So you can't grow potatoes vertically? Can you elaborate? Is it a function of physiology, i.e. calorie dense vegetables need far more leaves and supporting stems than can be practically stacked vertically?
I imagine space is a factor, but energy will be a big one as well. Calorie dense foods will likely need more space and energy (light) inputs. Vertical farms are very water efficient, so I don't think that matters much.
Vertical farms make a lot more sense with fresh vegetables like leafy greens that grow quickly, command high prices if grown organically, and benefit from being closer to market.
Potatoes are the exact opposite. If it ever becomes more cost effective to grow corn, wheat, and potatoes in virtual farms then outdoor agriculture is dead. While I don't agree with the article that it will never happen, it might require energy advances like fusion power or drastically higher _rural_ land values and water prices.
Greenhouses make sense long before vertical farming, just look at agriculture in the Netherlands, it's mind boggling how much they produce for such a tiny country.
Sun + water is cheap and plentiful. Small scale farms can sell potatoes at $0.50/lb
or less. Amish farms with oxen can go a little less.
Capital and operational costs for vertical farms don’t seem to make sense, unless there’s some disaster in the Colorado watershed or a trade war that makes hothouse winter produce a viable business again.
This is totally unrelated, but I saw people plowing fields with oxen in Cuba. A scathing indictment of socialism if ever there was one[1]. It's easy to forget at times how large parts of the rest of the world live.
[1] Don't get me wrong, it's a spectrum and some socialism is a very good thing. But not like in Cuba or the old USSR.
>But why is fusion power required instead of better UV lamps in my vertical farm?
Because of the second law of thermodynamics. Your UV lamp is not going to produce light that contains more energy than the electricity you used as input. That energy needs to be produced via solar panels if you want maximum efficiency. If we ignore nuclear or fusion all energy on earth is derived from sunlight.
The total amount of electricity to power those UV lamps should be on par with what the Sun sends to the potatoes fields. Maybe that's the reason for fusion. It didn't do the math.
Actually no not really. Plants only absorb two wavelengths of light. It's currently more efficient to convert sun into solar power via panels and then to light LEDs supplying only the wavelengths that plants use. Despite the seeming inefficiency here, the fact is that plants are even more inefficient at absorbing light not at the right wavelengths than solar panels.
Even if artificial lighting and natural lighting were equally efficient you would still have to cover the same number of acres in either solar panels or plants. In other words, the denser your vertical farm the more land it consumes. Clearly vertical farming is meant for some really exotic situations in which you might have access to electricity but are in an environment in which you can't grow the plants you want. That situation would probably be a mars colony or a fallout shelter.
Well, it's more efficient (I forget by which factor). So, if the factor were 2, you would need 1 acre of solar panel for every 2 acre-equivalents of planting space. Since you're okay with going vertical, the acre-equivalent could be much less than an acre. So yeah... electricity being much easier to transport than produce, it would actually make more sense to cover a large part of unpopulated area with solar panels, and then farm in very very small portions of the earth.
From an environmental perspective, this is certainly a 'win'. Reducing the amount of land needed for agriculture is a win to both consumers and the environmentalists and the farmers.
Could one imagine a material that would absorb solar spectrum and emit the preferred frequencies? Something like a polymer one could stretch over fields to get more from the suns rays.
>> "Actually no not really. Plants only absorb two wavelengths of light. It's currently more efficient to convert sun into solar power via panels and then to light LEDs supplying only the wavelengths that plants use. Despite the seeming inefficiency here, the fact is that plants are even more inefficient at absorbing light not at the right wavelengths than solar panels."
> Could one imagine a material that would absorb solar spectrum and emit the preferred frequencies? Something like a polymer one could stretch over fields to get more from the suns rays.
> Generators of radio waves for heating or industrial purposes, such as microwave ovens or diathermy equipment, are not usually called transmitters, even though they often have similar circuits.
(edit) The thermal energy from sunlight (from the FREE radiation from the nuclear reaction at the center of our solar system) is also useful to and necessary for plants. There's probably a passive heat pipe / solar panel cooling solution that could harvest such heat for colder seasons and climates.
> The light that plants predominately use for photosynthesis ranges from 400–700 nm. This range is referred to as Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR) and includes red, blue and green wavebands. Photomorphogenesis occurs in a wider range from approximately 260–780 nm and includes UV and far-red radiation.
Amateur hydroponicist here. It depends on what you mean by 'vertically'. You can certainly grow potatoes in containers that are stacked vertically. You can also grow them hydroponically. However, the issue I've noticed in the hydroponics community is that no one is interested in growing potatoes. That is really the problem with these vertical ag startups and such. They focus on ridiculous foods like greens, which -- while nutritious and easy to grow -- cannot form the bulk of a human diet.
As a community, vertical agriculture need to focus on high calorie crops like potatoes or sweet potatoes or at least something useful like beans.
But circling back to the beginning. You can't really grow a potato with less industrial input vertically than you can with regular land, so unless you are really out of land (and the United States at least is not running out of land anytime soon), it doesn't really make sense to do so. Potatoes are really easy to grow -- you stick them in the ground and dig them up a few months later. Anyone can just buy a few acres of land, fertilize it, stick in some seed potatoes, and get a pretty decent crop that more than covers their costs. This is currently way easier than the amount of setup it would take to use containers. If you were to use conventional growing containers, you would need to import large amounts of soil / substrate. If you were using hydroponics, you'd also have to buy large amounts of hydroponic substrate or expensive nozzles for aeroponics. Either way, it's more expensive.
Anyway... wish me luck, I'm starting some potato growing experiments this summer to see if I can develop new container, vertical, and hydroponic techniques. I'm particularly interested in growing potatos without a substrate and without expensive aeroponics. Currently investigating 'aeroponic' drip systems.
You probably can grow them (you can "grow" a potato in a cup of water on your counter), but probably not profitably. Potatoes have a fairly low commodity price relative to their light and space demands. Additionally, they store and transport really well.
