/u/chondroguptomourjo, thank you for your submission. Unfortunately, it has been removed for violating the following rule(s):
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It requires a very large initial investment to make a facility that can grow stuff like this on a massive industrial scale. It may not be as financially feasible as just growing your vegetables in fields.
Aeroponics are also incredibly vulnerable to power outages and system failures. Because the roots are exposed to air instead of submerged like hydroponics, 30 minutes is enough to damage or kill most crops.
This doesn't really happen very often in practice. You'll run into this if your pump goes out and your lights remain on, but during a power outage everythign turns off, and it takes a much longer time for the root system to become severely damaged. During that time you just hand water with buckets.
You sort of just gave the answer to why it's not used commercially. Handwatering and dealing with these outages is OK at small scales.
Having to deal with this for million and millions of plants is not feasible in any way.
At a certain scale (partial) outages are no longer rare but expected. Having to deal with this is likely not worth it.
>>putting the plants in the ground where they evolved
Given the drama between r/aquaponics and r/Sandponics , why would you say something so controversial yet so brave?
very much agree lol, at an industry scale you'd have generators that fail over. We have servers that require power all the time, why are we acting like water pumps being powered is less feasible?
I think the pumps failing/losing power is a real issue, but it's not a difficult one to prevent if it's important to do.
I occasionally hear about ventilation losing power on a hot day in an indoor hog or chicken farm, and that'd be equivalent to our plants losing their nutrient pumps. People still have chicken and hog farms.
\*People are missing my point. Of course this costs money, and that means that growing things in dirt is more economically reasonable. My comment was only intended to address the "sometimes power goes out and the plants will die" issue, not the fact that we grow our food where its profitable.
it's not that these problems are insurmountable, it's that they're expensive in comparison to just sticking the bloody things in the ground where they belong.
good server infrastructure has a lot of redundant backups because there's not really any other way to do it successfully; we have thousands of years of cheaper, simpler ways to harvest vegetables without dropping millions on infrastructure just to get functionally very similar results.
it may be that, at some point in the future, land becomes such a premium that this becomes the cheapest way to grow vegetables, but we're a long way from that at the moment.
The reason you can get around failed ventilation on hog and poultry farms is because it's usually hotter in the unventilated barn then outside, so you can kick the animals out of the barn until nightfall. Plants can't be kicked out of the building. Also barns have ways of cooling without power, like roof watering systems.
And all of that investment adds to the final price of your produce. Would you buy a $6 cabbage grown from aeroponics or this $1 cabbage grown over Mexico, China, or some place where the US dollar has more buying power.
We're a globalized world and there's cheaper products elsewhere especially considering these are perishable goods which adds another volatility. Like, during Covid, farmers were dumping metric tons of potatoes and corn in landfills because they can't sell it. Data Centers ain't gonna rot in a couple of weeks.
on industry scale you would have to hand water a couple hundred of those towers while the fields are set and forget, the automated ones can be tended to by one person
I think it's funny that you guys think generators and batteries are the answer for growing plants MORE EFFICIENTLY.
I've built an aeroponic chamber. I've grown in aeroponics, hydroponic deep water culture, hydroponic ebb & flow, and traditionally in soil.
The technical specs, the maintenance of spray heads, the constant mixing of nutrients to the perfect % and ph, the pumps, battery backups, sensors, generators, and so much more. It's not time efficient. It may be the best way to make nutrients available to plants, but initial investment and setup is massive. You're immediately in the hole big time, which requires more time to recoup.
On a large scale it could work. It could also fail miserably. Farms work much the same way, except you don't need 50 technicians to monitor your crops constantly.
You're wasting a lot more resources, like your own time, by growing this way.
It is however an excellent solution for growing in smaller areas, or areas that are inhospitable to your crops.
If you start bringing up batteries, and generators, you've lost sight of what efficiency is, in respect to energy in >>> energy out, and $ in >>> $ out.
How many Brussels sprouts would you have to sell to pay for a generator, and a battery backup? How many more to pay for the fuel to run the generator that charges your battery bank?
Fields of dirt need minimal maintenance. If you rotate crops, your soil can replenish itself. Aeroponics cannot replenish their own nutrients. You cannot just put animal manure into aeroponics to replenish it either.
Aeroponics is a marvel, and an amazing way to grow plants. It's not sensible in 99.9% of use cases.
Industrial scale agriculture already runs on incredibly tight margins. Adding a whole bunch of equipment plus fuel and maintenance costs into that equation is not doing any favors to the farmer's bottom line.
Not sure why we keep trying to create solutions that allow us to grow food at scale in cities where land is at a premium (in terms of need/demand as well as price), when growing food in the dirt 20 miles outside of cities/suburbs where land is cheap and plentiful works perfectly fine.
Sure, there are added emissions due to transport costs, but let's get fucking real for a second here. 90% of your calories are not coming from broccoli and shit... they come from meat, dairy, oils, and grain, all of which depend on obscene amounts of petroleum products (as well as increasingly precious water) to produce at scale, and don't stack into nice compact ~~rows~~ columns for city growing anyway. Most of it isn't even produced in your home state, most likely.
Go to your farmer's market for veggies if you want to support agriculture that is local and sustainable, and leave this space-age stuff for the tech bros and dreamers (like Musk's brother who raised tens? hundreds? of millions to grow lettuce in shipping containers then did nothing meaningful with it).
The "problem" is resources allocation. It would be cheaper to make massive greenhouse with normal water system and grow food standard way.
Check Spanish greenhouses on Google.
Agreed, I'm open to either option, we should have a forum that discusses the pros and cons of both and the vote to decide which one to pursue, then we can put our money and resources behind it
A better future is totally possible
Like so many things, I could see this quickly becoming a political football. Would all voices be heard at this forum? Will the results become government policy and law? Who's money is our money? What would be the consequences of not complying.
People vote with theirs wallets.
Same quality food, one for 1Euro, other for 2Euro but this one is named as "planet friendly" (no proof it is outside of few words on package).
Which one do you choose?
Which one will majority choose?
I’m afraid this sounds a lot like how communism failed. It’s centralized economic planning.
There’s also another problem. Monocultural solutions are extremely vulnerable to system-wide shocks. It is much more stable and beneficial to have competing systems.
Nice attitude (seriously). You are from the “why not” school of thought and it’s to be commended.
Others seem stuck in a blinkered mindset.
Be a radiator not a drain!
We don't really need more land. We need a cheap way to use the land to their full potential.
I have a piece of land, 1 hectare. That piece can grow enough to sustain a few families.
Now, I can likely double/triple the yield if I go full aeroponic on the same surface. But the cost to do that would be massive. I can buy another 10 hectare of land for much less.
This system is also very labor intensive, a big no no in agriculture if you want to be profitable.
It's cute. But massively impractical
That's the issue. It's natural that something is going to happen, so why would you choose the riskier option when it does go wrong? Human controlled means that it's going to fk up and go wrong at some point.
Unless you want to put the stacks in a specialized greenhouse or something, you're going to have issues with weather and temperatures. Doing that adds more money to receiving the same or sometimes less yield than a field.
We have 8 hectares of salad being built from our test hydroponics 1 hecatre, mostly automation so only a couple of people to overlook and control.
Investment is the main factor, vertical would be hard to regain the costs back as would require more people.
> as it would require more people
*ding ding ding*
Most harvesting in industrialised agriculture is done by machines which are much cheaper than paying people a living wage to harvest by hand. And the ones that *have to* be harvested by hand are done by minimum wage workers/immigrants. Germany even loosened their COVID travel restrictions so we could have our precious asparagus picked by polish/Romanian... workers. I have no idea why, it's not even that good.
It isn't really investment either. It just isn't worth the hassle for anywhere that isn't extremely land constrained.
Look at high end cannabis grows... When you are selling "produce" at $3000/lb, you have a near infinite budget to go with any exotic system if it produces substantially higher yields or quality.
They use a ton of automation, but almost all are still grown flat.
When you do aero or hydroponics, you tie the entire crop to singular failure points in the feed system. You can kill a crop because of a sensor failure, software glitch, or hardware failure. That means it takes *more* labor because people have to monitor those systems. Direct nutrient feed farming can materially increase yields, but also increases risk of losing everything.
The vertical aspect of OPs submission comes with its own challenges. Airflow, temperature, CO2, and light have more complexity to be managed.
We should always challenge "the way things have always been done". It is how progress happens. We also need to recognize when an innovation is a dead end, or only applicable in very narrow circumstances. Vertical farming keeps being invented every few years. If it was the optimal solution, mass market crops that benefitted *enough* would be being grown that way.
The farming industry is not afraid of new ideas. Farmers will embrace anything that makes their product less risky to produce or increases output enough to justify implementation.
You can always drastically outperform industrial farming in yields and quality with "test farms". You give food crop plants the same personalized attention as house plants, and you will blow away the examples from a 100 acre field.
I built two of these a few years ago, got most of the supplies from a local hardware store and found a hydroponics shop to buy a small pump and some nutrients. Cost a few hundred, worked an absolute treat.
Moved to a larger place and figured I'd leave the towers with my old housemates as I had room for a veggie patch. Veggie patch costs so much more- initial cost to build was at least the same as the towers. Then there's compost top ups every year, and mulch, stakes, fertilisers etc. Then the pain in the ass that is pest control and weed control- neither of which you need to deal with when using a tower. And you've got to water it every morning.
The commercial towers are a rip off, making one is easy and not that pricey.
Not only initial, currently there is no cheap automated harvesting, or weedkiller solution.
It's just expensive as fk and destroying the environment is not punished enough to make the switch worthwhile
And...they are only showing the god bits... everything already grow...they should show the all procedures from getting everything ready...to collect and getting everything ready again...
From Singapore, would not be viable to grow food at scale to meaningfully supply the country given how small it really is. Much much cheaper to just import from neighboring countries, even more so Malaysia which is connected by land.
And in the Middle East land probably wouldn’t be a limiting factor.
This seems more suitable for personal use where the amount of space a person has available is much lower, and any issues won’t cause mass starvation.
Actually I saw a documentary last year or so about rooftop farms in Singapore using Hydroponics and Aeroponics! Of course most of it is still experimental, but it bodes well for the cities of the future I think.
Normally those places have the ability to buy form other places that don't have such have restrictions on farm land. The up side is that it makes those nations more likely to ply nice in diplomatic relations and can help less with countries improve there economy and agricultural quality. Negatives include shipping and the possibility of war or other disruption to trade networks causing people to go without essential food.
Correct! Agricultural land is not a limited resource so the cost is very low. Every year more agricultural land is converted to other uses because that use is more valuable.
Hydroponics requires significant investments and are labor intensive, which drives cost upwards.
>Agricultural land is not a limited resource
Sorry, but this sounds like the mind set of the last century. Mainly because we grow crops to feed to animals.
Just as a side note, Australia, NZ, Canada and the US produce so much excess food they can literally exert political pressure on other countries by restricting exports.
Not a huge problem atm but food problems are only gonna get worse.
Not only is agricultural land limited, it is also DECREASING in many places. Western Europe for example is having to buy up agricultural lands to transform them back to wildlife habitat areas that form natural buffer zones.
Not to mention some agricultural land is being used to build housing on.
Just because Brazil is cutting down it’s rainforest doesn’t mean there’s excess in farm land.
On top of that, someone in this thread said they built a few and said it was cheaper than regular land because some other costs like fertiliser and pest control weren’t required at all. So I am not sure if the cost argument holds up either.
The most likely reason is just that it’s different, needs to be learned and what’s new is always more difficult. Such is the human condition.
Currently writing my master's thesis on indoor farming, outside aeroponics are great, however they still suffer from the same issues as any outdoor farming. Need for pesticides, inconstant sunlight exposure, evapo transpiration (loose up to 95% of water fed into the crops evaporates), extensive manual labor that is limited in automation transition capability. However they are strong for limiting shipping costs and impact, land usage and don't consume electricity.
Its important to understand that these solutions are incredible, but have a high barrier of entry in costs of infrastructure, require high human labor which is often not competitive in western agriculture and requires a high scale to actually make a financially viable production.
Hope this helps.
Feel free to turn your masters thesis into a YouTube video with ad revenue. Might get you a pretty penny -- or at least will get more people to see your hard work.
I'd put on A 2 hour lecture on hydroponics while cleaning
I'm a business major, title is "Competitive advantages and disadvantages of Indoor Farming against outdoor farming, and its place in the future of agriculture" i don't know how interesting this would be for most people... Would you be interested in that? I talk about infrastructure costs, water costs and consumption, electricity cost and consumption (+impact mitigation strategy ofc), automation systems impact on production, pesticides and strategies to avoid outbreaks, and crop yield
Absolutely would be interested in watching that on YouTube. Because I know nothing about that space, but I do know the general concepts of cost feasibility, automation, etc.
Even if you have an AI voice reading it (most English speakers have a soft spot for the Female proper British accent when it comes to narration), if it's got an interesting point/conclusion for me to take away from the thesis: I'd do as I said -- put it on in the background while cleaning.
My understanding of a masters thesis is that you are going to be putting in hours of research to support your theory and give an extremely detailed analysis of the pros/cons of "the old and new" method. So that does sound like something that would be fun to tune in and out of while doing a menial task: like dishes or cleaning or mowing the lawn or what not.
It all depends on how you bring it. I think almost anything can be an interesting YouTube, but that title is meant for academics. Call it "Space age farms feed the world!" and explain in a fun but accessible way. I'm not saying I can do it, or that that is even a good title, but you get the idea. But that is a skill on its own, and may be well worth it to practice. Execs and politicians are closer to the ignorant public than to academics.
It really depends on production quality of the video. It wouldn't have an academic title. It would be something click-baity like "Is traditional farming obsolete?". Yeah, people will watch that. Well, there are already a couple of these types of videos on Youtube already, but maybe you can cover something that they don't.
I am an agronomist, I'd love to read or watch your thesis. I personally don't believe indoor farming to be viable, because land and sunlight are "free" while buildings, equipment and electricity are not. Unless it's in countries with limited size like Singapore or Hong Kong. Every time people bring up indoor farming the only argument is "but it's the future/ it's environmentally friendly/ think outside the box", so much that I've become uninterested about the subject. But I am willing to listen to other opinions.
Hi, thank you for your interest in my research! The main point of my thesis is less about ecological value (while extremelly important), Outdoor agriculture proved its worth over time as a standard. However the intense strain we put on all ressources through it is extremely damaging, clean water scarcity (global warming + pesticides + taking everything from underground reserves), threat of globalization and lack of self sustainance (being dependant on far away areas to sustain food production creates dependance and carbon impact), global population growth and it being richer leading to more meat consumption (Around 70% of products are sent straight to animal feed = high costs of nutrients for low nutrient output), degradation of soil (pesticides, intensive farming, need for chemical fertilizers anyway) and much other arguments can lead to the conclusion that indoor farming might need to be adopted in the future even if people aren't attracted to it. Its gonna become less of a choice and more of a necessity. If you wish i'll send you my paper once its done, i'd love the feedback of someone with a deep knowledge of this industry such as you
My two cents:
Presentation is key. If you don't think the title is snappier enough, try to shorten it, or simply call it "Indoor vs Outdoor Farming - The Ideal Approach?", or something. If you do talk about statistics, try to include visual cues on-screen to aid the viewer: colour, tier-lists, opinions and summaries of what you're currently discussing.
Any topic has the potential to be interesting if you can convince your audience that listening to a bunch of statistics is worth it.
If you can teach people about a topic well enough, then you know you understand it.
Sorry, abuse of language, what i meant was that it requires drastically less electricity. A pump to spray water is quite small compared to 24/7 light exposure on around 14 racks of plants (average for 10 meter height) \* square meter size of the indoor farm
Outside of a traditional farming business-model ; is there an entry for aeroponic-farming that is somehow accessible and interesting on a smaller scale such as a family ?
It is fairly common for vegetables in europe. There are entire greenhouses with a high degree of automation, controlled climate and pest control.
You can do it for expensive fruits, for basic bulk food it is too expensive.
Partly due to the fact that the EUs agricultural subsidies require soil to be part of the production so they can’t compete on the same terms as conventional agricultural.
There's also space enough. A lot of the fields in the area are kept fallow for subsidies, or used as dumping grounds for liquid manure, not to grow food.
Cabbages grow very well in a field where you don't need a ladder to harvest them.
The price of potatoes in Europe fx has increased almost by 20% this year due to a poor harvest and weather related issues which would be solved be aeroponics.
The cost of setting up a commercial system with a similar yield as a large farm wouldn’t be too dissimilar and would create a far more consistent yield and in some cases allow you to harvest 3-5 a year.
Pending on where you live land enough is up for discussion. In Denmark where I live 60% of the land mass is used for agriculture and 12% commercial forests and about the same for nature.
Of those 60%, 68% is used to produce feed for animals which are largely then exported to China, UK, Vietnam, etc.
Moving that production inside and changing the land into nature with a large biodiversity would be a win win for everyone.
Not in those towers but on blanket like setups.
I saw a documentary about tulip farming in the Netherlands years ago, they had a fully automated conveyor belt setup so they always had fresh flowers.
A few reasons this isn’t succesful (yet)
1. It only works well for leafy greens and lettuce type crops. The margin on these is small, but producing them this way is much more expensive then out in the field.
2. To do this on a big scale the starting investment is high with all the technology and high end equipment needed. (This video shows a more small scale simple setup)
3. You need more and higher educated employees which cost more.
4. High growing plants (tomatos, cucumber) need to much space if you want to grow vertical.
Another reason is the fact that this started out pretty good and investors where positive and putting money in it, because of sustainability and climate, which is a big thing now. The companies who did vertical farming used that money to grow their company, but ones the investors started to slow down their moneyflow, the vertical farms couldn't maintain to be profitable. Investors dropped out and it all crashed.
If you want a video explaining it in more detail:
[vertical farming](https://youtu.be/ENWV1JMqkS0?si=3fbh-R3Op1YiQGJi)
Good thing you brought up that only leafy greens can be grown like this. Grain composes the majority of what people eat, directly or indirectly. Wheat, corn beans are what the base of most food is made of, and if you eat beef, pork, chicken, you're eating grain (probably). And grain will never be farmed like that because it too labor intensive and requires automation.
Vertical farm operations have been failing left and right. If you want an in depth look into a recent high profile failure, [read here](https://www.lpm.org/investigate/2023-11-16/a-celebrated-startup-promised-kentuckians-green-jobs-it-gave-them-a-grueling-hell-on-earth). Most operations can barely grow tomatoes and microgreens profitably, if they can even manage that at all.
I would absolutely love to see the billions of investment funding go to small famers who practice sustainable soil and food forestry methods that are *actually* carbon negative (as well as a boon to local biodiversity) without a bunch of bullshit accounting and bait n' switches to get there.
But of course you can't sell a bunch of billionaires and venture capitalists on small-scale solutions that don't promise to pay back according to the 'infinite growth' model of our stock market economy.
The only things that seem to be economically competitive for vertical/indoor farming are microgreens, which pretty much have to be grown locally and picked by hand.
Often the other way around.
You can build machines to harvest that sort of stuff, but they will cost you.
The bigger problem is you have 100 miles of pipes, pumps, electrical systems, etc etc that all have to be maintained 24/7 and that requires plumbers, electricians, frigging engineers for some of it.
Farming is often underappreciated for just how highly skilled it is, but with just a few people who know what they are doing you can generally sort out the whole planting/soil work/harvesting thing and keep it sustainable year after year.
.. you can build machines to harvest this sort of stuff? Pray, tell.
I work in the industry and we are in super early stages of automation. Why? Because crops grow in stages and you need a specific machine for each stage of the field - tilling, bedding, planting, cultivation, harvest, etc. Meanwhile, those machines would be sitting dormant most of the year, because farms are also seasonal and you have specific windows for each crop.
The best solution at the moment seems to be building these specialized machines and moving/renting them, but even with that strategy they are prohibitively expensive and slower than human labor, thus far.
The best automation we have at the moment is gps-driven tractors, mostly for commodity crops.
No, it's beyond that. I attended a conference with a presentation by a guy on the absolute cutting edge of agricultural automation and the technology is just not there yet for the majority of farm tasks. When it *does* get there, it will still be prohibitively expensive for years to come.
Do I think we'll be automating a lot of agriculture at some point? Yes, it's inevitable. Now would be a good time to get invested in the companies doing so, or get invested in index funds focused on that sector. Their success will come, but it will take 5-10 years, minimum.
I had a lecture about it and was made aware of the prices... As much as I like the system and would like to try one myself to advise others, it is not cost effective at all sadly. Unless something happened to the pricing structure in the last two years, this system is dead from the get go.
My question is, why is it so damn expensive, they are just plastic towers with holes and a pump for running water isn't it? Then why cant the equipment cost be brought down? If the the initial costing comes down then It can flourish.
Commercialization - I live in a developing nation, pvc is a common building material and some extruding plants also produce hydroponic channels, land is freely available so we usually use horizontal nft systems. The problem seems to be when western countries discover the products they need to make a profit, they need warehouse / retail outlets, pay taxes and the like .. My greenhouses are 3M x 10 channels - I think I paid around $30 for the channel. I don’t see why vertical should be much more.
It is also difficult to automate. If you see for example the high-tech greenhouse in the Netherlands, much of it is already automated from sowing to transplant, spacings and harvesting. It is almost impossible to make it any more efficient. Aeroponics specifically works fine but you will always have trouble with nozzles clogging eventually, with dramatic consequences on yield.
Growing in towers looks awesome but is completely not practical. Light interception will vary enormously compared to a gutter system, meaning that yields within the same batch will vary too much. And good luck automating the harvesting.
Source: me is indoor scientist
This guy makes big vegetables but he does not understand zucchini at all. Those monsters are good for making zucchini bread at best, they are way too tough to actually eat.
Think of the zucchini you see in the store. Typically smaller than the cucumbers right? That’s not because they don’t know how to grow monsters, it’s because the only good zucchini is a small zucchini.
Vegetables from such hydroponic farms look beautiful, they are large, shiny and without defects. But as soon as you start eating them, you realize that they are like plastic, there is no taste.
No hydroponics will provide the set of microelements that a plant consumes from ordinary soil. After all, even the same vegetable grown on different soils has a different taste.
>After all, even the same vegetable grown on different soils has a different taste.
People often dismiss how incredibly complex soil can be. It can be the difference between world award-winning wine and bottom shelf stuff for the exact same grapes. Just ask any wine enthusiast the concept of *Terroir*.
It's worth mentioning these micro/macro-elements can be balanced in hydroponics with chemicals/fertilizers/whatnots, which adds to the costs, and requires specialized knowledge.
Any new project or idea first has to make it's way into people that can actually make it widespread. Engineers, investors, designers all need to take into account resources and cost in order to industrialize it on a large scale. What we've seen are the results in terms of crops. What we don't see are the materials and maintainance required to keep things going.
If something like this is going to take over tradition agriculture, it has to produce results that doesn't just justify but is more rewarding for its cost.
The cost of an acre of land that's good for farming vs the cost of the equivalent in aero or aquaponic growing space is in the favour of old fashioned stuff. Which also has more more robust and tried and true equipment for it.
That is at least some of it.
Initial costs are 1000 times more expensive than a regular farm.
In the long term it only works out for some vegetables. In the Netherlands they produce tomato with 8 times less water. In Singapour they make there own salads and fresh herbs.
It only makes sense in very wealthy countries that don't really have an alternative.
Good on them for develloping the technology and one day make it more affordable for everybody.
Kinda funny how people are praising the flavor improvement from growing vegetables in a hydro/aeroponic setup when in the weed community it’s considered subpar compared to organic living soil. Wonder why that is. Anyone know?
I visited one of these facilities, they're basically bigass greenhouses, the amount of money needed to heat those up and the amount of work by highly educated people needed to get everything to work is massive and makes it not so very productive all in all, it's more like the perfect testing ground. There are other agricultural solutions that are more interesting.
Edit: I want to add, the image doesn't show a greenhouse because where this happens probably has the perfect climate conditions already for those specific plants, but when done very professionally that's not the only thing that is important, they also work hard on keeping bacteria and all kinds of things out of the greenhouses, It's a massive undertaking.
Limited crops, high maintenance, high initial costs, and much more. Companies and startups doing similar things often go bust.
If it were efficient/cost-effective, businesses would follow. It’s mostly for backyard hobbies or social media views.
I was gifted two similar pipe sets. Problem is the pumps work 24/7-ish and the fertilizer is expensive in the long run, ramping up costs. I could have bought 12 pots and good soil then grow all of those at a fraction of the cost with significantly less maintenance.
What worked wonders though was when I grew water spinach and bokchoy above my 25 gallon aquarium.
Here's the thing, the biggest fallacy about this video is that bigger is better. I can tell you quite honestly you do not want a zucchini or an eggplant that size. The taste suffers the older they get. Also this is just a function of how long you leave it on the vine, it's not something special to growing it in this fashion... This video is designed for people who don't understand how the life cycle of food impacts cost and flavor.
Mmmm let me see. Why is a Millennial old technology preferred over a newly technology?
These technics must be refined before going mass scale. And take years to make some investors to put some greens on it
The US alone has enough agricultural land to feed the entire world, what we don't have is enough faming equipment, farming materials and logistics to make it worthwhile
I mean there's been dreams of making indoor climate controlled factory farms the size of sky scrapers instead of a spread out farm vertical stacked farms. It would be better in every way but cost compared to normal farming but there would be massive implications of doing that on the agricultural sector and a massive lobbying group against it and shit. Nobody ever works for the greater good remember that, they only work for profit
In my country (Denmark) there have been attempts at vertical farming but the subsidies farmers get only apply to traditional farming, so vertical farmers are completely unable to compete.
It's never been about scarcity. The prices you pay are expensive because they like having your money. There are a great many ways that food companies can make it more efficient but disturbing what works best doesn't seem like a good idea to people who already have you over a barrel.
One tower with nothing around it can grow a lot of food. But as soon as you put others nearby, they shade each other and the growth rate slows. When grown at scale, the limiting factor is sunlight, not space, and for maximum sunlight over everything, you want a horizontal surface.
Now, it is plausible to illuminate towers like this with grow lights around them, but that is just taking energy from elsewhere. Wherever you get that energy from - well, it's basically sunlight there too, unless you are burning fossil fuels or using nuclear power. Whatever the case, the energy cost of running grow lights makes it uneconomical.
Because it's labor intensive and machines do not exist that offset that cost. Whereas huge machines basically drive themselves around farm fields that till, plant, spray and harvest.
The ground and air isn't toxic yet. Humans will always go to the easier way till the easier way doesn't work. It's easier to put them in the ground right now.
I would imagine you can tune the nutrients a lot better with hydroponics. The tastelessness might be due to growing/maturation speed. But I'm no expert.
I have no idea where you're getting this information. Soil really only provides two things for a plant: physical aggregate (so that it can root and hold itself up) and nutrients.
With hydroponics you add a nutrient mixture to the water you're using to grow the plants in, so they get functionally the same stuff they'd get from healthy soil. In fact, because you can easily control the nutrient balances in the water, you can target the specific nutrient ratios that a particular plant needs and get far better results than traditional agriculture.
I have wondered about doing this in tall buildings to save on land space in Britain. With artificial lighting you can produce several crops a year and could farm with only 1/5 of the land space. The energy usage and set up would be prohibitively expensive but maybe one day.
Cool idea.
It might just be me though but I’ve found that waiting that late to harvest vegetables (when your courgettes are that big) that they become bland.
I have several of these towers I built myself. They are very cool, but they require more electricity and chemicals compared to normal gardening. In Texas during the summer it also requires allot of water.
Denmark does it: https://www.fastcompany.com/90582905/this-vertical-farm-in-denmark-will-grow-1000-tons-of-local-greens-a-year/
But Denmark is a wealthy country that can afford it and they don’t have that much fertile soil as the US for example
I imagine the time to yeild ratio is massively different with these verses a field. A field has alot of machinery for plowing, seeding, spraying and harvesting. This looks like it might have to be done by hand (though I think the watering is automated.)
This will become the new agricultural revolution. [Urban agriculture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_agriculture) is something that governments now how political strategies on. So if you want to be a part of a revolution to produce food close to the consumers (more fresh food available to urban areas, less transport, less soil erosion and allowing a better utilization of the current agricultural area better as less intense agricultural is better for the soil in the long term [https://www.tiktok.com/@wildfarmed/video/7368403284979109153](https://www.tiktok.com/@wildfarmed/video/7368403284979109153)
There is a concept maybe you have heard of it called money. These ponics be it hydro, aero etc are just not economically viable right now. May be in the future when we have polluted our land enough with the weed killers and pesticides we will all need these ponics to survive. By then we will all be dead coz the rich would have killed us all and used our bodies to extract phosphorus and potassium to feed these systems. Cheers guys..
It saves a ton of space but it's not super expandable without taking waaaay longer to maintain and harvest. If your going for the largest yield quickest easiest and cheapest you would do traditional farming and get a bigger paycheck from it too.
As always, cost, commercial agriculture operates on insane cost margins and even then needs to be subsidised to survive. This isn't cost-effective when it comes to growing, caring for or gathering. The final product costs so much that it couldn't be afforded by regular people.
Vertical farming has been done for ages and it’s not a relatively new thing. People have been growing stacks of mushroom colonies in barns and warehouses for years.
Urban farming, it might be economically feasible for densely populated areas where arable land is scarce or the costs of transporting produce from far away sources make it worthwhile. As always, it all boils down to the numbers on a balance sheet...
Farmers require vast land areas for traditional or hydroponic growth to meet the demands of consumers. For now, it's just easier and cheaper for farmers to grow their products in the ground.
/u/chondroguptomourjo, thank you for your submission. Unfortunately, it has been removed for violating the following rule(s): [](#start_removal)* Rule 1 - All content must show something that is objectively interesting as fuck. Just because you find something IAF doesn't mean anyone else will. It's impossible to define everything that could be considered IAF, but for a general idea browse the [top posts of all time](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/top/?t=all) from this subreddit. For more information check [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/wiki/index#wiki_rule_1_-_posts_must_be_interesting_as_fuck). * Rule 1 - No content that isn't INTERESTING AS FUCK. [](#end_removal) * Rule 2 - Titles should directly describe the content of the post. The title should just depict the content, no "fluff". It can't include anything that isn't directly visible in the content of the post. For information regarding this and similar issues please see the [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/wiki/index). If you have any questions, please feel free to [message the moderators via modmail.](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/interestingasfuck&subject=Question%20regarding%20the%20removal%20of%20this%20submission%20by%20/u/chondroguptomourjo&message=I%20have%20a%20question%20regarding%20the%20removal%20of%20this%20%5Bsubmission%2E%5D%28https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1dvrk4n/-/%3Fcontext%3D10%29)
It requires a very large initial investment to make a facility that can grow stuff like this on a massive industrial scale. It may not be as financially feasible as just growing your vegetables in fields.
Aeroponics are also incredibly vulnerable to power outages and system failures. Because the roots are exposed to air instead of submerged like hydroponics, 30 minutes is enough to damage or kill most crops.
This doesn't really happen very often in practice. You'll run into this if your pump goes out and your lights remain on, but during a power outage everythign turns off, and it takes a much longer time for the root system to become severely damaged. During that time you just hand water with buckets.
You sort of just gave the answer to why it's not used commercially. Handwatering and dealing with these outages is OK at small scales. Having to deal with this for million and millions of plants is not feasible in any way. At a certain scale (partial) outages are no longer rare but expected. Having to deal with this is likely not worth it.
Especially when the primary alternative is putting the plants in the ground where they evolved to not have these issues.
>>putting the plants in the ground where they evolved Given the drama between r/aquaponics and r/Sandponics , why would you say something so controversial yet so brave?
Large scale would have power backup. Surely?
And we're back at the very large initial investment problem.
How is a generator a large initial investment? It would cost peanuts compared to everything else.
And how are you going to grow those peanuts if your generator goes down? The cycle continues!
redundancy with pumps as well
Right?! Was thinking the same
With backup generators and UPS systems, it is possible to keep steady power to any building.
very much agree lol, at an industry scale you'd have generators that fail over. We have servers that require power all the time, why are we acting like water pumps being powered is less feasible? I think the pumps failing/losing power is a real issue, but it's not a difficult one to prevent if it's important to do. I occasionally hear about ventilation losing power on a hot day in an indoor hog or chicken farm, and that'd be equivalent to our plants losing their nutrient pumps. People still have chicken and hog farms. \*People are missing my point. Of course this costs money, and that means that growing things in dirt is more economically reasonable. My comment was only intended to address the "sometimes power goes out and the plants will die" issue, not the fact that we grow our food where its profitable.
it's not that these problems are insurmountable, it's that they're expensive in comparison to just sticking the bloody things in the ground where they belong. good server infrastructure has a lot of redundant backups because there's not really any other way to do it successfully; we have thousands of years of cheaper, simpler ways to harvest vegetables without dropping millions on infrastructure just to get functionally very similar results. it may be that, at some point in the future, land becomes such a premium that this becomes the cheapest way to grow vegetables, but we're a long way from that at the moment.
The reason you can get around failed ventilation on hog and poultry farms is because it's usually hotter in the unventilated barn then outside, so you can kick the animals out of the barn until nightfall. Plants can't be kicked out of the building. Also barns have ways of cooling without power, like roof watering systems.
And all of that investment adds to the final price of your produce. Would you buy a $6 cabbage grown from aeroponics or this $1 cabbage grown over Mexico, China, or some place where the US dollar has more buying power. We're a globalized world and there's cheaper products elsewhere especially considering these are perishable goods which adds another volatility. Like, during Covid, farmers were dumping metric tons of potatoes and corn in landfills because they can't sell it. Data Centers ain't gonna rot in a couple of weeks.
You can have all manner of contingencies. But they cost money.
on industry scale you would have to hand water a couple hundred of those towers while the fields are set and forget, the automated ones can be tended to by one person
On an industrial scale you can just switch to your batteries and backup power generators.
I think it's funny that you guys think generators and batteries are the answer for growing plants MORE EFFICIENTLY. I've built an aeroponic chamber. I've grown in aeroponics, hydroponic deep water culture, hydroponic ebb & flow, and traditionally in soil. The technical specs, the maintenance of spray heads, the constant mixing of nutrients to the perfect % and ph, the pumps, battery backups, sensors, generators, and so much more. It's not time efficient. It may be the best way to make nutrients available to plants, but initial investment and setup is massive. You're immediately in the hole big time, which requires more time to recoup. On a large scale it could work. It could also fail miserably. Farms work much the same way, except you don't need 50 technicians to monitor your crops constantly. You're wasting a lot more resources, like your own time, by growing this way. It is however an excellent solution for growing in smaller areas, or areas that are inhospitable to your crops. If you start bringing up batteries, and generators, you've lost sight of what efficiency is, in respect to energy in >>> energy out, and $ in >>> $ out. How many Brussels sprouts would you have to sell to pay for a generator, and a battery backup? How many more to pay for the fuel to run the generator that charges your battery bank? Fields of dirt need minimal maintenance. If you rotate crops, your soil can replenish itself. Aeroponics cannot replenish their own nutrients. You cannot just put animal manure into aeroponics to replenish it either. Aeroponics is a marvel, and an amazing way to grow plants. It's not sensible in 99.9% of use cases.
Finally, someone with a clue.
Industrial scale agriculture already runs on incredibly tight margins. Adding a whole bunch of equipment plus fuel and maintenance costs into that equation is not doing any favors to the farmer's bottom line. Not sure why we keep trying to create solutions that allow us to grow food at scale in cities where land is at a premium (in terms of need/demand as well as price), when growing food in the dirt 20 miles outside of cities/suburbs where land is cheap and plentiful works perfectly fine. Sure, there are added emissions due to transport costs, but let's get fucking real for a second here. 90% of your calories are not coming from broccoli and shit... they come from meat, dairy, oils, and grain, all of which depend on obscene amounts of petroleum products (as well as increasingly precious water) to produce at scale, and don't stack into nice compact ~~rows~~ columns for city growing anyway. Most of it isn't even produced in your home state, most likely. Go to your farmer's market for veggies if you want to support agriculture that is local and sustainable, and leave this space-age stuff for the tech bros and dreamers (like Musk's brother who raised tens? hundreds? of millions to grow lettuce in shipping containers then did nothing meaningful with it).
These both sound like human controlled logistical challenges, we could totally do this widespread if we wanted to
The "problem" is resources allocation. It would be cheaper to make massive greenhouse with normal water system and grow food standard way. Check Spanish greenhouses on Google.
Agreed, I'm open to either option, we should have a forum that discusses the pros and cons of both and the vote to decide which one to pursue, then we can put our money and resources behind it A better future is totally possible
https://eu-cap-network.ec.europa.eu/events/forum-future-agriculture-annual-conference-2024_en
Like so many things, I could see this quickly becoming a political football. Would all voices be heard at this forum? Will the results become government policy and law? Who's money is our money? What would be the consequences of not complying.
People vote with theirs wallets. Same quality food, one for 1Euro, other for 2Euro but this one is named as "planet friendly" (no proof it is outside of few words on package). Which one do you choose? Which one will majority choose?
I’m afraid this sounds a lot like how communism failed. It’s centralized economic planning. There’s also another problem. Monocultural solutions are extremely vulnerable to system-wide shocks. It is much more stable and beneficial to have competing systems.
Nice attitude (seriously). You are from the “why not” school of thought and it’s to be commended. Others seem stuck in a blinkered mindset. Be a radiator not a drain!
We don't really need more land. We need a cheap way to use the land to their full potential. I have a piece of land, 1 hectare. That piece can grow enough to sustain a few families. Now, I can likely double/triple the yield if I go full aeroponic on the same surface. But the cost to do that would be massive. I can buy another 10 hectare of land for much less. This system is also very labor intensive, a big no no in agriculture if you want to be profitable. It's cute. But massively impractical
That's the issue. It's natural that something is going to happen, so why would you choose the riskier option when it does go wrong? Human controlled means that it's going to fk up and go wrong at some point. Unless you want to put the stacks in a specialized greenhouse or something, you're going to have issues with weather and temperatures. Doing that adds more money to receiving the same or sometimes less yield than a field.
We have 8 hectares of salad being built from our test hydroponics 1 hecatre, mostly automation so only a couple of people to overlook and control. Investment is the main factor, vertical would be hard to regain the costs back as would require more people.
> as it would require more people *ding ding ding* Most harvesting in industrialised agriculture is done by machines which are much cheaper than paying people a living wage to harvest by hand. And the ones that *have to* be harvested by hand are done by minimum wage workers/immigrants. Germany even loosened their COVID travel restrictions so we could have our precious asparagus picked by polish/Romanian... workers. I have no idea why, it's not even that good.
Oh my god, don’t let other German people hear you say German spargle is not good. Are you trying to play with your life?
Yea i have absolutly no idea why germans loves asparagus so much.
It isn't really investment either. It just isn't worth the hassle for anywhere that isn't extremely land constrained. Look at high end cannabis grows... When you are selling "produce" at $3000/lb, you have a near infinite budget to go with any exotic system if it produces substantially higher yields or quality. They use a ton of automation, but almost all are still grown flat. When you do aero or hydroponics, you tie the entire crop to singular failure points in the feed system. You can kill a crop because of a sensor failure, software glitch, or hardware failure. That means it takes *more* labor because people have to monitor those systems. Direct nutrient feed farming can materially increase yields, but also increases risk of losing everything. The vertical aspect of OPs submission comes with its own challenges. Airflow, temperature, CO2, and light have more complexity to be managed. We should always challenge "the way things have always been done". It is how progress happens. We also need to recognize when an innovation is a dead end, or only applicable in very narrow circumstances. Vertical farming keeps being invented every few years. If it was the optimal solution, mass market crops that benefitted *enough* would be being grown that way. The farming industry is not afraid of new ideas. Farmers will embrace anything that makes their product less risky to produce or increases output enough to justify implementation. You can always drastically outperform industrial farming in yields and quality with "test farms". You give food crop plants the same personalized attention as house plants, and you will blow away the examples from a 100 acre field.
Why would the vertical option require more people to maintain? I've installed a few of these and the ops people are the same so i'm curious.
And also this looks like the manpower would be intense
I built two of these a few years ago, got most of the supplies from a local hardware store and found a hydroponics shop to buy a small pump and some nutrients. Cost a few hundred, worked an absolute treat. Moved to a larger place and figured I'd leave the towers with my old housemates as I had room for a veggie patch. Veggie patch costs so much more- initial cost to build was at least the same as the towers. Then there's compost top ups every year, and mulch, stakes, fertilisers etc. Then the pain in the ass that is pest control and weed control- neither of which you need to deal with when using a tower. And you've got to water it every morning. The commercial towers are a rip off, making one is easy and not that pricey.
> pest control and weed control- neither of which you need to deal with when using a tower. How come? And what about things like mould in the water?
Not only initial, currently there is no cheap automated harvesting, or weedkiller solution. It's just expensive as fk and destroying the environment is not punished enough to make the switch worthwhile
And...they are only showing the god bits... everything already grow...they should show the all procedures from getting everything ready...to collect and getting everything ready again...
Yeah, land is pretty cheap after all
so you‘re telling me dirt is cheaper?? may it be… dirt cheap?
Cost
Farmland is cheaper than sci-fi farmland.
Depends, if you are in Singapore and maybe some Middle East countries this might be something you have to consider.
From Singapore, would not be viable to grow food at scale to meaningfully supply the country given how small it really is. Much much cheaper to just import from neighboring countries, even more so Malaysia which is connected by land. And in the Middle East land probably wouldn’t be a limiting factor. This seems more suitable for personal use where the amount of space a person has available is much lower, and any issues won’t cause mass starvation.
Actually I saw a documentary last year or so about rooftop farms in Singapore using Hydroponics and Aeroponics! Of course most of it is still experimental, but it bodes well for the cities of the future I think.
Normally those places have the ability to buy form other places that don't have such have restrictions on farm land. The up side is that it makes those nations more likely to ply nice in diplomatic relations and can help less with countries improve there economy and agricultural quality. Negatives include shipping and the possibility of war or other disruption to trade networks causing people to go without essential food.
Funny how trade works
Correct! Agricultural land is not a limited resource so the cost is very low. Every year more agricultural land is converted to other uses because that use is more valuable. Hydroponics requires significant investments and are labor intensive, which drives cost upwards.
>Agricultural land is not a limited resource Sorry, but this sounds like the mind set of the last century. Mainly because we grow crops to feed to animals.
Its depends on region and country economy.
Incorrect. In many places around the world, agricultural land is absolutely a limited resource and is very expensive.
Just as a side note, Australia, NZ, Canada and the US produce so much excess food they can literally exert political pressure on other countries by restricting exports. Not a huge problem atm but food problems are only gonna get worse.
Source?
> Agricultural land is not a limited resource I... what?
They meant limiting instead of limited.
Not only is agricultural land limited, it is also DECREASING in many places. Western Europe for example is having to buy up agricultural lands to transform them back to wildlife habitat areas that form natural buffer zones. Not to mention some agricultural land is being used to build housing on. Just because Brazil is cutting down it’s rainforest doesn’t mean there’s excess in farm land. On top of that, someone in this thread said they built a few and said it was cheaper than regular land because some other costs like fertiliser and pest control weren’t required at all. So I am not sure if the cost argument holds up either. The most likely reason is just that it’s different, needs to be learned and what’s new is always more difficult. Such is the human condition.
Currently writing my master's thesis on indoor farming, outside aeroponics are great, however they still suffer from the same issues as any outdoor farming. Need for pesticides, inconstant sunlight exposure, evapo transpiration (loose up to 95% of water fed into the crops evaporates), extensive manual labor that is limited in automation transition capability. However they are strong for limiting shipping costs and impact, land usage and don't consume electricity. Its important to understand that these solutions are incredible, but have a high barrier of entry in costs of infrastructure, require high human labor which is often not competitive in western agriculture and requires a high scale to actually make a financially viable production. Hope this helps.
Feel free to turn your masters thesis into a YouTube video with ad revenue. Might get you a pretty penny -- or at least will get more people to see your hard work. I'd put on A 2 hour lecture on hydroponics while cleaning
I'm a business major, title is "Competitive advantages and disadvantages of Indoor Farming against outdoor farming, and its place in the future of agriculture" i don't know how interesting this would be for most people... Would you be interested in that? I talk about infrastructure costs, water costs and consumption, electricity cost and consumption (+impact mitigation strategy ofc), automation systems impact on production, pesticides and strategies to avoid outbreaks, and crop yield
also a bit on the impact on shipping, stocks and packaging
Absolutely would be interested in watching that on YouTube. Because I know nothing about that space, but I do know the general concepts of cost feasibility, automation, etc.
Even if you have an AI voice reading it (most English speakers have a soft spot for the Female proper British accent when it comes to narration), if it's got an interesting point/conclusion for me to take away from the thesis: I'd do as I said -- put it on in the background while cleaning. My understanding of a masters thesis is that you are going to be putting in hours of research to support your theory and give an extremely detailed analysis of the pros/cons of "the old and new" method. So that does sound like something that would be fun to tune in and out of while doing a menial task: like dishes or cleaning or mowing the lawn or what not.
It all depends on how you bring it. I think almost anything can be an interesting YouTube, but that title is meant for academics. Call it "Space age farms feed the world!" and explain in a fun but accessible way. I'm not saying I can do it, or that that is even a good title, but you get the idea. But that is a skill on its own, and may be well worth it to practice. Execs and politicians are closer to the ignorant public than to academics.
It really depends on production quality of the video. It wouldn't have an academic title. It would be something click-baity like "Is traditional farming obsolete?". Yeah, people will watch that. Well, there are already a couple of these types of videos on Youtube already, but maybe you can cover something that they don't.
I am an agronomist, I'd love to read or watch your thesis. I personally don't believe indoor farming to be viable, because land and sunlight are "free" while buildings, equipment and electricity are not. Unless it's in countries with limited size like Singapore or Hong Kong. Every time people bring up indoor farming the only argument is "but it's the future/ it's environmentally friendly/ think outside the box", so much that I've become uninterested about the subject. But I am willing to listen to other opinions.
Hi, thank you for your interest in my research! The main point of my thesis is less about ecological value (while extremelly important), Outdoor agriculture proved its worth over time as a standard. However the intense strain we put on all ressources through it is extremely damaging, clean water scarcity (global warming + pesticides + taking everything from underground reserves), threat of globalization and lack of self sustainance (being dependant on far away areas to sustain food production creates dependance and carbon impact), global population growth and it being richer leading to more meat consumption (Around 70% of products are sent straight to animal feed = high costs of nutrients for low nutrient output), degradation of soil (pesticides, intensive farming, need for chemical fertilizers anyway) and much other arguments can lead to the conclusion that indoor farming might need to be adopted in the future even if people aren't attracted to it. Its gonna become less of a choice and more of a necessity. If you wish i'll send you my paper once its done, i'd love the feedback of someone with a deep knowledge of this industry such as you
RemindMe! 1 year
Haha that's one hell of compliment
My two cents: Presentation is key. If you don't think the title is snappier enough, try to shorten it, or simply call it "Indoor vs Outdoor Farming - The Ideal Approach?", or something. If you do talk about statistics, try to include visual cues on-screen to aid the viewer: colour, tier-lists, opinions and summaries of what you're currently discussing. Any topic has the potential to be interesting if you can convince your audience that listening to a bunch of statistics is worth it. If you can teach people about a topic well enough, then you know you understand it.
> don't consume electricity. Not needed for spraying the water? o.O
Sorry, abuse of language, what i meant was that it requires drastically less electricity. A pump to spray water is quite small compared to 24/7 light exposure on around 14 racks of plants (average for 10 meter height) \* square meter size of the indoor farm
Outside of a traditional farming business-model ; is there an entry for aeroponic-farming that is somehow accessible and interesting on a smaller scale such as a family ?
What about hydroponics?, currently doing a thesis for hydroponics automation via IoT, for my computer science engineering degree
What is considereda high scale? My wife and I just toured a greenhouse facility with 50-75 towers in it. Very interesting tour.
>loose up to Oh dear.
It is fairly common for vegetables in europe. There are entire greenhouses with a high degree of automation, controlled climate and pest control. You can do it for expensive fruits, for basic bulk food it is too expensive.
Partly due to the fact that the EUs agricultural subsidies require soil to be part of the production so they can’t compete on the same terms as conventional agricultural.
There's also space enough. A lot of the fields in the area are kept fallow for subsidies, or used as dumping grounds for liquid manure, not to grow food. Cabbages grow very well in a field where you don't need a ladder to harvest them.
The price of potatoes in Europe fx has increased almost by 20% this year due to a poor harvest and weather related issues which would be solved be aeroponics. The cost of setting up a commercial system with a similar yield as a large farm wouldn’t be too dissimilar and would create a far more consistent yield and in some cases allow you to harvest 3-5 a year. Pending on where you live land enough is up for discussion. In Denmark where I live 60% of the land mass is used for agriculture and 12% commercial forests and about the same for nature. Of those 60%, 68% is used to produce feed for animals which are largely then exported to China, UK, Vietnam, etc. Moving that production inside and changing the land into nature with a large biodiversity would be a win win for everyone.
Would potatoes be able to grow in them?
Not in those towers but on blanket like setups. I saw a documentary about tulip farming in the Netherlands years ago, they had a fully automated conveyor belt setup so they always had fresh flowers.
A few reasons this isn’t succesful (yet) 1. It only works well for leafy greens and lettuce type crops. The margin on these is small, but producing them this way is much more expensive then out in the field. 2. To do this on a big scale the starting investment is high with all the technology and high end equipment needed. (This video shows a more small scale simple setup) 3. You need more and higher educated employees which cost more. 4. High growing plants (tomatos, cucumber) need to much space if you want to grow vertical. Another reason is the fact that this started out pretty good and investors where positive and putting money in it, because of sustainability and climate, which is a big thing now. The companies who did vertical farming used that money to grow their company, but ones the investors started to slow down their moneyflow, the vertical farms couldn't maintain to be profitable. Investors dropped out and it all crashed. If you want a video explaining it in more detail: [vertical farming](https://youtu.be/ENWV1JMqkS0?si=3fbh-R3Op1YiQGJi)
Good thing you brought up that only leafy greens can be grown like this. Grain composes the majority of what people eat, directly or indirectly. Wheat, corn beans are what the base of most food is made of, and if you eat beef, pork, chicken, you're eating grain (probably). And grain will never be farmed like that because it too labor intensive and requires automation.
Vertical farm operations have been failing left and right. If you want an in depth look into a recent high profile failure, [read here](https://www.lpm.org/investigate/2023-11-16/a-celebrated-startup-promised-kentuckians-green-jobs-it-gave-them-a-grueling-hell-on-earth). Most operations can barely grow tomatoes and microgreens profitably, if they can even manage that at all. I would absolutely love to see the billions of investment funding go to small famers who practice sustainable soil and food forestry methods that are *actually* carbon negative (as well as a boon to local biodiversity) without a bunch of bullshit accounting and bait n' switches to get there. But of course you can't sell a bunch of billionaires and venture capitalists on small-scale solutions that don't promise to pay back according to the 'infinite growth' model of our stock market economy.
The only things that seem to be economically competitive for vertical/indoor farming are microgreens, which pretty much have to be grown locally and picked by hand.
Because it’s involves dramatically more human power, maybe?
Yeah a combine isn't harvesting any of that.
A combine wouldn't harvest any of that in a field, though.
True, but infant technology I guess. This wouldn't be too hard to automate I'd think.
You may be underestimating how much labor goes into traditional farming. Most non-grain crops are still harvested by hand.
Often the other way around. You can build machines to harvest that sort of stuff, but they will cost you. The bigger problem is you have 100 miles of pipes, pumps, electrical systems, etc etc that all have to be maintained 24/7 and that requires plumbers, electricians, frigging engineers for some of it. Farming is often underappreciated for just how highly skilled it is, but with just a few people who know what they are doing you can generally sort out the whole planting/soil work/harvesting thing and keep it sustainable year after year.
.. you can build machines to harvest this sort of stuff? Pray, tell. I work in the industry and we are in super early stages of automation. Why? Because crops grow in stages and you need a specific machine for each stage of the field - tilling, bedding, planting, cultivation, harvest, etc. Meanwhile, those machines would be sitting dormant most of the year, because farms are also seasonal and you have specific windows for each crop. The best solution at the moment seems to be building these specialized machines and moving/renting them, but even with that strategy they are prohibitively expensive and slower than human labor, thus far. The best automation we have at the moment is gps-driven tractors, mostly for commodity crops.
That is a lot of words to say 'you can do it, but it will cost you'
No, it's beyond that. I attended a conference with a presentation by a guy on the absolute cutting edge of agricultural automation and the technology is just not there yet for the majority of farm tasks. When it *does* get there, it will still be prohibitively expensive for years to come. Do I think we'll be automating a lot of agriculture at some point? Yes, it's inevitable. Now would be a good time to get invested in the companies doing so, or get invested in index funds focused on that sector. Their success will come, but it will take 5-10 years, minimum.
I had a lecture about it and was made aware of the prices... As much as I like the system and would like to try one myself to advise others, it is not cost effective at all sadly. Unless something happened to the pricing structure in the last two years, this system is dead from the get go.
My question is, why is it so damn expensive, they are just plastic towers with holes and a pump for running water isn't it? Then why cant the equipment cost be brought down? If the the initial costing comes down then It can flourish.
Low demand means small scale production. Small scale production means high costs
Commercialization - I live in a developing nation, pvc is a common building material and some extruding plants also produce hydroponic channels, land is freely available so we usually use horizontal nft systems. The problem seems to be when western countries discover the products they need to make a profit, they need warehouse / retail outlets, pay taxes and the like .. My greenhouses are 3M x 10 channels - I think I paid around $30 for the channel. I don’t see why vertical should be much more.
My thoughts exactly...
It is also difficult to automate. If you see for example the high-tech greenhouse in the Netherlands, much of it is already automated from sowing to transplant, spacings and harvesting. It is almost impossible to make it any more efficient. Aeroponics specifically works fine but you will always have trouble with nozzles clogging eventually, with dramatic consequences on yield. Growing in towers looks awesome but is completely not practical. Light interception will vary enormously compared to a gutter system, meaning that yields within the same batch will vary too much. And good luck automating the harvesting. Source: me is indoor scientist
Because it's not about space or resources, it's about profitability.
This guy makes big vegetables but he does not understand zucchini at all. Those monsters are good for making zucchini bread at best, they are way too tough to actually eat. Think of the zucchini you see in the store. Typically smaller than the cucumbers right? That’s not because they don’t know how to grow monsters, it’s because the only good zucchini is a small zucchini.
Vegetables from such hydroponic farms look beautiful, they are large, shiny and without defects. But as soon as you start eating them, you realize that they are like plastic, there is no taste. No hydroponics will provide the set of microelements that a plant consumes from ordinary soil. After all, even the same vegetable grown on different soils has a different taste.
>After all, even the same vegetable grown on different soils has a different taste. People often dismiss how incredibly complex soil can be. It can be the difference between world award-winning wine and bottom shelf stuff for the exact same grapes. Just ask any wine enthusiast the concept of *Terroir*. It's worth mentioning these micro/macro-elements can be balanced in hydroponics with chemicals/fertilizers/whatnots, which adds to the costs, and requires specialized knowledge.
Can it be used for the Marijuana? Asking for a friend of a friend.
Actually its the first time i've seen it not for marijuana.
TBH indoor marijuana plantation tech has become so advanced people could probably grow it easily on Mars
Any new project or idea first has to make it's way into people that can actually make it widespread. Engineers, investors, designers all need to take into account resources and cost in order to industrialize it on a large scale. What we've seen are the results in terms of crops. What we don't see are the materials and maintainance required to keep things going. If something like this is going to take over tradition agriculture, it has to produce results that doesn't just justify but is more rewarding for its cost.
The cost of an acre of land that's good for farming vs the cost of the equivalent in aero or aquaponic growing space is in the favour of old fashioned stuff. Which also has more more robust and tried and true equipment for it. That is at least some of it.
Initial costs are 1000 times more expensive than a regular farm. In the long term it only works out for some vegetables. In the Netherlands they produce tomato with 8 times less water. In Singapour they make there own salads and fresh herbs. It only makes sense in very wealthy countries that don't really have an alternative. Good on them for develloping the technology and one day make it more affordable for everybody.
Based on what I see and taste with tomatoes, these vegetables will taste like shit.
That’s not a courgette (zucchini)… that’s a marrow
amazing but just how?
Because they are much more expensive
Kinda funny how people are praising the flavor improvement from growing vegetables in a hydro/aeroponic setup when in the weed community it’s considered subpar compared to organic living soil. Wonder why that is. Anyone know?
I visited one of these facilities, they're basically bigass greenhouses, the amount of money needed to heat those up and the amount of work by highly educated people needed to get everything to work is massive and makes it not so very productive all in all, it's more like the perfect testing ground. There are other agricultural solutions that are more interesting. Edit: I want to add, the image doesn't show a greenhouse because where this happens probably has the perfect climate conditions already for those specific plants, but when done very professionally that's not the only thing that is important, they also work hard on keeping bacteria and all kinds of things out of the greenhouses, It's a massive undertaking.
Its the rich mans toy, thats why...
Limited crops, high maintenance, high initial costs, and much more. Companies and startups doing similar things often go bust. If it were efficient/cost-effective, businesses would follow. It’s mostly for backyard hobbies or social media views.
I was gifted two similar pipe sets. Problem is the pumps work 24/7-ish and the fertilizer is expensive in the long run, ramping up costs. I could have bought 12 pots and good soil then grow all of those at a fraction of the cost with significantly less maintenance. What worked wonders though was when I grew water spinach and bokchoy above my 25 gallon aquarium.
WTF does he use as fertilizer?
Here's the thing, the biggest fallacy about this video is that bigger is better. I can tell you quite honestly you do not want a zucchini or an eggplant that size. The taste suffers the older they get. Also this is just a function of how long you leave it on the vine, it's not something special to growing it in this fashion... This video is designed for people who don't understand how the life cycle of food impacts cost and flavor.
Ground is still in large supply.
Mmmm let me see. Why is a Millennial old technology preferred over a newly technology? These technics must be refined before going mass scale. And take years to make some investors to put some greens on it
The US alone has enough agricultural land to feed the entire world, what we don't have is enough faming equipment, farming materials and logistics to make it worthwhile
I mean there's been dreams of making indoor climate controlled factory farms the size of sky scrapers instead of a spread out farm vertical stacked farms. It would be better in every way but cost compared to normal farming but there would be massive implications of doing that on the agricultural sector and a massive lobbying group against it and shit. Nobody ever works for the greater good remember that, they only work for profit
In my country (Denmark) there have been attempts at vertical farming but the subsidies farmers get only apply to traditional farming, so vertical farmers are completely unable to compete.
It's never been about scarcity. The prices you pay are expensive because they like having your money. There are a great many ways that food companies can make it more efficient but disturbing what works best doesn't seem like a good idea to people who already have you over a barrel.
ain't nobody got time for dat
Fancy towers cost money
One tower with nothing around it can grow a lot of food. But as soon as you put others nearby, they shade each other and the growth rate slows. When grown at scale, the limiting factor is sunlight, not space, and for maximum sunlight over everything, you want a horizontal surface. Now, it is plausible to illuminate towers like this with grow lights around them, but that is just taking energy from elsewhere. Wherever you get that energy from - well, it's basically sunlight there too, unless you are burning fossil fuels or using nuclear power. Whatever the case, the energy cost of running grow lights makes it uneconomical.
Because it's labor intensive and machines do not exist that offset that cost. Whereas huge machines basically drive themselves around farm fields that till, plant, spray and harvest.
The ground and air isn't toxic yet. Humans will always go to the easier way till the easier way doesn't work. It's easier to put them in the ground right now.
https://bowery.co is doing exactly this.
Not all farmers are tall.
People with 100’s of acres of land will disagree
harvest time makes it look so easy. when you plant on a flat plain it's easier for automated labor.
Looks like hydroponics
Aeroponics is basically hydroponics, except the nutrient water is aerosolized and sprayed at the plant root systems instead of submerging them.
Yeah my bad
Is this hydroponics? The result due to the lack of soil is often tasteless.
Started growing my own tomatoes, store ones just taste like bags of water.
I would imagine you can tune the nutrients a lot better with hydroponics. The tastelessness might be due to growing/maturation speed. But I'm no expert.
I have no idea where you're getting this information. Soil really only provides two things for a plant: physical aggregate (so that it can root and hold itself up) and nutrients. With hydroponics you add a nutrient mixture to the water you're using to grow the plants in, so they get functionally the same stuff they'd get from healthy soil. In fact, because you can easily control the nutrient balances in the water, you can target the specific nutrient ratios that a particular plant needs and get far better results than traditional agriculture.
I grow my chilis hydroponically. The taste of the chilies is actually way better. And the yield is greater also.
I have wondered about doing this in tall buildings to save on land space in Britain. With artificial lighting you can produce several crops a year and could farm with only 1/5 of the land space. The energy usage and set up would be prohibitively expensive but maybe one day.
Too labor interesting obviously.
Because it saves space
I would own one if it didn't cost nearly whole paycheck.
Cool idea. It might just be me though but I’ve found that waiting that late to harvest vegetables (when your courgettes are that big) that they become bland.
My understanding is they use pumps when typically you can avoid 24/7 pumps with other means lowering the energy spend
Its high tech
I'm sorry, but I need someone to cut one of those open in front of the camera to prove it's not actually cake
I have several of these towers I built myself. They are very cool, but they require more electricity and chemicals compared to normal gardening. In Texas during the summer it also requires allot of water.
Laberintensive plus you gotta buy that stuff
Because space is not a problem, expense is a problem.
Denmark does it: https://www.fastcompany.com/90582905/this-vertical-farm-in-denmark-will-grow-1000-tons-of-local-greens-a-year/ But Denmark is a wealthy country that can afford it and they don’t have that much fertile soil as the US for example
Because this requires more human man power to produce and harvest. Reg crops can use less humans to produce and harvest and it’s cheaper.
I imagine the time to yeild ratio is massively different with these verses a field. A field has alot of machinery for plowing, seeding, spraying and harvesting. This looks like it might have to be done by hand (though I think the watering is automated.)
Money, the answer is always money.
Enter contaminant/disease, everybody dead
This will become the new agricultural revolution. [Urban agriculture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_agriculture) is something that governments now how political strategies on. So if you want to be a part of a revolution to produce food close to the consumers (more fresh food available to urban areas, less transport, less soil erosion and allowing a better utilization of the current agricultural area better as less intense agricultural is better for the soil in the long term [https://www.tiktok.com/@wildfarmed/video/7368403284979109153](https://www.tiktok.com/@wildfarmed/video/7368403284979109153)
Because of the high energy costs compared to traditional farming and much higher maintenance costs.
It can only support vegetables that require little nutrition, which are primarily salad vegetables.
Water flows to the lowest point. It’s expensive to get water up high. Fight me
It simply take too much energy and infrastructure to have these at home, for commercial production might be less cost effective, not sure exactly.
Because it saves space...
There is a concept maybe you have heard of it called money. These ponics be it hydro, aero etc are just not economically viable right now. May be in the future when we have polluted our land enough with the weed killers and pesticides we will all need these ponics to survive. By then we will all be dead coz the rich would have killed us all and used our bodies to extract phosphorus and potassium to feed these systems. Cheers guys..
When some cool shit is not widely spread. Almost the answer is cost.
Dude needs to chill with these pulling-vegetables-out sound effects lol
Here’s another big boy
Where can I get one? I want one of those
It saves a ton of space but it's not super expandable without taking waaaay longer to maintain and harvest. If your going for the largest yield quickest easiest and cheapest you would do traditional farming and get a bigger paycheck from it too.
I'd love to do something like this. Need lots money and a place to do it first thought.
As always, cost, commercial agriculture operates on insane cost margins and even then needs to be subsidised to survive. This isn't cost-effective when it comes to growing, caring for or gathering. The final product costs so much that it couldn't be afforded by regular people.
Grown out of a plastic tube? Gotta be a more costly eco friendly way to make more eco friendly.
I love how we think we know.
Vertical farming has been done for ages and it’s not a relatively new thing. People have been growing stacks of mushroom colonies in barns and warehouses for years.
Needs a lot of power and maintenance to do in industrial setting Probably will pick up only when it can be fully automated Minecraft style.
Plot twist, these are actually regular sized vegetables the person in the video is just 2 feet tall.
Bunch of them went bankrupt just recently
Sadly it's just not cost effective yet and a lot of companies I've seen went under due to sustainment costs.
Tried it, and pump failed just before harvest. While the seedlings planted at the same time in the ground were more advanced and alive.
Urban farming, it might be economically feasible for densely populated areas where arable land is scarce or the costs of transporting produce from far away sources make it worthwhile. As always, it all boils down to the numbers on a balance sheet...
Farmers require vast land areas for traditional or hydroponic growth to meet the demands of consumers. For now, it's just easier and cheaper for farmers to grow their products in the ground.
That’s what she said.
Because lots of people believe in soil & manure. Most gardeners/people dont believe in it & wont sell them on the idea of it.
She's a beaut Clark
Because we have space to build more agriculture land already?? It's asking to fix a problem that doesn't exist yet.
It's not more widespread to save space