The world's oldest culture is embracing high-tech vertical farming

May 29, 2024 4:29 AM

The world's oldest culture is embracing high-tech vertical farming. Vertical farms grow plants quickly, using less water and land than traditional farming. One newcomer to the industry hopes it can put native herbs into supermarkets.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (10 comments total)

Greenhouse Industry 4.0, was established to bring in some of the latest technology already used in other industries and apply it to greenhouse production
posted by HearHere at 4:53 AM on May 29 [1 favorite]

Props to you OP for great posts - loving it!
I'm glad that this example of vertical farming is in the Hunter Valley (ie around Cessnock, near where I grew up), because that area around Hunter Valley/New England is going to be one of the worst hit re: climate change in Australia. Insurance data is showing that if floods don't get them, fires will, so having cropping like this that can be pretty resilient is going to come in handy.

Re native herbs...hmm...it'll be interesting to see how that goes. The great thing about many natives is that they don't need to care and special conditions that imports do - a great example being Kangaroo Grass (not a herb tho!).
posted by gusset at 5:49 AM on May 29 [3 favorites]

This is how we will become a multi-planetary society!
posted by sammyo at 5:53 AM on May 29

This is great for small, niche crops. But as the article says, "The farms use artificial light, temperature, water and humidity control ... you can predict the weather inside your cubic farm ... as long as you have power."

Outdoor farming takes more land, labor, water, and chemicals, but way less energy, since sunlight is free. That's why, by one estimate, "indoor lettuce production has a carbon footprint some 7 to 20 times greater than that of outdoor lettuce production." Hopefully, increased efficiency and a shift to difference sources of power could move that in the right direction.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 7:24 AM on May 29 [7 favorites]

I wonder what the comparison is for square meters of land needed to farm vs set up solar panels to power an equivalent number of containers...
posted by rivenwanderer at 8:18 AM on May 29 [1 favorite]

This would be a good way to have fresh greens when you are stuck in your survival bunker after the surface world becomes uninhabitable.
posted by GiantSlug at 9:44 AM on May 29

It's inherently inefficient since there's energy loss when you generate, store, and transport electricity. But you can grow illegal crops pretty well this way since they're hidden inside shipping containers.
posted by subdee at 9:51 AM on May 29 [1 favorite]

Is "the world's oldest culture" some sort of reference, or is it as bad as it sounds?
posted by groda at 11:02 AM on May 29

How many “acres” of vertical greenhouses could a nuclear aircraft carrier or submarine power?

My favorite mode of escapism is imagining huge cold fusion generators powering large scale water purification, carbon sequestration, and manufacturing.

Shipping container sized generators powering small communities with their underground greenhouses.

This is the setup for my favorite part, imagining farmland return to nature. No more driving through horizon to horizon plastic outdoor greenhouses.
posted by Dr. Curare at 12:38 PM on May 29

Thanks for sharing this! Fascinating topic. I did a yearlong research project on this exact topic during my undergrad, built a small vertical farm in an unused classroom and grew lettuce. I compared it using lifecycle analysis software to a traditional farm growing the same crop. Not that my research was bulletproof by any means, but at least back then, I did find that conventional farming methods still blew vertical farming out of the water in terms of using less fossil fuels. I was expecting greenhouse gas costs of transporting food to market to be about equal with those of the electricity needed to power grow lights and watering systems, but the two weren’t even close. I did go on to work on traditional (albeit organic) farms for a few years.

It used to kind of drive me crazy hearing people talk about vertical farms as if they are the solution to the problem. Realistically, I think a transition back to smaller farms and to more environmentally sound practices such as no-till is what we should be working on. Not only are many claims of the inefficiency of organic/no-till operations as compared to conventional farms overblown, but studies usually don’t compare nutrient content of produce when they draw their conclusions although the increased soil health and biodiversity of an organic operations lead to healthier food. In my mind the real advantage of vertical farming lies in the potential to abolish the totally screwed slave labor conditions of many large scale farms, which, again, could be solved with proper government programming but is realistically going to be a problem for the foreseeable future.
posted by leafmealone at 7:00 AM on May 30 [2 favorites]