Become a Sustainavore!

Eat for your health, the planet, and your values.

Become a Sustainavore!

Eat for your health, the planet, and your values.

Vertical Farms: Thermodynamic Nonsense

I recently had dinner with my long time farmer friend Chris Yoder of Van Garden CSA in Dover, MA. We were talking about lab-produced meats and the recent explosion of vertical farming in the Boston area, and how ridiculous these “sustainable” solutions are. He told me his brother came up with a slogan: “Freight Farms: Your Salad in Critical Care”. What a great visual – all that plastic, outside inputs, no soil, climate control, monitors… I completely agree.

Technology definitely has it’s place in the future of our food, but I’ve been seeing more and more “solutions” that don’t seem to make a ton of practical sense. Huge infusions of tech dollars are being poured into food production systems that seem to be working against nature instead of with it. Lab-produced meats are a perfect example of this. Instead of using cattle to graze land we can’t crop, converting grass to nutrient dense protein, many seem to feel that it’s more sustainable to take mono-crop soy and convert this to fake, “bleeding” meat through a resource-intensive process.

[Tweet “How many resources did it take to make your fake food?”]

The same holds true for these new shipping container “sustainable” salad factories and other 100% artificial light plant factories. Now don’t get me wrong, there could be a place for greenhouse-produced greens in certain areas that get a lot of sunlight for passive solar energy. I even think some forms of indoor agriculture that utilize natural sunlight and fish could be a potential solution in some areas. But let’s think about these 100% artificial light salad production facilities for a minute and compare them to greens grown outdoors.

On a farm that incorporates animals and uses soil to grow crops organically, there’s little need for mined minerals, fertilizers, artificial lights, steel racks, and the energy required to heat the building. With smart use of crop rotations, cover crops and green manure, compost and animal inputs, the soil has all it needs to produce healthy crops. The sun provides the energy for free.

It fascinates me that there isn’t even a sunroof on these $85,000 “sustainable” solutions to our salad fix. On a perfectly sunny day, these containers are still sucking energy to grow lettuce, all in an effort to reduce food miles and take up less land than traditional farming. But at what cost? Do the inputs required to grow these greens really result in a more sustainable product? Has anyone done a life cycle assessment on these compared to supporting local sustainable producers?

[Tweet “Does vertical farming maximize solar capture? Does it work with nature or against it?”]

It turns out there actually has been studies on the thermodynamics of these methods using 100% artificial lights, and guess what? They make no sense at all.  One study found, “Vertically grown produce has a carbon footprint that is much higher than conventionally grown produce”

Researchers that looked at artificially lit greens farming found that the energy required just for lights alone is one to two orders of magnitude greater than the energy content of the plants. This didn’t even account for the energy loss required to make the artificial lights to begin with, nor the energy required for the building, the trays, racks, etc.

One researcher commented: Why does it make sense to put a lot of intellectual activity and resources into something that negates the direct use of our one and only absolutely renewable resource – the sun – and totally replace it with artificial light?”

When compared to shipped in lettuce, the 100% artificially lit lettuce lost big time. A 2008 study from Cornell University found the following:

Production system                                                     kg CO2/kg lettuce

Import average of 2900 miles                                    0.70 (transport only)

100% Artificial Lighting                                            3.95 (lighting only)

70% Sun/30% Artificial Light, Ithica, NY                0.71 (lighting only)

70% Sun/30% Artificial Light, Long Island             0.35 (lighting only)

And remember, this is just looking at transportation of the lettuce to lighting only. The total costs of a 100% artificially lit salad growing system are higher than just lighting. But what about the winter, when we’re covered in snow? Certainly container farms are better than shipping in greens from far away, right?

However, when you look at the numbers, this isn’t the case. Passive solar greenhouses can produce lots of greens with very little energy input. A 2014 study on lettuce production carbon footprint showed unheated hoop houses (see photo below from study) in January at Michigan State University generated about one-fifth the CO2 compared to shipping in lettuce from 2,200 miles away. Results were 0.198 vs. 0.857 kg/CO2/kg lettuce.

What if we power the 100% artificial light with solar power? Wouldn’t that be better?

Nope. 

It turns out it would take about 4.5 acres of solar cells for every one acre of plant growth space. Just think for a moment of all of the raw materials and energy required to produce a solar cell. Since we can use the sun DIRECTLY to grow lettuce, it seems like a better use of solar cells would be to power things that we actually need energy for, like lighting for our homes. It seems to me that if we just cut off the tops of these vertical farm units and let the sun shine in, we might have a better return on investment.

Michael W. Hamm: C.S. Mott Professor of Sustainable Agriculture – Michigan State University and Director of the MSU Center for Regional Food Systems. said this in a post about the absurdity of vertical farming: “I take strong issue with those who go to great lengths trying to convince everyone this (vertical farming) is the solution to world hunger, fresh water challenges, and agriculture’s contribution to climate change.”

As a dietitian, I also have to point out something pretty serious here. Let’s also not forget what lettuce gives us, nutritionally. Not much. Lettuce is basically crunchy water. We’re spending so much of our investment dollars and intellectual energy on something that has the nutrition of a Kleenex. Salad is great at filling you up, but the health benefits are in what you put ON the salad (the nuts, the vegetables, the avocado, the steak tips…) not the lettuce. The lettuce just provides low-calorie volume to help us feel more full.

[Tweet “Lettuce is basically crunchy water, with the nutrition of a Kleenex”]

Lettuce provides “vitamin A” according to the USDA nutrient database, but it’s actually not true vitamin A. The plant form must be converted to vitamin A in our bodies. It takes about 10 to 28 molecules of carotenoids in plants to make one molecule of vitamin A. Efficiency of this conversion is influenced by several factors including the type food, the overall fat content of the meal, and the cooking method. About 45% of the population have a genetic factor limiting their ability to convert vitamin A from plant sources into active vitamin A.  Vitamin A from animal sources is very effectively absorbed, with 100% absorption. Lettuce also contains a good amount of vitamin K, however it’s in the form of K1, found primarily in green leafy vegetables and plant oils, and bioavailability from plants is relatively low and depends on chlorophyll content. For vitamins A and K, your best source is not lettuce.

To me, a smarter investment in the future of our food would be these passive solar hoop houses with minimal-to-no artificial light and other off-farm inputs.

And while I’m at it, I’d like to propose that instead of lab meats, we could alternatively invest in more locally produced, well-managed grass-fed meat. Cattle, sheep and goats do very well in the New England landscape. Because of our high quality pastures, we can actually produce a lot more meat per acre than many other parts of the United States. They can graze hilly, rocky land that we can’t use for crops. These animals don’t require grain, so they don’t have to compete with us for farmland (which we can then grow lettuce and other vegetables on, using the sun!) Better yet, the impact of ruminants in a well-managed system actually improves the land. Their chomping, stomping and manure is required for healthy pastures, which sequesters carbon instead of emitting it. And remember, meat provides much more nutrition than lettuce.

All of this excitement surrounding high tech food solutions needs to be analyzed on a thermodynamic basis. We need to systems thinking, not linear, reductionist solutions. How can we maximize the energy from the sun? On a planet of limited resources, do we want to be using more artificial lighting and mined minerals to produce lettuce, a nutrient poor food with a big carbon footprint? Do we want to use more fossil fuels to produce more soil-depleting, mono-crop soy and then use it to make fake meat that bleeds just like the real thing, or just eat the real thing, raised the right way? These sexy “sustainable” high tech food solutions are doing nothing to ensure we’ll be able to produce food in 100 years. Our future depends on healthy soil, not lab meats and vertical farming.

As we look to new food solutions, I wish people would use a little more common sense and ask the basic questions, “Does this maximize solar capture? Is this system working with nature or against it?”

 

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48 thoughts on “Vertical Farms: Thermodynamic Nonsense”

  1. Thanks for this good information. Indoor farming especially of crunchy water makes no sense. Very low efficiency based on 2nd law of thermodynamics.

  2. So agree with you on the sensibility of using Nature’s true resources: Sun and Land! Thank you for this excellent article, which I’ll share widely.

    Please note: some of the artificial light (artificial everything!) investments are based on fear of what-if or what-when scenarios of potential emissions from volcanos and / or exploded nuclear power plant emissions blocking sunlight, even as geoengineering releases daily do so, with solar energies suppressed by the last in some places by up to 60% per year. Some individuals fear FEMA camp entrapments and the equipment therein as exposed by FBI retiree Ted Gunderson, namely guillotines, and look to protective bunker scenarios and means of growing food therein. Yet others have been involved with alphabet-agencies’ developments of underground cities, where seed banks and lots of artificial light do exist, and may be the sole means of human life support.

    All the latter thankfully point us right back to Nature, where we find our true sustenance!

  3. Do you know if the study on artificial lights looked at LED lights? I don’t think so but of course I might have missed it because it was too long. LED uses less energy than conventional lights and different wavelength combinations have been shown to mimic the sun’s energy. The research is still at it’s infancy but I think there might be some use for it in the future.

    1. I’d be open to looking at other papers if someone showed them to me. Although LED may be more efficient, there’s still a cost to producing those bulbs, making the building, etc – compared to growing lettuce outdoors with photosynthesis. A great example of this is the energy required to build the solar cells to make solar power to feed energy to these indoor units. There are a lot of hopeful marketers out there, thinking technology will save us. So, even with numbers that don’t work today (as in the case of lab meat) investors are hopeful that technology will advance and “someday” it will make more sense. I don’t see how this is possible. We’re running out of resources. You can’t make something out of nothing.

        1. I’m still not convinced that producing plants using 100% artificial light is “sustainable”. But academics who aren’t actually farmers certainly do seem to think so!

          1. So where is the value in you, a dietitian (not actually a farmer), claiming that it is “not sustainable”?

          2. I have worked as a farmer before, does that qualify me as being able to access if something is “sustainable” or not? Does one need a degree in sustainability in order to have an opinion on what is sustainable? I’m not sure I understand your question – where is the “value” in me because I have a degree in human nutrition and I’m not currently employed as a full time farmer? Please be more clear on how I’m not allowed to write about my opinions on a free blog. What is your expertise, Tyler?

          3. This is based upon your criticism that academics are not actually farmers, implying that we should not trust thier expertise regarding this matter. Just wondering why you look down on thier studies when you are far more removed then they are. Who’s to say that they didn’t “work as a farmer” before. You are certainly allowed, and encouraged to have an opinion. It just seems disingenuous and contradictory for someone like you to make that claim.

            People are buying this food which means more food is being consumed. Just because you don’t find it a practical means of production doesn’t mean that it is not working to address the looming food crisis that is presenting itself.

            Penned- graduate of top 5 ag school in the nation, grew up on a traditional farm, working in agriculture for 15 years.

          4. I have lived on a working farm for the last 15 years myself.
            Just because someone is buying something, doesn’t mean it makes sense to produce it. I’m sure you can see the flawed logic in this.
            Growing lettuce indoors, in plastic trays, under 100% artificial light is a complete waste of energy when it can be grown in soil with sunlight. Lettuce isn’t even a nutrient dense food.

      1. Luis Eduardo Gómez de Aranda Junco

        See, there’s a huge flaw in your analysis:

        “making the building”

        Creating whole new buildings to convert into vertical farms is indeed silly from a Co2 point of view, which is precisely why NO ONE IS DOING IT. Last time I checked, there were still many large empty factories in the US, and it’s precisely these buildings that can be converted into vertical farms. They are sitting empty right now, with no use other than to house crack smokers and gutter punks, so why would turning them into food production be wasteful?

        Why not take these factories that have been empty for decades due to the deindustrialization of the Western world to turn them into leafy green factories?

        1. How are they being fueled? In a sustainable way? How are they getting the inputs for feeding the kale? From chemicals and mined minerals? Is this honestly better than growing in the ground? Where is the water coming from?

  4. Once again people live in a black and white world. Obviously if outdoor conventional farming and an abundance of clean water is a readily a resource you have it’s the best option. Now say you’re in the middle of Saudi Arabia and you have more oil than soil. You can export the oil, but the methane gas is best used locally. Or if you’re in an area where water is the least available resource, then the water savings might be your advantage. Agriculture is problem solving, don’t limit my options.

    1. I think there are alternatives to 100% artificial light systems that make more sense, and I talk about this in the article. I’m DEFINITELY not saying this is black and white. I acknowledge there may be aquaponic systems that work, and that we should be looking at passive solar options with less artificial light. What the numbers clearly show is that 100% artificial light does not make any sense. In the case of Saudi Arabia, it may make more sense to be shipping in produce rather than growing it indoors with the available technology right now. For example, one study found that shipping produce like apples to Britain was actually more sustainable than local cold storage of the fruit for winter consumption. This is counterintuitive, but it’s important to be open minded and look at the data. https://ucanr.edu/datastoreFiles/608-324.pdf Now, when oil prices go up, this could be a totally different story. But speaking of oil prices, let’s look at Venezuela. They started shipping in all of their food and then the price of oil dropped, and they are now all starving because nobody produces food there anymore. I’m all about context and nuance, but also science and numbers. If you have numbers that show that growing lettuce with 100% artificial lighting is a better solution, please show me and I’ll review it.

    2. spot on. Horses for courses as they say. Saying CEA is bad based just on fuzzy carbon footprint equations is very naive. No point having nice sunny hoops in a dessert or hurricane ally, and not many left in Florida last week. I would rather have a bigger carbon footprint than no food, and please dont anyone be silly and post lowering our carbon footprint will make the weather nice again, that would be insulting.

  5. This article is clearly flawed. Removing the roof of an indoor farm will not supply enough light; it would only shine on the top shelf and leave dozens of lower shelves dark. You could use a greenhouse, but that defeats the point of high density farming.

    Also, “artificial” light efficiency has improved by leaps and bounds since the study you reference from 2008, before indoor farms even used LED lighting – these numbers are no longer relevant.

    Energy will be widely available as energy harvesting technology and low power electronics continue to develop. The real issue will be space for farms and crop harvest frequency – traditional farmers will be thankful for indoor farm innovation.

    1. Here’s another study, more recent that shows outputs of lettuce higher, but many times more overall energy to produce, “Hydroponics offered 11 ± 1.7 times higher yields but required 82 ± 11 times more energy compared to conventionally produced lettuce.” and in the conclusion, they say, “At this point in time, hydroponic farming of lettuce cannot be deemed a more sustainable alternative to conventional lettuce farming techniques” but then they’re “hopeful” that technology will improve. Also, they were comparing lettuce grown in arid regions (WHERE WE SHOULD NOT BE GROWING LETTUCE TO BEGIN WITH). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4483736/ If you have any better research, please show me it and I’m more than happy to review them. I open criticism, but please show me some LCAs to back up your opinion.

  6. Crunchy water? See spinach and tomatoes and strawberries and likely a lot of others to be more efficient as we make progress. Didn’t make it to the moon in a day dipshit.

    1. Those papers I reference also go into those crops and illustrate how it makes no sense to grow them in 100% artificial light. If you had the cerebral capacity to look at the numbers, understand how food is produced, and some basic understanding of how photosynthesis works, then you’d likely grasp this concept and would be less included to use the word dipshit. Have a great day [email protected]

  7. What you don’t appear to consider is that around half of the energy in sunlight is the wrong frequency for photosynthesis whereas the artificial light can be optimised both for wavelength and intensity.
    Probably that is still less efficient than direct lighting, but I think very much less inefficient that you suggest.

    1. I’m just looking at data presented. I understand what you’re saying, but when you look at the numbers, the systems using the most or all sunlight win compared to 100% artificial. What also needs to be factored in is the energy and materials required to make the bulbs, the inputs required to build these indoor facilities, etc. Hoop houses are pretty minimal in terms of materials.

  8. You forgot about main regulator of progress – profit. VA is nice idea but not profitable with current technology and climate, like you already pointed out. VA will take back seat while there is more money in producing plants in greenhouse and open areas. That is also why we will never go organic on global scale. There is not enough money in it to go global. On a smaller scale, well, that is a different story. Organic is great on small scale for those who can afford it, for those who embrace it as a lifestyle, for those who (irony is not lost on me) live in undeveloped rural areas. There is place for VA also. It is great progressive idea worth exploring which can flop big time or be crucial for human survival in few hundred years – whether in space or deep ocean or some mega-urban areas. Right now it is not economically viable but I am sure that was case with most of things we use today, from needle to Rosetta Mission.

    1. If organic wasn’t profitable, you wouldn’t see companies like Whole Foods on the scene. Photosynthesis is free. The cost of running one of these vertical farm units with 100% artificial light is astronomical compared to planting lettuce in the dirt.

      1. Global does not mean US. It means whole world. There is no Whole Food in South America, Europe (UK excluded), Asia, Africa, Australia. There is limit to organic production and there is premium price to pay for it. VA is not economical at moment but there are things called progress and advance of science so there is no reason at all to stop researching and testing VA. Imagine world if someone, 75 years ago, said “computers are expensive and use a lot of energy so they are complete waist of time” and that someone listened to his/hers advice.

        1. So grow vegetables indoors, with solar cells and lights and electricity and no soil is a solution in Africa? My thesis is that we should explore systems that mimic nature, utilizing solar energy to it’s maximum potential, instead of these systems which are expensive and resource intensive. You are clearly in the camp of “tech will save us” and I’m just looking at more natural solutions to feeding people. In many African locations, plants don’t thrive but grazing animals do. Why not help them learn to manage their herds in more sustainable ways, helping to improve soil health. That seems much more useful than telling them to spend tons of money on these fake farm units that require tons of inputs. It just doesn’t seem to make sense to me.

          1. No, I am in camp “moderation will save us all” and i don’t think that VA is solution. I like my meet bloody and grass fed. I like to drink free range eggs because they are sweeter. I like my vegetables with dirt on them. I eat both cherry and worm in it. But I also like tinkering, curiosity, progress. I like man and woman who are better then I am. I like advancement, technology, reading about other people science achievement.

            Why not teach undeveloped countries? Corruption and interests of more powerful nations. It is not about agriculture.

            VA is still in its infancy and it make no sense to you now but, with some luck, it will make sense in few decades.

            I grew up in a village in a war torn country. I know what is drought, pestilence, floods and poverty. Now, I am lucky that I can prefer organic. I would like that everyone (whole world, not just my country) can but I think that it is impossible. I would like to be proven wrong in few decades but I would like to have other options also. VA is just one of them. If I get to live on some space station… probably the only one.

  9. You took the words out of my mouth Diana. Great article backed up by real numbers. Seems human nature is addicted to widgets and associated technological fixes, when as you say our agriculture should be seeking to mimic nature, and with so much land degraded actually regenerate that land, using techniques like holistic planned grazing, FMNR and so on. Focusing on the thermodynamics is definitely the methodology to reveal the inconsistencies in this VA approach. As for food in Africa VA will never work. We often suffer load-shedding daily and higher electricity tariffs quarterly as subsidies are dropped. Importantly all the money flowing into this VA is actually removing money from where it should go, into researching and implementing on a very large scale regenerative integrated agricultural practices.

    1. VF could work in Africa and lots of other underdeveloped countries if it were off the grid and powered by dedicated, localized renewable energy sources (e.g. solar panels, wind generators, perhaps geothermal plants dedicated to powering the VF). There are advantages to VF that may make it preferable to open air agriculture or green houses in overpopulated areas and/or environments with extreme weather/climate conditions. It is a drastic over-simplification to dismiss VF as something that will “never work” just because it wouldn’t be feasible under certain conditions.

      1. How? People don’t even own land and irrigation is hard to come by. This will just keep food grown by and in the hands of the elite. If people can’t afford seeds, how are they going to afford the infrastructure of VF? Have you seen the input costs?

  10. I have no data, but the impression I get is that people are more interested in ‘lab meat’ for ethical rather than environmental reasons i.e. they can enjoy meat habits while knowing no animal was intentionally killed for that product. They may or may not consider the energy-input and mono-cropping required to produce the artificial protein slab.

    Outside of the ethical question of killing another sentient being for adequate nutrition (which is clearly not necessary for every person in every biome), the use of animal agriculture can have positive impacts on landscapes and atmospheric greenhouse gases. It is troubling that in the majority of cases it has negative impacts, and not just in mega-ranches, but in deforested uplands for example. And for me, the ethical question – when it is not for survival – is often addressed and justified by meat-eaters, but never truly absolved.

      1. Luis Eduardo Gómez de Aranda Junco

        Oh, no doubt about that.

        The vast amounts of energy that it took to upgrade our brains from simple apes to Homo Sapiens came from eating high-energy, nutrient-rich foods like … meat.

        We can easily observe this fact from comparing herbivores and carnivores in untouched natural environments such as the African Savannah. Which seems more intelligent to you, leopards, lions or any of the other big cats or zebras and wildebeests?

        Of course eating meat is a very efficient way of taking in nutrients.

        What I still don’t understand is why you chose to lump artificial meat factories and vertical farms into the same article…

  11. It is a pleasure reading your piece here. I could not agree with you more. All I see is a lot of plastic and synthetics growing food on life support that tastes like cardboard. Sun state organics grows food in fabric bags using Omari listed ingredients and they do it using compost and fertilizer made from waste organics. They put the nutrition in their air pruning bags and only pump water to their plants. Their system enables novices to achieve remarkable results organically. The taste of the food grown is off the charts great and the nutrient content is second to none. They don’t have a big marketing budget to get their message out but I gotta tell you this company is rocking it. And they are doing it in the sun, in the shade, in buildings and anywhere people live.

    1. Luis Eduardo Gómez de Aranda Junco

      You state that “plastic and synthetics growing food on life support tastes like cardboard”.

      Would you be willing to put your money where your mouth is? Would you bet me a thousand dollars that you’d recognize hydroponic, artificial-lighting food from traditionally-grown food?

      As I’m reading the rest of your article I can’t help but wonder – are you getting paid by Sun State Organics? Apparently their “small marketing budget to get their message out” might include posting comments on a website.

      Now, please tell me: Will I get these “remarkable results”, “off the charts good taste” and “second to none nutrient content” in Oman, at 50ºC in the shade all year around? Or in Sweden, with a few feet of snow over my “chunky water” lettuce plants?

      If the answer to any of these questions is NO it certainly seems as if vertical farms have a place to be.

      1. The question though, is “Is this sustainable” meaning, can this be SUSTAINED? The answer is NO. It is not. Nothing about this process is regenerative, improves soil. You know what grows well in Sweden? Ruminants!

        1. Your model requires huge swaths of fertile land upon which to grow crops and raise animals. Fine if you’ve got the land, but arable land area is shrinking and will continue to do so throughout the remainder of the 21st century and beyond. A farming method that makes much more efficient use of space will be valuable under these future conditions. Your narrow focus on organic open-air farming is creatively limited.

  12. Luis Eduardo Gómez de Aranda Junco

    I have a huge qualm about this article as a whole:

    “Vertical farms can only be used to produce chunky water, with no nutrients whatsoever”. Yes, really funny. I congratulate you on being so hilarious SustainableDish.com, but have you actually looked at Dr. Fuhrman’s Nutrient Density scores? It turns out that watercress and kale score the highest, with microgreen kale even being more nutritious than their mature counterparts.

    Did you overlook this fact? Or are you simply ignorant of this fact? Even worse: Did you PURPOSELY overlook this fact when writing about vertical farms? Both watercress and microgreen kale are perfect for indoor, artificial-illumination growing in vertical farms, yet you left them out and only talked about lettuce (“chunky water”).

    I could now make a rebuttal article saying “The most nutritious food in the world is best grown indoors under electric lights!”

    As another reader said, it’s not as black-and-white as you make it out to be: Vertical farms will never provide the majority of the world’s nutritional needs, but even if they just took care of 1% of them, it could be a very profitable business.

    The world lives off 4 types of plants: Rice, maize, wheat and potatoes. These will NEVER be grown under artificial light (I say this knowing I could easily be wrong, who knows what kinds of advancements in technology will appear by 2050?) However, does the average middle class New Yorker live off potatoes? I would go ahead and think they also get their nutrients from other, less important plants such as arugula, bok choy and whatever else fancy schmancy plants you want to think of.

    We’re not living in the 1930’s Dust Bowl anymore. Families don’t exclusively live off food that doesn’t need to be refrigerated. Eggs, flour and potatoes are no longer the main source of nutrients for Americans in the year 2018.

    All these other leafy greens with nutritional values far above iceberg lettuce can be grown efficiently in vertical farms and just a bike’s ride away from the point of consumption. Add electricity from 100% renewable sources and you’ll start to see Co2 emission values go down, therefore invalidating the entire ‘Co2 argument’.

    I can’t help but to feel these articles are being paid for by companies that have a big stake in current agricultural practices: Through the history of humanity it’s always been the same, whenever a technological paradigm shift appears there will be companies that live off the old status quo that have large resources (read: quantities of money) to belittle these new technologies.

    I would love to remind you of how traditionally ice was brought in by companies that would cut large slabs off ice from mountains. When artificial refrigeration was invented these companies spent huge amounts of money to tell the population that “Artificial ice is not proper ice”. They suggested that ice that wasn’t lugged in from mountains to central New York (to keep produce cool) wasn’t proper, and that all ice that was artificially made by artificially freezing water (GOSH!) was not proper and harmful.

    Does that ring a bell?

      1. I think it would be wise if we bred a variety of watermelon that is specifically good at grilling. Watermelon steaks are good, but they could be better.

  13. While it is true that current vertical farming operations are not yet efficient enough to be profitable, projected drops in energy costs, along with a strong focus on automation and optimization of crop yield and quality through manipulation of (among other things) nutrient supply, light spectrum and intensity, temperature, humidity and CO2 concentration have the potential to drop operating costs to a point where a profit can be made. Vertical farming with 100% artificial lighting also has other advantages, including: Much tighter control of the growth environment, allowing for more consistent yields and increased crop quality, decreased crop losses due to disease, pests, inclement weather, or soil nutrient depletion, 24 hour light availability, shorter and more consistent time to market, as well as much smaller land requirements (as these farms are vertical so you can fill all 3 dimensions with crop, rather than just the x,y plane – a big advantage in a world where the population is projected to reach 11.2 billion by the end of the 21st century). The VF method can be especially useful in extreme environments (e.g. desert, high-latitude locations where the growing season is much shorter, even orbital stations/spacecraft), which will become increasingly important in the near future as more and more arable land is rendered useless by rising sea levels, increased drought and possible increases in pathogen and pest populations due to warming conditions. The success of VF also hinges on the market these operations are targeting. Selling to niche markets (e.g. baby greens, etc), where customers are willing to pay a premium for a particular type of specialized product that is easier to grow in a controlled environment, can make VF profitable in short term, even though large-scale VF production of food crops may not yield a profit under current conditions.

    So, bottom line is that, while your criticisms are not completely unfounded, there is a case to be made for continuing to invest in VF development as a sort of insurance policy against future deteriorating conditions that will likely have a significant negative impact on the ability to sustain food production using the traditional agricultural model. I like to think of it not so much as a replacement for traditional agriculture, but as one tool among a suite of agricultural approaches that could perhaps be combined in the future to make food production more sustainable in the future. You can also think of it as a prototype technology that has not yet reached its full potential :-).

    1. You nailed it here: “Selling to niche markets (e.g. baby greens, etc), where customers are willing to pay a premium for a particular type of specialized product that is easier to grow in a controlled environment, can make VF profitable in short term, even though large-scale VF production of food crops may not yield a profit under current conditions.”

      So let’s call this what it is, expensive food for privileged people. This is NOT how it’s being sold. It’s not a sustainable, cost effective solution.

  14. You did some math here. I suppose my only question is whether you included how artificial lighting gets to leave out the energy green light element. I drive by a greenhouse regularly that they power when it is dark out and it glows purple. (They probably shut it off during the day).

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