Always lettuce. If someone can figure out how to grow something with a dense and full nutrient profile then there might be something to vertical farms.
Always lettuce. If someone can figure out how to grow something with a dense and full nutrient profile then there might be something to vertical farms.
Dyson is doing strawberries
* https://dysonfarming.com/strawberries/
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA6BCIWPJ30
The rationale there is a combo of profit (from off season strawberries) and mark-up possible from unique branding (Dyson) and social fuzzies (eco-friendly, etc (regardless of cold economics)).
Home scale example with strawberries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LIhx0yoM7s
The challenge is finding something that is energy dense, that grows quickly, and has a high value to justify the length of trouble you have to go through. Things like potatoes, grains, rice, etc. Are relatively low value and they don't grow that quick.
Potatoes especially don't like to be submerged. But otherwise they are not that hard to grow. A simple grow bag will do. That's true for a lot of root vegetables and tubers. For vegetables like that, greenhouses are more common.
With rice and grains, they grow well enough in hydroponics but you just need an enormous amount of area to get to interesting amounts. Also the growing season for that is quite long. Hydroponics favor things that you can harvest in weeks rather than say 2-3 times per year.
I grow kale, mustard greens, herbs, and sprouts. I'm not looking to erase my need for produce. I just want to always have some fresh staples. Easier to pull off a few sprigs of parsley or some basil than it is to buy those little packs all the time.
I remember seeing people suggest vertical algae farms that could (in the marketing theory) be a very high nutrient source. The problem then is that you're eating algae. Spirulina is an acquired taste.
I'm more intrigued by duckweed, which grows very fast and is a common food in some countries.
Isn't the idea that you get to do that with all the fertile land you liberate from the lettuce?
Fruiting plants require more space. You're not going to grow tomatoes or peppers in a server rack. Density works well for leafy greens and microgreens.
afaik soybeans can grow perfectly well in hydroponic setups, and I'm sure you can do many other beans too.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jf203275m
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S194439862...
there's no free lunch - the plants are just rearranging what you give them.
I agree. Potatoes transform light into starch. With traditional farming you get a huge "free" solar collector. In vertical farming you have to pay for the light.
So the alternative is to grow lettuce that has a greater price to energy ratio.
More than just light - the chemical profile of the soil is the feedstock for all of the interesting chemistry the plant does. The air can provide oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon, which are the backbone of a lot of the chemistry, but anything more exotic than that is coming from the soil. They're factories, not alchemists.
Hydrogen comes from water. They have surplus of Oxygen from CO2 and water, so much that they give it away. Carbon comes from the CO2 in the air.
Other nutrients like phosphorus or potassium come disolved in water, but in intensive farming they must be added to the soil, so it's the same that dissolving in the hydroponic solution. Perhaps it's more efficient in hydroponic than in soil.
Nitrogen is more tricky. There is plenty of Nitrogen in the air but not in a useful form, so in most cases it must be added as fertilizer. In some cases like soy the plants have helper bacteria that transform the nitrogen from the air into useful forms. This conversion takes a lot of energy, so I don't expect the lack of wind to be a problem, you still need some air movement to keep the CO2 high and the O2 low. (Anyway, farming soy under artificial light is probably not profitable for the same reason farming potatoes under artificial light is not profitable.)
The most important thing you lack inside a vertical farm that you get almost for free in a big faring field is sunlight (i.e. energy).
co2 is mostly free and plentiful, and also the main ingredient for plant biomass.
which is why lettuce grows just fine.
Turns out you’re meant to eat multiple plants.
Bioflavonoids are important.
Mushrooms!