Vertical Farming

[lpetrich]

From growing crop plants in stacked fashion, like growing them in greenhouses but more high-tech.

Vertical farms have nailed leafy greens. Next up: tasty fruit | WIRED UK
This company wants to build a giant indoor farm next to every major city in the world - Vox
 Vertical farming
Home - Association for Vertical Farming

From the first article:

Barnard is CEO of Plenty, the agtech startup he founded in 2013 after a career in tech and finance. The San Francisco-based firm grows crops not in fields or polytunnels but indoors on six-metre-high vertical poles. Their roots are fed by a slow trickle of nutrient-rich water. There’s no soil and no pesticides (there are no pests). And there’s no sun – light is provided by LEDs.

The idea is that indoor farms like this can be built close to population centres, cutting the length of the supply-chain and leaving farmers to concentrate on growing crops for flavour rather than durability. City-centre hydroponic farms aren’t a new idea – but Plenty is making progress on that toughest of products: fruit and veg.

“Right now,” says Barnard, “produce often has to travel 3,000 miles from the farm to consumer, which is why so many farms grow iceberg lettuce, which tastes of nothing. Our salads are spicy and citrusy and sweet at the same time. People are amazed they can eat it without salad dressing.”

Thus needing much less land and much less water, though with sizable electricity bills.

The second article is also about that company:

Plenty grows plants on 20-foot vertical towers instead of the stacks of horizontal shelves used by most other vertical-farming companies. Plants jut horizontally from the towers, growing out of a substrate made primarily of recycled plastic bottles (there’s no soil involved). Water and nutrients are fed in from the top of the tower and dispersed by gravity (rather than pumps, which saves money). All water, including from condensation, is collected and recycled.

The plants receive no sunlight, just light from hanging LED lamps. There are thousands of infrared cameras and sensors covering everything, taking fine measurements of temperature, moisture, and plant growth; the data is used by agronomists and artificial intelligence nerds to fine-tune the system.

The towers are so close together that the effect is a giant wall of plants.

Plenty is currently focusing on lettuce, kale, mustard greens, basil, and other leafy greens and herbs. Strawberries and cucumbers are in the works, and the Plenty people claim that they can grow everything but root vegetables and tree fruits.

Plenty uses a few ladybugs for pest control, and no pesticides. That's because indoor farming makes it easy to keep pests away from the crops. The crops are also more flavorful and more nutritious, since they have not had to survive long trips.

Vertical farming has attracted a lot of enthusiasm, and many vertical-farm companies have failed. But as vertical farmers learn from their experiences, we might end up seeing more and more of this kind of farming.

 

[lpetrich]

Toshiba Unveils 'Clean' Factory Farm that Uses No Sunlight or Soil | Inhabitat - Green Design, Innovation, Architecture, Green Building

Does Toshiba hold the key to the future of factory farming? The massive tech giant recently unveiled their incredible “clean” factory farm, which is capable of growing up to three million heads of lettuce every year without using sunlight or soil. The factory farm, which is operating in a 21,000 square-foot electronic factory in Yokosuka, Japan, is to be used in the company’s new healthcare business and has the perfect germ-free environment for producing bagged lettuce, according to Toshiba and Science and Health.

(That's 2000 square meters of floor area)

The pictures show what's inside -- stacked shelves with lettuce plants growing in them. Lettuce plants typically grow 6" - 12" (15 - 30 cm) high, so they are easy to stack.

What’s inside the factory is the stuff of science fiction; a completely isolated environment, with temperature and humidity control, monitored by lettuce inspectors who wear full body suits and face masks and use tablet devices to make notes about the quality and health of the plants. The plants themselves are constantly irradiated with artificial light to make them think it’s sunny, while being injected with vitamins and nutrients directly into their roots, removing the need for soil.

Since the plants are effectively sequestered from the outside environment, they can be kept free of unwanted bacteria, fungi, and insects without using pesticides.

 

[4321lynx]

Toshiba Unveils 'Clean' Factory Farm that Uses No Sunlight or Soil | Inhabitat - Green Design, Innovation, Architecture, Green Building

Does Toshiba hold the key to the future of factory farming? The massive tech giant recently unveiled their incredible “clean” factory farm, which is capable of growing up to three million heads of lettuce every year without using sunlight or soil. The factory farm, which is operating in a 21,000 square-foot electronic factory in Yokosuka, Japan, is to be used in the company’s new healthcare business and has the perfect germ-free environment for producing bagged lettuce, according to Toshiba and Science and Health.

(That's 2000 square meters of floor area)

The pictures show what's inside -- stacked shelves with lettuce plants growing in them. Lettuce plants typically grow 6" - 12" (15 - 30 cm) high, so they are easy to stack.

What’s inside the factory is the stuff of science fiction; a completely isolated environment, with temperature and humidity control, monitored by lettuce inspectors who wear full body suits and face masks and use tablet devices to make notes about the quality and health of the plants. The plants themselves are constantly irradiated with artificial light to make them think it’s sunny, while being injected with vitamins and nutrients directly into their roots, removing the need for soil.

Since the plants are effectively sequestered from the outside environment, they can be kept free of unwanted bacteria, fungi, and insects without using pesticides.

Cost in wages and salaries and chemicals used and in electricity costs per thousand head of lettuce? Nutrient content of lettuce produced?

 

[lpetrich]

Cost in wages and salaries and chemicals used and in electricity costs per thousand head of lettuce? Nutrient content of lettuce produced?

The only cost number mentioned was $1.60 per bag of lettuce.

 

[4321lynx]

Cost in wages and salaries and chemicals used and in electricity costs per thousand head of lettuce? Nutrient content of lettuce produced?

The only cost number mentioned was $1.60 per bag of lettuce.

Seems very low production cost. Depending on size of Bag, of course. And Im guessing does not include capital cost of start-up.