The transition to vertical farming, would IMHO, allow regular farmland to transition to forest — which would help offset carbon — and reduce the cost for regular farmers bc the crops would grown in a more-controlled environment. So, what’s the holdup?
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The scale of farming is probably beyond what you can imagine, vast fields of wheat, corn, and soy just for starters. How do you make that vertical in the real world? You’d need to build the same surface area “up”, maintain those structures, have equipment to handle it, etc. Vertical farming makes sense for some non-commodity crops with relatively high per-kg sale price, where the alternatives involve a lot of expensive shipping.
Even then, it’s a nice idea that doesn’t lead to reduced costs, but increased costs.
I believe farmland is much much bigger than you think. It’s harder and more expensive to have hundreds or thousands of acres of farmland stacked on top of each other and mass-managed
Are you gonna build *900 million acres* of structures to do it?
The infrastructure cost is absolutely immense, orders of magnitude beyond everything we’ve ever built. We have entire states dedicated to farmland.
Vertical farming is much more expensive than traditional farming. Most estimates have it at ~3-5x as expensive as traditional farming. It also requires more power usage per acre of growing space than traditional farming does.
Some crops are just not suited to vertical farming as well. Think of how tall corn grows; that kind of crop isn’t exactly ideal for a vertical farm.
This is the reason that vertical farms have largely been growing plants like lettuce that are quick to harvest, low to the ground, and can be grown in high densities.
Huge upfront capital costs. The entire global GDP couldn’t make that switch in five years.
Also, political problems. There are literally hundreds of millions of dirt farmers who aren’t in love with your plan to repurpose their land and put them out of a job.
And a lot more. Civilization-scale vertical farming (and similar kinds of ag innovations) is a far-future idea that probably has legs, but it’s not a do-it-now plan.
Who’s going to pay the startup cost for building all these vertical farms? Regular farming you basically just start growing in any piece of arable land. Vertical farms require building a large building, all those racks of stacked planters/crates/whatever, lights, plumbing, etc. The demands for lighting – and consequently electricity – would especially be significant.
Then there’s the fact that vertical farms are primarily used for small plants, like cabbages, tubers, and herbs. High caloric density foods like corn, wheat, and rice aren’t grown in vertical farms.
Vertical farming is expensive.
Biggest reason is that it requires a lot of electric light in order to get similar yields to traditional farming….a lot of light.
That’s basically a non-starter right there. Because you are taking something that is current free (sunlight) and replacing it with something that costs about 12 cents per kilowatt hour. That means each square meter of crops need about 50-80 cents of electricity every day.
The main problem is the price, including for the ridiculous amount of electricity needed for artificial light.
> reduce the cost for regular farmers bc the crops would grown in a more-controlled environment
Only if you ignore startup costs
There are a few major things you’re skimming over here.
1) the majority of the world’s calories come from agronomic crops:
* wheat, rice, maize, soy. These are often called “row crops” because they very low value per individual: think about how much 100 grains of rice would be worth.
* Each rice plant is worth a fraction of a cent, and it’s the sheer volume of plants grown in “rows” that gives agronomic crops value.
* horticultural crops (annual vegetables, tomatoes, strawberries) are higher value per plant, and the only realistic candidates for controlled atmosphere agriculture.
2) vertical farming requires insane amounts of resources and carbon to start with. .
* Greenhouse glassing, steel framework, PVC towers, pumps, tanks, mixing tanks, nozzles, fans, supplemental lighting, concrete, tables, germination chambers, etc.
* The fossil fuel, resource, and energy requirements to build a single greenhouse is insane. Row crops have been bred for years to be efficiently grown outside: minimal spraying, soil prep, drought and salinity tolerance, disease resistance
* Then the actual electricity of running these things: you still need fertilizers (synthetic work best for hydroponics) and pesticides.
3) which leads me to the idea that there are not pests in indoor farming.
* On the contrary: indoor grows are hugely challenged by humidity, extremes in heat/cold, and air flow.
* These grows are not hermetically sealed and aphid populations (as an example) can explode in a warm greenhouse with no predators or wind to discourage their growth.
* Fungus and infections, once in a system, requires bleaching and sanitation of ALL lines (tanks, towers, all plastics) to get rid of, or you’re showering your plants with spores. You need to clear out your entire space to clear out disease, and the time you’re not growing, you’re losing money
4) farming is extremely expensive.
* Farmers have the capacity to make a lot of money in a given year, and sometimes do. However, the cost to farm every year is extraordinarily high.
* You need to buy seed that matches yield, performance, and disease resistance requirements to even consider being competitive. This seed is usually patented, and expensive on its own
* You need to have a tractor (new: about $1k per horsepower, think about how much diesel and hp you need to drive a tractor around) with specialized implements (discer, harrow/till, sprayers, sprinkler systems, fertilizer distribution)
* You need fertilizer and pesticides (organic or not) which you need trucked in in huge volumes
* You have to pay for all of these (diesel and maintenance for tractors) every year, and you don’t know if a new wheat rust will devastate your crop, how futures traders will impact your sale prices, if it rains enough for your dryland wheat, if water use restrictions are going to hit you to preserve some minnow species in California, or if a hailstorm hits you right before harvest and you’ve borrowed against your crop for the year. And then you need to get ready for next year, hoping it’ll be better.
* And these are big farmers–small farmers face an even more uncertain economic landscape. Very few would have the resources to pay for a 400k greenhouse (that would only be about 200 feet) on top of it all.
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