Vertical farming: a local solution for greens, but not feeding the world any time soon
Vertical farming: a local solution for greens, but not feeding the world any time soon
A data driven assessment of the role of verticle farming in feeding the world.
“The economics of producing leafy greens and lettuce in vertical farms can work, if electricity prices are low”
Good to see a real analysis on this topic instead of the puff pieces we usually see.
In the future, vertical farming systems could potentially run entirely on renewable energy, which would significantly reduce their carbon footprint. However, this might not always be enough to make them lower-carbon than outdoor farming. For example, the study in the Netherlands modelled a renewable energy scenario. While the carbon footprint gap narrowed, the vertical farm’s emissions still exceeded those of traditional outdoor farming.
This is why I’m skeptical of this technology for the foreseeable future. Even if we solve the current energy crisis and achieve the cheap, carbon-free energy necessary to solve the issues with indoor lighting, there’s still the issue that buildings are scarce and require many resources to build. I’m not sure indoor farming is worthwhile barring some additional huge innovation that makes construction much cheaper and more efficient. That could happen, but now we’re looking at two major economic and technological revolutions to make this idea viable, which puts it in the far future by my estimation.
I think it could be interesting to integrate these into newly build apartment buildings. They could function as a sort of light shaft in the interior and should also be quite efficient to block noise between apartments. Heating would be also mostly "free" in such a setup.
But wouldn’t this reduce the amount of living space, and still require more construction? We see this very clearly with structures in the US that are required to include parking garages—much higher costs and fewer units.
Unless there’s some under-utilized space that could have this added without taking up additional space and that could be practically managed, I’m not sure how that would work.
But it’s definitely worth considering. The advantages of having food production in apartments would be huge, but I think we need to be rigorous and skeptical to make sure it pencils out.
Light-shafts or relatively inefficient building layouts are necessary once a building hits a certain size, so this would probably not have a big impact on overall living space. Of course such a building would be more expensive to build, but it might be possible to offset if the vertical farm's profits would benefit the same housing coop.
Moisture would be an issue with such a set up, and could cause mold and mildew in apartment units
Maybe we'll see it as a response to crop loss caused by climate change? Could be more dependable in areas with plentiful water.