I don't know much about the power consumption and efficiency of vertical farm lighting and heating; can you share any references about them?
One thing that does occur to me is that artificial lighting wouldn't be limited by the passage of the sun, so crop growth could potentially continue 24 hours a day.
The original comment suggested putting the farm below apartment buildings ("below grade" means underground).
It's extremely costly to provide sufficient light to grown plants, as photosynthesis isn't terribly efficient. Natural sunlight is significantly stronger than what people tend to expect.
Not only that, but you would need to move massive amounts of air to keep the plants happy, plus the humidity from being underground and all the water they need. Beyond that, you need to go quite a bit underground to feed a sufficient number of people, which isn't always feasible depending on the type of soil and water table, etc
Final note, most plants do better not getting 24 hours of light. They can only grow just so fast and need to photosynthesize just so much.
That's a lot of work (meaning higher prices for people who need to eat) for very little gain.
Vertical farming is far less resource intensive, using LEDS powered by solar or wind and gravity flow designs. I posted this in another comment but here is very brief video talking about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5clOYWsNhhk
I have other resources should you wish and I ton of personal experience. I have 3 Hydroponic systems (1 off the shelf, 2 custom designed by me) and 2 Aquaponics systems. The custom ones took 3 months to recoup the costs of materials vs the cost of produce, though the liquid fertilizer is a cost and input that I don't love. I've switched most of my effort to Aquaponics (Aquaculture - raising fish, which provides a natural fertilizer), I have 1 microsetup growing herbs and microgreens that has been running for 1 year. Only inputs are water and fish food, I clean it 1 once every 3 months since the plants act as a natural filter to clean the water.
This is completely misinformed, there are tons of vertical Hydroponic and aquaponic farms already in production that are thriving at much lower resource costs. Solar panels powering LED's and gravity flow water make a massive difference. For example:
US farmland occupies 895 million acres (3.6M km^2) [1]. Average solar irradiance on most US farmland is about 200 W/m^2 [2]. By being generous and assuming vertical farming is 100x more efficient than natural photosynthesis, the energy requirements come out to 7.2 terawatts of generating capacity. In contrast, the US currently has 1.1 terawatts of generating capacity. [3] Vertical farming isn't just uneconomical: it's completely absurd.
jka|3 years ago
One thing that does occur to me is that artificial lighting wouldn't be limited by the passage of the sun, so crop growth could potentially continue 24 hours a day.
zdragnar|3 years ago
It's extremely costly to provide sufficient light to grown plants, as photosynthesis isn't terribly efficient. Natural sunlight is significantly stronger than what people tend to expect.
Not only that, but you would need to move massive amounts of air to keep the plants happy, plus the humidity from being underground and all the water they need. Beyond that, you need to go quite a bit underground to feed a sufficient number of people, which isn't always feasible depending on the type of soil and water table, etc
Final note, most plants do better not getting 24 hours of light. They can only grow just so fast and need to photosynthesize just so much.
That's a lot of work (meaning higher prices for people who need to eat) for very little gain.
jaegerpicker|3 years ago
I have other resources should you wish and I ton of personal experience. I have 3 Hydroponic systems (1 off the shelf, 2 custom designed by me) and 2 Aquaponics systems. The custom ones took 3 months to recoup the costs of materials vs the cost of produce, though the liquid fertilizer is a cost and input that I don't love. I've switched most of my effort to Aquaponics (Aquaculture - raising fish, which provides a natural fertilizer), I have 1 microsetup growing herbs and microgreens that has been running for 1 year. Only inputs are water and fish food, I clean it 1 once every 3 months since the plants act as a natural filter to clean the water.
jaegerpicker|3 years ago
One is being built minutes from my house https://verticalharvestfarms.com/locations/westbrook-maine/
Also The Netherlands are leading the world at this type of farming, here is a short video about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5clOYWsNhhk
chroem-|3 years ago
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/196104/total-area-of-lan...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance
[3] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...