<story><title>Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?</title><url>https://www.eater.com/2018/7/3/17531192/vertical-farming-agriculture-hydroponic-greens</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mikro2nd</author><text>The &amp;quot;breakthrough tech&amp;quot; I&amp;#x27;m NOT seeing:&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s all the excitement over electric cars and electrical trucks, and I, for one, can&amp;#x27;t wait to get an electrically powered car I don&amp;#x27;t have to drive. But the thing I&amp;#x27;m not seeing is electrically powered farm machinery. I think people underestimate just how hard that problem is. These machines, when they&amp;#x27;re working at peak times of the year (planting time, harvest) are required to work 24 hours a day for weeks on end. There&amp;#x27;s no time to stop for a recharge, and something like a harvester or large tractor pulling ploughs or a planter uses a &amp;#x2F;hell&amp;#x2F; of a lot of power. Even assuming some sort of swap-out battery system, I&amp;#x27;d guess that each machine would need something on the order of three to five battery packs in order to keep up with the work demand. And at the busy times of year even a moderately sized farm will have at least three to five machines working at the same time.&lt;p&gt;Is anyone aware of companies developing real (not prototype&amp;#x2F;PoC) large-scale farm machinery?</text></item><item><author>rmason</author><text>In a word no.  I spent twenty years as a fertilizer agronomist and I&amp;#x27;m very familiar with the costs of producing a crop.&lt;p&gt;The numbers simply do not work.  Even when they tried in Detroit and got buildings for five cents on the dollar they couldn&amp;#x27;t make it work.&lt;p&gt;The investors funding these enterprises do not understand agricultural economics.  I keep investigating these stories looking for some kind of &amp;#x27;breakthrough tech&amp;#x27; that would dramatically reduce costs or increase yields.  I&amp;#x27;ve been tracking these vertical greenhouses for fifteen years, they open and a couple of years later they&amp;#x27;re gone.&lt;p&gt;I think what could change things for produce is solar cells and electric trucks.  It would isolate producers transportation costs from oil prices and lower the cost of getting produce to the cities.  I know technology is quickly improving in both battery technology and solar cells.</text></item><item><author>nostromo</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a lot of misunderstanding of agriculture in this thread.&lt;p&gt;1) No, land is not expensive.  In agricultural areas, land is quite cheap.  Organizing shelves of crops vertically solves for a problem that isn&amp;#x27;t actually a problem.&lt;p&gt;2) The sun is free and electricity isn&amp;#x27;t cheap.  Putting plants indoors and then buying electricity to create light is going to be expensive compared to using the free sun.  (The absurdity of putting solar panels on a roof to make electricity to beam LEDs on plants, losing 90% of the energy along the way, shouldn&amp;#x27;t be lost on anyone.)&lt;p&gt;3) Shipping is cheap.  It may make us feel good that a salad&amp;#x27;s greens were created on a roof-top in Brooklyn, but using some of the most expensive real-estate on Earth to save a few cents on shipping is beyond economically irrational.&lt;p&gt;I actually love the idea of hydroponics for another reason entirely: it saves a ton of water.  Water is a real problem worth solving, particularly in the dry west.  Focus on this and forget about all of these other non-benefits.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>audunw</author><text>Is this really that important though? I haven&amp;#x27;t numbers that indicate that farming machinery is such a big share of the oil consumption.&lt;p&gt;My thoughts on these things is, if we can cut 90% of gasoline&amp;#x2F;diesel use with BEVs and PHEVs, then the last 10% could feasibly be fueld by renewable hydrocarbons. The development after that is up to the markets.. probably pure BEV will be preferred over time as batteries get better and we develop new solutions.&lt;p&gt;Why would you need three to five packs? A pack can generally charge as fast as it can discharge.. you should only need two if you have a fast charging system.&lt;p&gt;The problem is if the machines is only used part of the year. For the cost of a battery pack to make sense, it should be used as much as possible. If it&amp;#x27;s idle for large parts of the year and it can&amp;#x27;t be used for anything else, it&amp;#x27;ll be hard to justify the cost. Maybe they can double as grid storage?</text></comment>
<story><title>Is Vertical Farming Really the Future of Agriculture?</title><url>https://www.eater.com/2018/7/3/17531192/vertical-farming-agriculture-hydroponic-greens</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mikro2nd</author><text>The &amp;quot;breakthrough tech&amp;quot; I&amp;#x27;m NOT seeing:&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s all the excitement over electric cars and electrical trucks, and I, for one, can&amp;#x27;t wait to get an electrically powered car I don&amp;#x27;t have to drive. But the thing I&amp;#x27;m not seeing is electrically powered farm machinery. I think people underestimate just how hard that problem is. These machines, when they&amp;#x27;re working at peak times of the year (planting time, harvest) are required to work 24 hours a day for weeks on end. There&amp;#x27;s no time to stop for a recharge, and something like a harvester or large tractor pulling ploughs or a planter uses a &amp;#x2F;hell&amp;#x2F; of a lot of power. Even assuming some sort of swap-out battery system, I&amp;#x27;d guess that each machine would need something on the order of three to five battery packs in order to keep up with the work demand. And at the busy times of year even a moderately sized farm will have at least three to five machines working at the same time.&lt;p&gt;Is anyone aware of companies developing real (not prototype&amp;#x2F;PoC) large-scale farm machinery?</text></item><item><author>rmason</author><text>In a word no.  I spent twenty years as a fertilizer agronomist and I&amp;#x27;m very familiar with the costs of producing a crop.&lt;p&gt;The numbers simply do not work.  Even when they tried in Detroit and got buildings for five cents on the dollar they couldn&amp;#x27;t make it work.&lt;p&gt;The investors funding these enterprises do not understand agricultural economics.  I keep investigating these stories looking for some kind of &amp;#x27;breakthrough tech&amp;#x27; that would dramatically reduce costs or increase yields.  I&amp;#x27;ve been tracking these vertical greenhouses for fifteen years, they open and a couple of years later they&amp;#x27;re gone.&lt;p&gt;I think what could change things for produce is solar cells and electric trucks.  It would isolate producers transportation costs from oil prices and lower the cost of getting produce to the cities.  I know technology is quickly improving in both battery technology and solar cells.</text></item><item><author>nostromo</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a lot of misunderstanding of agriculture in this thread.&lt;p&gt;1) No, land is not expensive.  In agricultural areas, land is quite cheap.  Organizing shelves of crops vertically solves for a problem that isn&amp;#x27;t actually a problem.&lt;p&gt;2) The sun is free and electricity isn&amp;#x27;t cheap.  Putting plants indoors and then buying electricity to create light is going to be expensive compared to using the free sun.  (The absurdity of putting solar panels on a roof to make electricity to beam LEDs on plants, losing 90% of the energy along the way, shouldn&amp;#x27;t be lost on anyone.)&lt;p&gt;3) Shipping is cheap.  It may make us feel good that a salad&amp;#x27;s greens were created on a roof-top in Brooklyn, but using some of the most expensive real-estate on Earth to save a few cents on shipping is beyond economically irrational.&lt;p&gt;I actually love the idea of hydroponics for another reason entirely: it saves a ton of water.  Water is a real problem worth solving, particularly in the dry west.  Focus on this and forget about all of these other non-benefits.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cjrp</author><text>This may be a stupid idea, but is there any reason that this kind of heavy machinery needs a battery and couldn&amp;#x27;t just be connected to a power source via a (admittedly, very long) cable?</text></comment>