of a
| frozen white castle burger is about the same as fresh
| made by humans, and I doubt fresh made by robots would be
| much better. All three are going to be pretty crap.
|
| The robot pizza company in particular was a joke. Viewed
| with a critical eye, the whole thing was technophiles
| blinded to obvious reality by their love for high tech
| gadgetry. Why else would you use a sophisticated robotic
| arm to transfer a pizza from one machine to another when
| a simple conveyor belt can do the job faster and need
| less space to do it?
|
| White Castle is doubtlessly being smarter about it, but
| I'm pretty sure you could replace their restaurant
| employees with a microwave oven. BTW, automated
| restaurants are not new; look up 'automat'. If you're
| retrofitting a kitchen designed for humans, systems like
| what White Castle is experimenting with might make sense,
| but if you were to design an automatic kitchen from the
| ground up, I think it makes little sense.
| mediaman wrote:
| In California, yes, because they are grown naturally there,
| and growing in a vertical farm seems kind of pointless,
| except as novelty.
|
| But on the East Coast, vertical farms can serve a useful
| economic purpose for some crops which would otherwise be
| trucked in from the Salinas Valley.
| busterarm wrote:
| The transportation costs of produce have been demonstrated
| to be negligible.
|
| Imported produce is typically aggressively price-
| competitive with the local stuff.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| Not negligible in terms of pollution
| busterarm wrote:
| Do you think that LED grow systems and the
| nutrients/chemicals being used to help grow these plants
| are pollution-free?
| alpha_squared wrote:
| Could that be because we don't yet have a carbon offset
| cost for transportation? I recognize that the actual cost
| would be controversial and mostly subjective, but I
| always wonder about how many things are 'free' or nearly
| just because there are otherwise hidden costs elsewhere
| (such as the environment).
| busterarm wrote:
| This math has already been done.
|
| Even if you figured the carbon offset cost, transporting
| agriculture still beats out all of these alternatives by
| a lot.
|
| The math is only becomes slightly favorable to the subset
| of plants with high water content and lower sunlight
| tolerance. You can grow tomatos at nearly break-even. A
| diverse set of agriculture that can sustain people with
| balanced diets? Not a chance.
| epistasis wrote:
| That trucking process means getting produce optimized for
| transport, rather than produce optimized for flavor. The
| costs are not only in dollars, but in quality.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| no, they are optimised for mass production. Not shipping.
|
| Shipping isn't that damaging to plants, compared to a
| 55mph wind.
| epistasis wrote:
| Decay time is a huge factor in selective breeding, and
| also in the harvest time of produce shipped across the
| country versus used locally.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Agreed and this has been proven already in greenhouse
| farming. There are many greenhouse farmers that grow
| crops that would otherwise be impossible to grow in their
| zone. One example is a orange tree grower in a very cold
| zone that can sell oranges to his local community at a
| tiny fraction of what it costs to ship oranges from
| California. He still makes a profit and the produce is
| fresh.
|
| Here is a small scale example [1] but I can't fault this
| guy for keeping it small given his advanced age. I hope I
| have that much energy when I am older.
|
| [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD_3_gsgsnk
| flukus wrote:
| There are some remarkably low tech ways to grow citrus in
| cold climates:
| https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/04/fruit-trenches-
| culti...
| busterarm wrote:
| You're telling me that produce grown in its optimal
| environmental conditions and flash-frozen at harvest is
| going to taste worse than something grown in a truck in a
| parkinglot in Brooklyn?
|
| I call bullshit. It's pretty much universally agreed that
| frozen fruit is fresher and often tastes better, for
| example.
|
| Flavor is more about varieties being selected for mass
| production rather than their growing method and
| transportation. You can transport heirloom tomatoes.
| Nothing stopping you.
| 1helloworld1 wrote:
| I don't think you can flash freeze leafy greens and still
| maintain the texture. Have you eaten flash frozen lettuce
| for salad?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Unquestionably worse. Recognize that "taste" is some
| mixture of flavor and texture.
|
| I challenge you to slice a thawed tomato the way you
| would a vine fresh one and tell me there isn't a
| difference. Same goes for most leafy greens and fruits.
|
| Delicate cellular structures of high water content
| vegetables are completely obliterated when frozen and
| then thawed or otherwise processed.
| busterarm wrote:
| Hydroponically grown vegetables don't typically taste
| good either. (Common complaints being: bland, weak,
| "oily", boring). That's the reason why this operation in
| the article is using soil in their growbeds. It's the
| only way to get plants that are worth selling.
| deedub wrote:
| Maybe a little different compared to the Bay area, but I live
| outside Jackson, Wyoming. It's currently about 16F outside and
| there is 12" of snow on the ground. We have access to fresh
| locally grown tomatoes, lettuce, and other things like that
| year round. https://verticalharvestfarms.com/ Just as you
| mention, it is high quality and tastes great!
|
| Also, it isn't trucked in from Salinas Valley CA which is 1,000
| miles away.
| busterarm wrote:
| https://extension.umn.edu/growing-systems/deep-winter-
| greenh...
| tyingq wrote:
| I'm not exactly critical of vertical farming, but I've noticed
| that the stories always seem to gloss over what works well and
| what doesn't. Plenty(tm), for example, does arugula and kale,
| but their stories say "veggies" in a way that leads you to
| believe it's working for a much broader set of "veggies".
|
| Verticalfield, featured in this story, has pictures of
| tomatoes, and mentions mushrooms and strawberries. But on their
| website, the FAQ says " _" Vertical Field can grow up to 200
| varieties of crops, such as leafy greens, herbs, and
| lettuces"_. Again, arugula, kale, some herbs, etc.
| jariel wrote:
| It's definitely 'real lettuce' this is not a 'lettuce
| substitute' so I'm doubtful that the skepticism is around
| 'taste', and I seriously doubt anyone would be able to tell the
| difference by tasting anyhow.
|
| I think the 'doubt' is around economics, and possibly the
| nutritional value.
|
| I can see a lot of people putting these things in their
| basements.
|
| I mean, we call could just put actual gardens in our backyards,
| but that might not be 'trendy' enough ...
| ramphastidae wrote:
| It's about practicality, not trendiness. I don't have a
| backyard or basement. Even if I did have a backyard, the
| climate is such that sunlight or predictable weather is not
| guaranteed. Even if it was, there is no guarantee of safety
| from wild animals, pests, and soil contamination. The list
| goes on ...
| jariel wrote:
| 'Practical' would to buy it from a 'farmer'.
|
| The entire premise of this is 'hipster tech' - or - a very
| long term vision and investment towards making something
| like actually practical at some scale, which may or may not
| ever happen.
| bsder wrote:
| > 'Practical' would to buy it from a 'farmer'.
|
| And if the nearest one is 400 miles away? Then my produce
| is _STILL_ optimized for transport and storage over taste
| and freshness.
|
| > The entire premise of this is 'hipster tech'
|
| I agree. It annoys me when they tout this as "volume" or
| "scale". However, you can't get VC funding unless you
| promise that so that's the price of your marketing.
| Shrug.
|
| Nevertheless, I do hope one of these catches on somehow.
| Several of my favorite restaurants had their own gardens.
| However, they are limited by the weather and season to
| certain crops.
|
| If someone can slap a steel container down and use these
| technologies to grow out of area/out of season vegetables
| and fruits I'm all for it. It would also have the side
| benefit of breaking up some of the gigantic monocultures
| we currently have in agriculture.
| ksdale wrote:
| A great many people cannot, in fact, put actual gardens in
| their backyards, due to space, or weather, or animals or
| insects, or lack of sunlight.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Anyone know what the nutrient content is compared to 'grown in
| the ground'? I know veg used to have a lot more before industrial
| farming.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Local food that cuts transport end storage costs is the future.
| Vertical farms will replace most of what we grow in large fields.
| Almost all of large factory sized farms ..at least in Ca..goes to
| feed the rest of the country.
|
| As hydroponics and roof top gardens and vertical farms and
| warehouse farms and shipping container farms become the norm in
| places where they have winter and have now hacked it with no need
| for California produce...California itself have to rethink its Ag
| policies. And work towards growing our own and sustainably. And
| locally. Automating and mechanizing a lot of it because Ag labour
| is going to dry up soon. Not to mention water.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Thats just lettiuice and similar leafy based products.
|
| If you want a whole meal then you'll need to do what de kas did
| in holland: https://restaurantdekas.com/
|
| And its totally tasty.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| So, the plants are grown purely on LED light? What's the
| electricity cost per kg produce?
| opwieurposiu wrote:
| Plastic boxes of fancy salad mix cost about $32/kilo at my
| grocery store. At 15c per kwh that puts a limit of 213 kwh/kg
| to break even.
| criley2 wrote:
| Here's an interesting angle:
|
| What's the energy/kg to produce on site versus the energy/kg to
| grow a thousand miles away, transport and store, transport and
| store, transport to final destination?
| handmodel wrote:
| It's hard to imagine it is that much.
|
| If I can buy a banana at my grocery store for 18 cents then
| the amount of oil/energy it took to produce that has to be
| less than 18 cents. Any fruit/veggie can be shipped at great
| distances at very marginal price cost/energy costs
| busterarm wrote:
| You also have to add to the on-site the cost of not using
| that space for something else.
| tonyhb wrote:
| In that case, lets add the environmental and biodiversity
| costs of farmland.
| stretchcat wrote:
| A cost worth paying, because the only alternative is
| billions of people starving. Whereas if vertical farms
| disappeared, yuppies would suffer from eating slightly
| less fresh lettuce but life would otherwise go on.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Farmland is good for more than one crop. If the lettuce
| is all grown vertically, most of the farmland won't go
| back to "nature", it'll be used for slightly less
| profitable crops.
| busterarm wrote:
| Not at all. The farmland is highly unlikely to be used
| for any other purpose.
|
| We're trying to make an apples-to-apples comparison here,
| not moral judgments.
| TT3351 wrote:
| Removing native flora and fauna and replacing it with
| domesticated varieties has a clear impact on the
| environment
| busterarm wrote:
| What was the environmental impact of replacing whatever
| was in these urban environements with concrete, steel and
| asphalt?
|
| Literally just looking at the economics here, I'll say
| again.
| TT3351 wrote:
| Of course that has an impact too; I hope you do realize
| the exploitation of and the health of the environment is
| actually very closely intertwined with the economy. There
| is fundamentally no way to "literally just look[] at the
| economics." All land use has an impact.
| criley2 wrote:
| Un-used land serves a purpose for biodiversity and
| maintaining ecosystems and plays a role in the climate.
|
| Deforestation for farmland has major implications here.
|
| If you want to make and apples-to-apples comparison, you
| have to consider what turning a thousand square miles of
| forest into farmland does versus stacking these
| containers up.
|
| This solution also claims to use 10X less water, so we
| can start to factor in energy use related to water
| production as well.
| busterarm wrote:
| See my other reply about replacing whatever was in these
| urban environments before with concrete, steel and
| asphalt.
| AlanSE wrote:
| I'm very excited about this. This isn't going to replace farms
| anytime soon, but there's a pretty solid economic niche for it
| within the food choices that customer preference justifies today.
|
| The best argument for this method of food production is by
| looking at criticism of existing food production.
|
| https://www.consumerreports.org/pesticides-in-food/stop-eati...
|
| Reading stuff like this is truly, deeply, depressing. In our
| modern lives, we are supposed to eat lots of vegetables (which we
| don't), but we're also supposed be picky about which ones we get.
| Just the thought of that is exhausting.
|
| Also lookup salmonella outbreaks. How, you might ask, does
| salmonella get into lettuce? You will probably be grossed out to
| hear the answer.
|
| Vertical farms offer consumers several things which are almost
| impossible to come by otherwise. This is extraordinarily good to
| have for market entry.
|
| Higher energy use is a strike, but you have to consider the whole
| picture. I definitely think there's a place for this, the
| benefits that offset higher energy intensity are very
| substantive.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| There has only been one instance when spinach was contaminated
| with e.coli. Two things: Americans like to eat their greens
| raw. Which is weird to most of the rest of the world. At least
| 3 billion people think that it's nuts. 2. In that particular
| instance, it was traced back to a pig that got lost and likely
| contaminated due to some animal that died during mechanical
| harvest. Greens get contaminated because of contaminated water
| too.
|
| It's very simple. Wash your vegetables. Wash your hands while
| cooking. Cook your greens and vegetables.
|
| It's not rocket science.
| [deleted]
| stretchcat wrote:
| > _Also lookup salmonella outbreaks. How, you might ask, does
| salmonella get into lettuce? You will probably be grossed out
| to hear the answer._
|
| Spoiler: field workers who don't get bathroom breaks.
|
| I think a lot of people don't understand that farming is messy
| work. After highschool I worked at a bean processing plant
| where my job was to pick dead small animals (usually rodents,
| snakes, and frogs) out of the beans as they sped by on a
| conveyor belt. The machines needed to harvest the massive
| quantities of food our civilization requires do not
| discriminate between beans and the animals living in bean
| fields. But here is the thing; almost nobody gets sick from
| this. Wash your produce. Raccoons do it, and so should you. If
| you do, you'll almost certainly be fine just like nearly
| everybody else. It's gross, but it's not really a problem.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Salmonella is different. It can get into the plant. Stomata
| can absorb pathogens. Likely contaminated irrigation water.
| stretchcat wrote:
| Either way, you're not exactly dicing with death when you
| eat some lettuce. Sometimes there are outbreaks, but the
| CDC says about 420 die per year from salmonella, with 26k
| hospitalizations. That's virtually nothing when you
| consider how many people eat lettuce every day.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| That's not how food security regulations work. We don't
| play games with people's lives.
|
| Lettuce has to be hydro cooled right after harvest..45
| minutes after harvest. In Salinas etc, it's done right on
| the field. It never gets out of refrigeration until
| customer buys it from store. There is enormous food
| wastage. Almost 40% of harvest is wasted even with top
| notch cold supply chain systems.
|
| When the public doesn't trust the food they are playing
| dice with every mouthful of food. That's just not
| acceptable.
|
| The risk from the farmers side is entirely different from
| how you consider food risks.
| stretchcat wrote:
| > _When the public doesn't trust the food they are
| playing dice with every mouthful of food. That's just not
| acceptable._
|
| The public _do_ trust lettuce. The current systems work
| well and billions of people trust their lives to it, with
| good results. Exceptionally few people are afraid of
| eating regular store bought lettuce.
|
| Nobody is talking about _" playing games"_ so I have no
| idea what you're on about there. I never suggested that
| food production be deregulated, that would be insanity.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| I once tried to convince the folks at store no:8 ...Walmart's
| incubator and start up division to do this for all their stores.
|
| I crunched the numbers and Walmart is the ONLY one that can pull
| it off profitably.
|
| Amazon warehouses are far behind, but it's possible.
|
| At Walmart store no:8, they engaged me for 3-4 emails and then
| ghosted me entirely.
|
| But even if someone there were to reconsider my proposal and take
| it off on their own, I think it still holds promise.
|
| Anyone can grow locally and minimize their foot print. Only
| Walmart can generate profits. I said it two something years ago
| and I still stand behind my analysis even though in the time in
| between Amazon has expanded, bought Whole Foods and now have
| warehouses.
|
| Amazon will get there someday..but if I were a betting person,
| I'd bet on Walmart. Despite the scorn they invite, they have the
| best supply chain experts and logistics solutions.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| > Controlled-environment agriculture systems such as hydroponics
| operations can be much more efficient,
|
| More efficient than flying it in maybe, but not more efficient
| than growing it in the garden using sunlight
| busterarm wrote:
| I always love seeing these examples where peoples' hopes and
| dreams easily overcome their ability to perform basic math.
|
| There is simply no beating the energy output of the sun for
| agriculture purposes.
|
| These systems are certainly worth study, but as a commercial
| operation it's basically snake oil.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Certainly for commodities at scale, no beating the
| agricultural infrastructure.
|
| But for a premium produce for a premium product, it can pay.
| You may not even be able to get from a grocery store, what
| you can grow for your own needs.
| AlanSE wrote:
| Companies are already selling LED growing units for inside
| the home for food (like aero-garden). The interest is
| there, what's missing is for it to make significant inroads
| into the grocery/restaurant food chain.
| busterarm wrote:
| Yes, but you can also grow that premium produce with
| traditional agriculture at a lower cost than these
| alternatives.
|
| It's just that most big farms want the most cost-effective
| use of their land.
|
| There's an argument that this process facilitates some
| market for people to pay a premium for produce grown
| inefficiently, but people also pay a premium for their
| local farmers markets to grow exotic stuff too. Traditional
| agriculture still wins, all things being equal.
|
| I dabbled in Aquaponics for 10+ years.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Most restaurants don't have a farm. And land costs are
| quite high right now - out here in Iowa it averages $7500
| per acre. Most of it not for sale anyway.
| Planting/harvesting machines can be half a million.
|
| The flexibility of e-ag may yet have a place. Weather,
| season, rain don't have to matter.
| kevinmgranger wrote:
| I hate unqualified "efficient". They really ought to say in
| terms of what.
|
| Hydroponic vertical growing is more water and ground-space
| efficient though, isn't it?
| gnicholas wrote:
| I'm interested in this sort of thing because I recently saw a
| Prop 65 warning on organic spinach purchased from Whole Foods.
| Apparently there are high levels of cadmium in soil that gets
| picked up by spinach. [1]
|
| I have no idea how bad cadmium is, or how much of it is in
| spinach. But it's a real bummer to learn that a food that I
| thought of as very, very healthy (organic spinach) has a downside
| like this. Growing it in containers would be one way to get
| around soil issues like these, which are unfortunately becoming
| more common (see arsenic in rice).
|
| 1: https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/proposition-65-notices-
| of-...
| grillvogel wrote:
| do people actually take prop 65 warnings seriously?
| bserge wrote:
| The advances in LED lighting over the past 10 years is nothing
| short of amazing. Used to be you needed heavy, big and _hot_
| multi-killowat HPS lamp installations for the best indoor
| farming, but not anymore!
|
| I set up a small experimental indoors farm myself, and I used
| cheap LED lamps you can get anywhere, three different
| temperatures, interspersed on a custom frame above the plants.
|
| I realized I know nothing about soil, because it turns out
| there's more to it than just dumping it in a pot. Soil
| composition and density are really important, moreso than the pH
| (that a lot of people focus on) in my experience. I would've
| definitely fucked up with a hydroponic setup that I first
| considered. Soil is much better and we really don't appreciate it
| as much as we should. It's literally the source of life.
|
| These plants needed more root aeration, the first batch was
| terribly small, but still pretty good. Second batch was much
| better thanks to a custom soil/pebbles setup (soil in the center,
| pebbles around the _fabric_ pot), then I realized the lumen
| output needed to be much higher for perfect results. I wanted to
| try some COB LEDs, which output more lumen, but I could not find
| any (and importing would take too long and cost way too much),
| plus I really wanted to see what simple SMD LEDs could do.
|
| So I trashed the whole thing in favor of custom Tipi style tents
| for individual plants with the LED lamps spread all around and
| above. Not the most efficient use of space, but it turned out to
| be the best for growth.
|
| ~2 months from seed to harvest, electricity cost was laughably
| low (~$20 _total_ per plant) and heat generation was practically
| non-existent. I also had plants outdoors, tbh the sun-grown
| tomatoes tasted better, but the other greens were just as good
| grown indoors.
|
| Still not sure if LED production is environmentally friendly or
| sustainable, but it sure is revolutionary.
| oneplane wrote:
| Why is this title using the parent-to-kids term 'veggies', is
| vegetables outdated or something?
| jennerGg wrote:
| It's coming home! www.greenloop.io
| srockets wrote:
| A model of farming is capturing the sun's energy in the grown
| produce. This is why farming takes so much land: to get more of
| the sun.
|
| Growing in warehouses or vertically forces you to substitute the
| sun with artificial lights: even if those are powered by the sun,
| there's a huge loss of energy in the system, hence increased
| cost.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Converting a field into a solar farm so that you can power
| artificial lights to grow plants is indeed not exactly ideal...
|
| But there are also energy and cost savings because you can
| remove most of the transport, which at the moment involves ICE
| vehicles, and the energy does not have to come from solar
| sources (just within renewables there are other options).
|
| Longer term we can also imagine artificial lights powered by
| fusion power, which would probably be the best option in term
| of space saving and environmental impact.
| robocat wrote:
| In theory a solar cell could also absorb wavelengths that
| plants can't/don't use (infrared, green, ultraviolet) and
| emit the ideal spectrum for chlorophyll a/b to absorb. If the
| efficiency could be [radically] improved then more could be
| grown per unit area of solar cells than could be under the
| sun when naturally farmed.
|
| http://hyperphysics.phy-
| astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Biology/ligabs.ht...
|
| Edit: note the reason that most plants are green is because
| their growth is not limited by the amount of sunlight
| converted, so they can afford to throw away some efficiency
| e.g. they might be limited by water or mineral availability.
| Quote from same site: "Some plants and plantlike organisms
| have developed other pigments to compensate for low light or
| poor use of light. Cyanobacteria and red algae have
| phycocyanin and allophycocyanin as accessory pigments to
| absorbe orange light. They also have a red pigment called
| phycoerythrin that absorbs green light and extends the range
| of photosynthesis. The red pigment lycopene is found in
| vegetables. Some red algae are in fact nearly black, so that
| increases their photosynthetic efficiency. Brown algae have
| the pigment fucoxanthin in addition to chlorophyll to widen
| their absorption range. These red and brown algae grow to
| depths around 270 meters where the light is less than 1% of
| surface light."
|
| Edit 2: plant photosynthetic efficiency in capturing CO2 as
| sugars: "the theoretical efficiency is 114/381 or 30%.
| Remarkably, Moore, et al. report that 25% has been achieved
| under laboratory conditions. The top efficiency they reported
| under natural growing conditions was the winter-evening
| primrose growing in Death Valley at 8%"
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Are you sure? Growing produce remotely has additional inherent
| costs that don't exist in vertical farms, such as wasted water,
| the need for very heavy machinery, the issue of transporting
| and transporting within certain timeframes. The last 2 problems
| include the cost of oil/gasoline, and the maintenance of a
| whole array of systems, from oil extraction pipelines to road
| maintenance.
|
| This, to me, sounds like vertical farms in the grand scheme
| could be more efficient.
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| A relevant previous submission to HN:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25554941
|
| The article linked presented the the efficiency of vertical
| farming in terms of produce/area. But as was pointed out in
| some of the comments on that article the cost of the greens
| grown on vertical farms was in the range of $15/pound [1].
| Which is about 3x the price of organic greens at Whole Foods,
| or 10x the price of what you would find at Walmart.
|
| [1] https://www.eater.com/2018/7/3/17531192/vertical-farming-
| agr...
| gtvwill wrote:
| Go set up a artificial growth environment and try run it for
| a cycle longer than a month. It takes huge amounts of
| resources to maintain that environment. And no it's not
| chemical free. Also yes water is used and wasted. If you
| ain't doing bulk washing your applying huge amounts of
| product to keep algae blooms out of your systems. Try run
| that environment for a year. I give it 2-3 month before your
| first insect/pest bloom. Less if your unlucky. An I'd be
| blown away if you fix your first pest bloom the first try.
| Vertical farms are sick on paper...that ignores masses of
| requirements to actually get the task done.
| cevn wrote:
| Very true. I have an aerogarden setup and best way to use
| it is to swap the plants into real ground and do a fresh
| clean after they've grown for a few months, otherwise gnats
| / fungus will take over.
|
| It also seems to require much more water than watering the
| plants in ground, I assume because they are getting maximum
| rate from roots and almost infinitely growing them .
| gtvwill wrote:
| Geez into High Pressure Aeroponics if the water
| efficiency thing interests you. Its also somewhat easier
| to keep clean as you only feed the plants the water they
| can consume (literally a single droplet of condensation
| in your root chambers DTW outlet means your feeding too
| much). On the downside the setup is hard as it gets,
| 145+psi water system, impinge nozzles with .4mm diameter
| outlets (means your nutes gotta be particulate free). But
| the efficiency of it is the ultimate in closed
| environment growth.
|
| For bugs in a greenhouse the least chemical method i've
| found is dumping c02. Can only use it in
| closed/controlled spaces tho. Blanket room in c02 for 12
| hrs...literally just chokes any bugs. Plants are fine.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Thanks for going in detail as to why it is severely
| impractical and inefficient, all the items you listed are
| overlooked or outright ignored in the discussions I have
| read, as you probably guessed I am way out of my field.
|
| In your opinion, what's the main bottleneck wrt to
| resources?
| gtvwill wrote:
| Eh the problem with resources is not using systems that
| are a closed loop for the whole cycle. e.g. Currently
| most vert farms or greenhouses buy in all their seed and
| nutrient and alot of the time grow medium too. Its
| wasteful just in the nature of it, you can't recycle
| those parts, your not producing them so you drain them
| from somewhere else. What I would love to see is hybrid
| broad acre/high density greenhouse farms.
|
| I'm leaning towards productions suited for my region for
| this example, it would require tailoring to each regions
| climates/capacities if you were to do this everywhere. On
| the broad acre you essentially would do native
| grasses/root vegetables/shrub crops and runs of more
| traditional mono crops in dispersed amongst heavily
| Wooded paddocks. like 30-40% tree cover,30-40% perennial
| natives, 20-30% rotated mono-crop runs. You need to not
| stress the land too much where I am, and work with the
| droughts that come through (Australia). The whole goal of
| the broad acre is to produce a little food buffer but
| mostly material for nutrient creation.
|
| So maybe you harvest/cut your native grasses a few times
| a year, bail it, inoculate it with fungi to eat it and
| convert it to a higher nutrient product for fertilizer if
| your running soil greenhouses. Or you could use mulched
| grasses to run a snail farm, that in turn feeds a
| aquaculture setup which you can strip the fish shit out
| of for nutes to supply your high density vert farm.
| Having the broad acre allows you to do other things too
| like maintain bee hives which can be brought into the
| greenhouse for pollinating.
|
| Huge amounts of resources/capital required to set closed
| loops like this up...but on the plus side...once their
| setup, if you do things right like use high grade
| materials(e.g stainless for all your greenhouse
| piping/water setup) it can last for near infinite time
| with correct maintenance. Just good luck getting a
| investor who gets profit @ 10-20 year mark rather than
| 6-12 months. Market doesn't seem to like long games these
| days even if it is whats probably best for
| environment/long term sustainable high density farming.
|
| Oh and also we need a robot that can pick fruit/veg and
| do maintenance that requires dexterity (think unscrewing
| a nozzle or pipe fitting). Bad. Labor is a killer for
| broad acre tree crops and stuff that requires a bit of
| dexterity for harvest (see Australia's current farm labor
| shortage).
| mortehu wrote:
| Plants reflect and diffuse most sunlight, and we can make lamps
| that only emit wavelengths that are suitable for
| photosynthesis. Doesn't this complicate the model a bit?
| TT3351 wrote:
| >Growing in warehouses or vertically forces you to substitute
| the sun with artificial lights
|
| Couldn't one construct pylons outdoors for planting? I don't
| see why it wouldn't work if you constructed it narrower at each
| successive plant height.
|
| Some indoor vertical farming I've seen rotates the entire
| vertical structure, necessitating only one light facing a
| section of the column. I would expect this kind of rotation
| might help outdoors as well.
| [deleted]
| stretchcat wrote:
| One constraint to keep in mind is how quickly and efficiently
| the field can be harvested. If you're talking about a crop
| that is harvested by hand then this isn't really a factor.
| But if you're trying to grow a crop that is usually
| mechanically harvested, you have to compete with that
| efficiency with machines of your own that are compatible with
| the structure of your farm (or content yourself with selling
| luxury produce priced for the wealthy.)
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| There are so many greens to grow other than letttce. Vertical
| farms are only good for greens and soft herbs. And it's possible
| to pack it with nutrient dense herbs.
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