Posted on 09/01/2019 1:42:48 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Indoor farm companies say they're scaling up, but many question their business model
Leafy salad greens grown under banks of LED lights, with mist or drips of water are having their day in the sun. Several top U.S. indoor farms say they are boosting production to a level where they can now supply hundreds of grocery stores.
Plenty, Bowery, Aerofarms and 80 Acres Farms are among young companies that see a future in salad greens and other produce grown in what are called vertical farms that rely on robotics and artificial intelligence, along with LED lights.
While the first versions of modern vertical farms sprouted about a decade ago, in recent years the introduction of automation and the tracking of data to regulate light and water has allowed them to get out of lab mode and into stores. Now they are trying to scale up.
Plenty and others say their customized, controlled lighting — some more blue light here, some more red light there — makes for tastier plants compared to sun-grown leaves and that they use 95 per cent less water than conventional farms, require very little land, and use no pesticides, making them competitive with organic farms.
(Excerpt) Read more at manitobacooperator.ca ...
Who does it hurt?
In my Town, there are still a few hothouses left. The farmer said "I get two crops this way."
Put them in old missile silos.
Keep the vault residents busy and fed while they wait for the killer asteroid/nuke war/massive solar flare/extinctionpandemic aftermath to clear up.
It's produce was priced about 20% higher compared to traditional farming.
I found it interesting that they were using the weight of the watering to help move the vertical conveyor of planter boxes down the sun-facing side.
The excess water from the planters was channeled to a collection container for reuse.
If only they could just develop a hydroponic tomato that actually tasted kindy tomato-y
None of the three companies would give details about costs.
This may not be great today. But it will be a workable solution in the future. I think this stuff is very exciting. Urban dwellers should be farmers.
If nothing else, we are going to be using this technology in space, and so the knowledge generated by these companies will be useful.
If you live in Manitoba it probably makes sense.
California, not at all.
Though heated greenhouses augmented with lights will have a MUCH lower production cost.
In the future there will be vertical farms that are 50 stories and 100 stories tall. Mega Cities will basically feed themselves. They won’t need thousands of square miles of farms and ranches to feed them.
Megacities then will be able to grow without any real limits.
How big can they get? They can spread out to encompass the entire planet with current technology
How high can they get?
The book of Revelations puts them as pretty darn tall. Almost too tall to believe. The height of the city of Revelations is too big by modern standards to believe. But vertical farms and next generation nuclear reactors will give them them the water energy and food needed to scale the vast heights needed to meet the book of revelations specs.
Maybe some of the new materials being developed today like carbon nanotubes or graphene will be able to build to heights envisioned by the book of revelations.
As a kid I worked in greenhouses in Southern California. I turn 60 in February.
Cool...and makes sense.
3 min, YouTube.
Robots do everything and they do not cr*p in your salad.
And they don’t shoot your daughter at the end of a SanFran peir, EITHER:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtwNKga6thw
Disney has been experimenting with hydroponics since EPCOT opened around 1970. Many of the greens served in Disney World restaurants are produced that way.
If EPCOT opened in 1970 why wasn’t I able to visit it during our vacation in 1977?
Do these veggies have an real food value? Or just filler for the gut? I’m afraid of chemically grown foods. Eating a cardboard box is probably healthier.
What chemicals? All crops are grown with fertilizers which are chemicals. Almost no manure is used as fertilizer in commercial farming these days.
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