Does Vertical Farming Work?

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Exa Cognition

Exa Cognition

Күн бұрын

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@Killbunny
@Killbunny 4 жыл бұрын
I started watching minecraft farms ideas and ended up in real life farms.
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
It's funny how many people arrived at this series from Minecraft. I first came across vertical farms in Minecraft alpha, I didn't realize that it was a real thing at the time! That was quite a while ago now...
@yourhomegreens8489
@yourhomegreens8489 4 жыл бұрын
I've thought recently about what if we could make something very efficient in minecraft, to prototype things like supply chains or devices, and then use them in real life. If successful, that would be crazy and awesome. Gamification in it's rawest and best form lol
@tristanmitchell1242
@tristanmitchell1242 4 жыл бұрын
@@yourhomegreens8489 Minecraft is nowhere near realistic enough to simulate a real-life design. Large amounts of effort have to be spend on things like "structural integrity" and "water transportation". Farming in minecraft is, quite literally, a bit of infinite water, some dirt, and a seed, for exponentially growing amounts of food, provided unlimited space.
@alexhutchins6161
@alexhutchins6161 4 жыл бұрын
@@ExaCognition lol same here I found vertical farms years ago, From minecraft. Though this time was straight from my recommendation list.
@LoneLibraryGaming
@LoneLibraryGaming 4 жыл бұрын
@@tristanmitchell1242Unless we make mod for it--
@FungIsSquish
@FungIsSquish 4 жыл бұрын
Boi I have been vertical farming for years. Every single survival world I own have vertical farms in them
@goreobsessed2308
@goreobsessed2308 4 жыл бұрын
Short Snort same lol
@Zennishiable
@Zennishiable 4 жыл бұрын
Now if only Minecraft physics applied to the real world ;)
@cammilford7078
@cammilford7078 4 жыл бұрын
yep same
@hectorvega621
@hectorvega621 4 жыл бұрын
With that profile pic, you seem tired. If only Golems can do more than just be bodyguards.
@Zennishiable
@Zennishiable 4 жыл бұрын
​@@hectorvega621 ?
@EvelynNdenial
@EvelynNdenial 4 жыл бұрын
you left out the real benefit of rooftop and wall farms that is reducing the heat island effect and making cities less depressing to look at and live in.
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
Yeah, I definitely was a bit brief on the rooftop and wall segments for the sake of scope. I generally agree that more green in the city is a positive.
@arccv
@arccv 4 жыл бұрын
I love the idea of rooftop gardens, but i think that area is better suited for solar panels.
@misterturkturkle
@misterturkturkle 4 жыл бұрын
@@arccv depends on the building. Wide squat buildings would br good for either. Maybe even do a 50 50 mix. But for skyscrapers i would think putting solar panels on the south facing (in north hemisphere) walls would be more effective.
@MortyrSC2
@MortyrSC2 4 жыл бұрын
how about making city look better with decorative plants instead, because that kind of "farming" makes food really sad to eat - air pollution in most big cities makes it unhealthy
@misterturkturkle
@misterturkturkle 4 жыл бұрын
@@MortyrSC2 an even better option would be fruiting trees. They dont make any fruit for several years but would scrub the air in that time.
@The_Cali_Dude_88
@The_Cali_Dude_88 4 жыл бұрын
... my take... we used to ride horses... and somebody complained about horseless carriages IE: Cars and their uncertainty of being useful and or viable... gotta start somewhere eh?...
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
You do have a point, it makes me wonder what technologies of tomorrow are dismissed today, and on the flipside, what technologies that we tout for tomorrow, that will fail to materialize. In the case of Plant Factories, it looks to me like they are here to stay. For me, the question is more about how much they can scale and how soon they can do it.
@gregorymckenzie7511
@gregorymckenzie7511 4 жыл бұрын
As long as they keep going. Industries seem to be quite reluctant to do anything different or simply creative these days for fear of loss of profit. In this way, new technology and practices seem to be more at threat by the companies that make them; rather than those who do not. Still, I praise those who push to better our future by sticking to it, such as those who run the facilities shown in this video. Achievements are made not simply by those who have power and creativity, but by those who use those qualities to their fullest, and are persistent in doing so.
@alejandroguerra9413
@alejandroguerra9413 4 жыл бұрын
@@ExaCognition As much as we want, as soon as we want to.
@mondaysinsanity8193
@mondaysinsanity8193 4 жыл бұрын
@@gregorymckenzie7511 muskets were worse than crossbows when they first became a thing. It's all about seeing what it will be not what it is
@HowlingWolf518
@HowlingWolf518 4 жыл бұрын
@@gregorymckenzie7511 You can blame shareholder culture for that - stock buyers want company profits to double and triple every quarter, and that discourages long-term growth and experimentation. Gotta reinvent the stock market first.
@BrooklynRedLeg
@BrooklynRedLeg 4 жыл бұрын
The real question is "Why aren't we building more nuclear reactors"? Seriously, if you're so concerned about CO2 emission and energy consumption, nuclear fission is currently the ONLY energy production model that meets all the requirements. And yes, that includes safety. And no, Fukushima's problem was because the backup system was in the basement, meaning it was UNDERWATER when they needed it to run. Furthermore, before anyone says anything about "what about nuclear waste", fast reactors burn waste materials, reducing the amount of waste produced (which is already a fraction of what is produced now with Coal).
@sage7149
@sage7149 4 жыл бұрын
France uses mostly nuclear power
@evoluxman9935
@evoluxman9935 4 жыл бұрын
Because of public opinion. While nuclear is the cleanest, and arguably the safest, one accident means hundreds of squared kilometres rendered uninhabitable. Until 2011, most of us thought it can only happen in countries like the former soviet union, but as Japan, arguably the most developed nation on earth, faced a similar disaster at Fukushima, there has been a huge pressure from public opinion not to build additional nuclear reactors. Especially in Germany, which is since barely a nuclear nation anymore. (Though, an important thing to note: Germany still produces less CO2 and has not been more reliant on coal than before. It was fairly stable and now starts to fall. Though it is sure it could have been way faster if they kept their nuclear plants). (+ nuclear accidents happened elsewhere, like in France, the UK, and the USA as well. Though much smaller in scale. (Windscale, Three miles island, etc...)
@BrooklynRedLeg
@BrooklynRedLeg 4 жыл бұрын
@@evoluxman9935 "one accident means hundreds of squared kilometres rendered uninhabitable" No, it doesn't. Seriously, who comes up with this crap? Chernobyl didn't explode like a thermonuclear weapon and the area around it has a radiation exposure level of about 1 microsievert per hour. A single CT-scan gives you a dose of about 6900 microsieverts, for example. I mean, FFS, the global average background radiation on any day is between 0.17-0.39 microsieverts per hour depending on where on the planet you're at that time. You get up to 7 microsieverts per hour on a flight between New York, USA and Tokyo, Japan (for example) cause by cosmic radiation. As for Fukushima, it was an old reactor (built in the 70s) and was nearing the end of its lifespan (in fact, it had probably been pushed beyond its lifespan). Furthermore, the light-water reactor design has been noted to be flawed since the 1970s, while US (and France) use a different and better light-water coolant design (pressurized water). However, that is also mitigated if we would built fast-neutron reactors, since it doesn't require liquid coolant (ala Fukushima) and could eventually be cooled with molten salt. And yea, Germany gets a lot of its power from nuclear still...they just buy it from France.
@joeblack4436
@joeblack4436 4 жыл бұрын
This is more about land and water use as well as food transportation than about electricity. Although electricity will be required. That said. You can work it out based on researching current prices yourself. Building a large wind/solar farm with large battery backup for day night energy availability is simply cheaper than a nuclear power plant in the majority of locations in the world. It's cheaper than building all but the largest coal plants in the coldest regions. And it's even cheaper than building peaker gas turbine power plants in many use cases. It's even in some regions becoming cheaper than operating existing coal or gas power plants. So the owners of such power stations are simply mothballing the stations and building renewables. Because there's more profit. Just cheaper overall. Worldwide hundreds of coal stations and nuclear builds have been stopped in the middle of building them simply because they could get more and cheaper power by using the remaining funds to build renewables. And the prices are still falling. For both renewables and batteries. And renewable installations are almost infinitely more likely to be build in a fraction of the time, and on time. PLUS you can as easily build many smaller renewable installations rather than a few big fossil fuel/nuclear stations. Looking at the big picture, which includes transmission costs and load balancing costs it has thus far turned out that medium sized solar installations with capacities in the order of one or two hundred MW is economically optimal. I know many people absolutely adore nuclear as THE ANSWER. But... It's actually quite expensive overall. Going into the billions to build. Hundreds of millions to maintain and fuel, and often enough more billions to decommission at the end of their operating lives. The building and decommissioning costs often largely subsidised from public funds. Whereas many independent renewable energy suppliers have become profitable with relatively minimal subsidisation. And there's a lot of headaches and risks in general which are near 100% non-existent with renewables. Even if it was at one point a good answer to fossil fuels doesn't mean it's the best answer anymore. People should just accept it. While they lament the decline in nuclear builds and capacity, energy companies are just going where the profit is in the meantime. Seems like a pointless ongoing debate to me at this stage. Nuclear is neat, but it has become a bit of a dinosaur. The world of renewable energy has moved on quickly in the last decade. For part of the decade it was barely an ideological nice to have. Leading to more expensive energy bills for consumers. Now it's just simply the best answer with the most profit. Leading to lower energy bills for consumers. Where will it be in another 10 years? Probably in another 5 years people will laugh at companies building fossil/nuclear. And more and more at companies just operating existing fossil/nuclear. As stupidity. Already in Saudi Arabia solar has come in at 1.7US cent per kWh. "Per kWh"! It should be no surpise that the Saudis have seen the writing on the wall and have taken Aramco public. I even fully expect that by the time ITER manages profitable fusion energy in 30-50 years time (if they ever do!) then people will be left wondering why the hell they would want it. Apart from maybe for large centralised server farms and military installations. Who knows. Maybe there will be no use cases for fusion at all unless somebody can come up with a cheap compact solution. There are more than 4x the renewable power capacity worldwide now compared to the beginning of the decade. Mark my words. Now that it has become so cheap, and is still becoming cheaper we will see an 8x increase by the end of this coming decade. At least.
@ambeegaming76
@ambeegaming76 4 жыл бұрын
With the amount of Earthquakes I don't think NA would be a good place for one lol
@exosproudmamabear558
@exosproudmamabear558 4 жыл бұрын
So we need more electricity and less energy-consuming lights which is quiet achievable in the future
@beatrixthegreat1138
@beatrixthegreat1138 4 жыл бұрын
Exo's proud mama bear wind and solar power maybe? The buildings are in the sun and some of them are high up. In places with heavy rain fall we could utilize it with strategically placed water wheels that move, and create energy for generators. I saw an experiment done with high currents were they made a generator powered by moving currents that did supply power for half a city.
@exosproudmamabear558
@exosproudmamabear558 4 жыл бұрын
@@beatrixthegreat1138Wind and solar power are too expensive though. I would say more advanced nuclear energy would make things a lot cheaper.
@beatrixthegreat1138
@beatrixthegreat1138 4 жыл бұрын
Exo's proud mama bear but the cost of nuke power is much higher. Solar and wind would be cheaper in the long run with the right administration
@exosproudmamabear558
@exosproudmamabear558 4 жыл бұрын
@@beatrixthegreat1138 Not really if you look at the amount of electricity and cost rate, nuclear energy is much proficient. This is why even the most developed countries can't turn to solar and wind energy fast even they don't want to use nuclear energy anymore.
@beatrixthegreat1138
@beatrixthegreat1138 4 жыл бұрын
Exo's proud mama bear I’m talking about the danger aspects like Fukushima. It’s still leaking and every robot they send in to repair burns up before it can even start the job.
@NordicProspecting
@NordicProspecting 4 жыл бұрын
idk why i got this in my feed. One year has past and the company that wanted to build the vertical farm in Sweden went bankrupt, they never even started building. The key to make money on vertical farming is cheep buildings, that means you have to have a Musk approach to problems, get funding and getting the price of that technology down. Also there are ways to reflect light from the sun and use lamps to top up in winter near the poles. Energy consumption goes down. Then you can also get fresh healthy food cheap to the masses. good video.
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
Cheap buildings is certainly an important element, and something skyscraper farms couldn't reasonably achieve. There are a lot of elements to a Musk style approach, I suspect his approach of extreme vertical integration could go someway to improving the cost competitiveness. Interestingly enough, his brother Kimbal founded a container farm company - Square Roots.
@silviafox78
@silviafox78 4 жыл бұрын
@@ExaCognition - The key to all this working out is creating cheaper electricity. We would have to also get off fossil fuel powerplants as well if we want to really lower our impact on the environment. Solar and wind farms are still expensive and would take up the same or more space than we'd save with the best vertical farms. Therefore, in my opinion, the key is in new-age nuclear reactors which produce the same electrical output for a cheaper price with far less nuclear waste, compared to the 50+ years old designs we are currently using, which also has a much lower half-life and which allows us to save our fossil fuels to be used for other things at a, possibly, lower cost due to a lowered demand once old fossil-fuel based power plants are replaced by new, cheaper, more efficient, and safer nuclear plants.
@Yetipfote
@Yetipfote 4 жыл бұрын
A Musk approach to problems is beginning to produce for the rich people to finance his cars and then gradually, as technology and production methods improve, also produce for poorer people.
@creativefantasybox2462
@creativefantasybox2462 4 жыл бұрын
I think it should be like manufacturing industry. Because to reduce cost, the have to set industries that are kind of mass producing all the necessary equipment and materials for the farm plants. And the vertical plants farm should produce it's own sustainable energy with biofuel.
@lazyh-online4839
@lazyh-online4839 4 жыл бұрын
@@Yetipfote "produce for the rich then as production improves produce for the poor" That's just manufacturing in general, new products will always be more expensive for a given level of quality than something that's already been established which makes it easier for the wealthy to get newer stuff. That's just how all manufacturing works, not really relates to a "Musk approach".
@Danster82
@Danster82 4 жыл бұрын
Vertical farming doesn't have to be done on premium real estate it can be done on farmland itself, thats when it comes into its own.
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
Yes you are right. A lot of architectural concepts for say skyscraper farms put them in the middle of the city, this is partly with then intention being close to the consumer and probably partly for the aesthetics of a design concept. The ability to place vertical farms pretty much anywhere is a distinct advantage. Existing companies such as Spread place their vertical farms surrounded by farm land on the edge of suburbia, such that they are close to a consumption center but also close to transport networks. The flexibility of placement is very useful for keeping land and building costs low. Companies like aerofarms have relatively urban production and have managed to leverage cheap real estate by re-purposing existing real estate, such as an old steel mill and a disused nightclub. There are plenty of smaller operations in both urban and rural settings. I think I could have done a better job of getting across the location flexibility advantage in this series.
@tsilb
@tsilb 4 жыл бұрын
​@@ExaCognition Aesthetics are such a waste. Just buy an existing, boring, rectangular warehouse. Nobody's gonna convince anyone we're being sustainable if we see them throwing billions of dollars away on some futuristic arcology when what we really needed was cheap land.
@snailordskates384
@snailordskates384 4 жыл бұрын
Kevin C I cultivate lettuce and micro greens vertically via hydroponics in a shipping container turned into controlled environment agricultural facility! This week we had a 105 lb lettuce harvest from our one container!
@tsilb
@tsilb 4 жыл бұрын
@@snailordskates384 Awesome! High density, purely functional, efficient. That's what we need our agriculture to look like. And ideally, local.
@snailordskates384
@snailordskates384 4 жыл бұрын
Kevin C we’re centered in the middle of Miami and our customers both local restaurants and residents get their produce delivered same day as harvest!
@Anna-tc6rz
@Anna-tc6rz 4 жыл бұрын
I use aquaponics + a bit of vertical farming. Some plants do very well in towers, others don't. I use basically a pipe standing straight up. I can produce most of my own food this way and trade a lot of the fish for other meats
@bd4811
@bd4811 4 жыл бұрын
Hi, could you provide me more information on your farming activity? I am looking for small scale solutions and for mass production. 🙂 my mail is: bela.deri@ferovia.co.uk.
@greghall4836
@greghall4836 4 жыл бұрын
3:09 The company behind the project in Linköping (my home city) mentioned in the video was put in bankrupcy this year. In 9 years they managed to waste over 12 million USD of investor's money and another million of the city's money, without actually having started to build anything at all.
@Simboiss
@Simboiss 4 жыл бұрын
What did they do with the money? Analysis? Feasability plans?
@scavenger6268
@scavenger6268 4 жыл бұрын
@@Simboiss It is likely "Union fees and Management payrolls" there is an episode from the comedy show Yes Minister that had a similar situation with "the best (government) run hospital in London" that was costing in the millions and not a single patient or doctor! :)
@greghall4836
@greghall4836 4 жыл бұрын
I don't know. They redrew the plans for the building at least two times. I presume a lot of money went to paychecks and to markering the project to potential investors in order to keep the paychecks to the management flowing. In my opinion building a highrise greenhouse in a low population density area with lots and lots of farmland was utterly silly in the first place.
@scavenger6268
@scavenger6268 4 жыл бұрын
@@greghall4836 Yeah that sounds utterly silly. I mean it should be something unique like an automated export farm or automated industrial production building for the benefits they could bring.
@GeneralBlackNorway
@GeneralBlackNorway 4 жыл бұрын
@@greghall4836 Classical scam. Come up with shiney cool idea with nice visuals and hefty promises of solving all the moral dilemmas with futuristic technology! Then as they get the money they can burn it on paying them selves trying to figure out how to actually make it work, only to run out of money, begging their investors for ever more swearing they are so close to getting it to work, until one day the investors finally have had enough and have spoken to someone with an actual clue that can show them how this team is actually useless and wont ever make their idea work as they promised. Then they go bankrupt and go on with their lives having made a killing without producing any value for anybody. They probably justify it to them selves as taking rich peoples money so it's fine or something like that.
@alejandroguerra9413
@alejandroguerra9413 4 жыл бұрын
The mistake is thinking that sustainability is low-value. It's low value until it isn't.
@madscientistshusta
@madscientistshusta 4 жыл бұрын
That can be said about many technologies tho
@vincenthellsing5655
@vincenthellsing5655 4 жыл бұрын
dude....I know what you're saying.....but the way that you say it is the reason why economists or "the elites", as you perhaps even call them, ton't take you seriously. If you can calculate the long-tern value accumulation of sustainability as part of a marketing/branding strategy then go and make a fortune with it. But spitting halfassed ominous one-liners ain't gonna save the planet :/ So get off your high environmentalist horse and start learning some math ;)
@generalharness8266
@generalharness8266 4 жыл бұрын
@@vincenthellsing5655 That has always been a argument. It is too expensive to do now but in the future it will be even more expensive if we don't do it. The problem is that is speculation, There was starvation then GM plants came about, another food shortage occurred then fertilizers came out. I am in agreement in high density farming but that is because the things that are grown are FOOD, does this mean they suffer yes but it also means I can afford meat. Needs drive innovation we do not need this atm as standard farming is still viable for countries with the people most likely to figure something out. Until someone can make money off it there is no drive to do it.
@IAmTheRealBill
@IAmTheRealBill 4 жыл бұрын
“For 80k you buy a shipping container ... this low cost entry” So for 80k you can, at best, produce 1/5th of an acre’s food. You can do that in the ground on a quarter acre or more for 5-10k. So for far less capital investment you can out produce it, and with a less sensitive setup. You can produce 25% more for 1/8th of the cost. I would certainly not call the 80k up front cost a low cost entry. Hydroponics systems aren’t *finnicky* at best. Why do you think the referenced “plant factories” go to such extreme lengths to cut the variables down? Moving to a “plant factory” model isn’t doing anything for the land that has been biologically mined to near sterility. It does nothing to restore what used to be many feet of quality soil. The largest barriers to food production over time are not land but quality land, they are not lack of hydroponics but lack of soil maintenance and management. We know how to restore the soil, and it takes much less time than most people think. We also have learned (or re-learned some might say) that multi-use is not only efficient but effective. The “market gardener” level is the truly scalable option. We have more back yard space than rooftops. Your back yard is the ultimate in locally grown. But that doesn’t sit week with the big wigs in the city who don’t have them. They only see and think in terms of their city. The amount of space and investment needed to grow your own herbs - even for city denizens, is shockingly low. The water requirements for small scale farms (“market gardens) is much lower than large ones which lose most of their water due to the sheer size of the area it is spread over - and the means of delivering it to that area. These are not problems at the smaller scale. It isn’t about growing all, or even most, of your food in your yard. Instead it is about growing “enough” in your yard. And most people are gobsmacked at how cheap and easy that is. This video referenced several options that seemed to come in at “saving about 2%” and they were all expensive. High up front costs and high maintenance, and distribution it even factored in. However, if just 10% of households were able to grow just an average of 20% of their plant based foods in situ, we can get there with far less money needed. Growing that portion yourself is even possible for city dwellers. For those of us with lawns shifting from turf grass to food and ornamental gardens will usually result in a reduction of water use. Turf grass is a thirsty crop. In terms of water usage it is the largest single irrigated crop in the U.S. - while only covering a total area the size of Texas. Because if this, shifting from turf grass to family foodstuffs means a net decrease in local water requirements. We would also see a return of local biodiversity, which improves ecological resiliency. Vegetable producing land in the U.S. is around only 3 million acres. We have some 42 million acres of residential lawns. If only ten percent of that were converted to vegetable and herb, it would be more space than is used for *all* of our current domestic vegetable production. All of it and then some. This is why it is “low value” - because it is cheap, easy, and distributable. It is why high rises are a *waste* of space for this purpose. If you are the kind of person that likes big initiatives, let me out this in that perspective. Spend 500 per residence to pay for them getting started and converting half of their yard to garden, figure a million people. So half a billion dollars and, based on average sizes, you’ve now “expanded” vegetable farm are by around 125,000 acres and every bit of it local. You’ve also cut down each of the water usage for each of those places by as much as 38% in the summer on average. How much do those “plant factories” cost again?
@ADerpyReality
@ADerpyReality 4 жыл бұрын
Maybe doing to the soil our current farming is using. If we can fix that will help combat a lot, increase nutrients and the land they're being grown on will suck our excess carbon dioxide the soil around the world being sucked up.
@aleksandrabissani567
@aleksandrabissani567 4 жыл бұрын
if it comes for water, using trickle irrigation we save 90% of water even when gardening on the soil.
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
I think this is a fair point. The comparison between vertical farms and the current general state of agriculture isn't really a fair one, since I was largely looking at the latest and best in the case of vertical farming. There is a lot of latitude for reducing the global challenges by scaling existing sustainable agriculture techniques. Delving into sustainable ag was beyond the scope of this series, but it's something I'd like to come back to. In many cases the impacts can be fairly significant and relatively easy to implement.
@OwlMoovement
@OwlMoovement 4 жыл бұрын
@@ExaCognition I'm glad this came up. A lot of the fanfare numbers in these technologically intensive tend to compare themselves to worst-case wasteful scenarios (overhead watering and open irrigation ditches which lose a lot to evaporation) rather than much more conservative irrigation methods like drip. One can imagine, too, that with all of the pipework involved in a plant-factory, the inevitable leak-maintenance that emerges as these shiny new ventures begin aging will significantly tarnish both cost and water conservation. If you do a follow-up video, I'd also love to see what you can find about the embodied energy and upkeep of these facilities; the fact that their marketing focuses so narrowly on operating consumption is a curious one.
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
This video took off a lot more than I expected recently! I'm glad that many people have enjoyed it and found it informative. One of the most requested additions for my channel is source and calculation documents. It's something I actually wanted to post with the video, but the document was a mess and hard to follow. I planned to get round to fixing it but never did. Given the traction I've seen on the video recently, it's about time I add a link to the sources. I don't have a lot of time at the moment (hence my lack of videos), but I'll add a link to the description in a few days with some of the sources. I will make sure to keep adding the sources and calculations over time until it's complete. As for future videos, I have had to focus employment recently but I am looking at ways to be able to make more videos, I do have a video at about 80% complete. After that, I start the energy series and will be looking at cultured meat and more vertical farm videos. Edit: I've added the link to the source doc. There's not much there yet but I will try to add to it as fast as possible. docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PLMge4OM_4cSc55iWVid0wMolbe8bbIO7QYWFvpOkKc/edit?usp=sharing
@catherineleslie-faye4302
@catherineleslie-faye4302 4 жыл бұрын
I would love to see at least small scale vertical farms employing homeless people and growing medicinal quality herbs and leafy plants for herbal teas... it would be good to have all our ingredients for our teas grown in or near our cities.
@mickmickymick6927
@mickmickymick6927 4 жыл бұрын
Fair play, great to see a content creator making an effort to show sources. Too many big channels like Crash Course don't bother to post their sources and, this makes them untrustworthy.
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
@@catherineleslie-faye4302 I would like to make a video on small scale home/local vertical farms. Will they work? can they be cost effective? how much could you grow? etc. It seems like a good follow on to this series (which is mostly focused on the larger scale Plant Factories).
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
@@mickmickymick6927 Thanks! I want to do a better job of posting the sources and calculations in future videos. So the the information becomes a sort of open source document. I was also thinking about crowd sourced knowledge too, as I'd imagine that would improve the quality of the research.
@catherineleslie-faye4302
@catherineleslie-faye4302 4 жыл бұрын
I am looking forward to such a video...
@Yavorh55
@Yavorh55 4 жыл бұрын
> Be big engineer, creating the future of farming in urban locations > Create a tri-shovel instead of buying 3 shovels
@dave-cj5gb
@dave-cj5gb 4 жыл бұрын
What is symbolism
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
It makes me wonder how big the corporate symbolic shovel market is!
@TheEvilProfessorMonoCulture
@TheEvilProfessorMonoCulture 4 жыл бұрын
Triple Shovel is called a Plow - Horse or Ox Not Included
@dave-cj5gb
@dave-cj5gb 4 жыл бұрын
@@TheEvilProfessorMonoCulture ... Hindsight is 20/20
@terkelalgevind529
@terkelalgevind529 4 жыл бұрын
@@TheEvilProfessorMonoCulture In russia women is replacement for horse or cow at age 30 plus.
@meisj0n007
@meisj0n007 4 жыл бұрын
Lettuce find out
@Tterragyello
@Tterragyello 4 жыл бұрын
An interesting feature that he didn't touch on for the plant factories is the types of lights they use. The blue and red lights used in the footage are LED. These are optimal for plants because blue and red light is all that plants use for the sun. If these LED are efficient enough in conjunction with renewable energy, we could grow plants indoors better than anywhere for less cost anywhere in the world. Better efficiency than nature can provide.
@saulw6270
@saulw6270 4 жыл бұрын
Garrett Robison but skyscrapers would waste money in real estate value if used ONLY for farms if it’s offices n living spaces with farms supplemented it’s fines cuz ur not giving up solar space
@maythesciencebewithyou
@maythesciencebewithyou 4 жыл бұрын
@@saulw6270 These vertical farms do not need to be built in cities. The main benefit of these is that they need far less land to grow on. This way more habitats can be kept intact.
@TheyCalledMeT
@TheyCalledMeT 4 жыл бұрын
yes, it's LEDs and only the colors which plants absorb the most but it's still energy that has to be produced instead of being given by the sun. and no you can't get far more efficient, the only energy loss is heat .. have you ever seen an increddibly hot LED? (outside of high power tech products) so for me, the question is .. can we produce energy highly efficient, cheap (!) and as free of pollution as possible.. THEN vertical farming becomes a real thing untill then .. it's a "green" hype but not good for the environment
@Gardstyle35
@Gardstyle35 4 жыл бұрын
thats just wrong. 65 uplikes... people dont fact check or think at all...
@themalle132
@themalle132 4 жыл бұрын
That's ultraviolett light not "blue and red LEDS" my guy.
@alinorametaluna3494
@alinorametaluna3494 4 жыл бұрын
One of the better ideas I've seen for DIY vertical/wallspace farming, is use a 24 pocket shoe organizer, with plants in every pouch.
@weakspirit_
@weakspirit_ 4 жыл бұрын
who knew vertical farms on minecraft would slowly creep onto the real world?
@oliverhitchcock8436
@oliverhitchcock8436 4 жыл бұрын
Thank you. Well written, well researched and extremely informative. Do you have any more recent data, following the mostly 2015 studies mentioned? Also, very impressive work on the collection and sharing of your source data!!
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
Thanks! I'm glad you found it helpful. The source and calculation doc that I'm adding to is based on the original sources and calculations that were used for the video series for the sake of continuity. I've got plenty more to add, it's going to take some time. I started researching the vertical farm series in 2017 and as you say, a lot of the sources are circa 2015. It would be a huge undertaking to update the sources for the latest, but I would like to do it as part of a video though. I was thinking of doing a video along the lines of Vertical Farming in 2020/21, were I would go through and update/make corrections to my original series and to see how the models are holding up, making new conclusions/predictions if necessary. I'd provide a new source/calculation document along with it (completed and linked with the initial video launch though!).
@jek__
@jek__ 4 жыл бұрын
This video has a lot of small tells that show quality and care. Right off the bat its professional and well organized, its information dense but not dry. In the video and comments, your presentation and attitude makes you come across as level headed and trustworthy, which makes me want to keep watching. High quality work here On the topic, I wonder if light irrigation via mirrors could be used to mitigate some of the energy cost of lighting a vertical farm. I also thought it was funny when around the 11 minute mark you ponder "could these be solar powered?" The question is valid and makes sense, but is humorous in the grand perspective: can the mass growth of plants be driven by solar energy? lol
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
Thanks for your words. Mirrors are definitely an opportunity for improving the efficiency of growing and they can be implemented without much cost. It's fairly common for even small scale growers to use artificial lights in combination with mirrored tents to trap as many photons as possible. Mirrors can create a few operational issues however, trapping the light also tends to trap the heat and limit airflow. Environment control is a big advantage of plant factories, so you need to be mindful of how mirrors affect that. With that said, I'd expect to see the use of mirrors more and more going forward. It seems ironic to use solar to capture light when plants already do it themselves, at first glance, it appears to be a wasteful endeavour. In the best case scenario, after converting sunlight into electricity, and then passing that electricity through LED's to create light again, you only have around 11% of the light energy than you started with (89% light loss). If you've lost a magnitude of your energy, how can it possibly be considered energy efficient? There's more to this than meets the eye however and as a system it's possible to more than overcome these loses. It's important to remember that plants grown outside are hugely inefficient at turning sunlight into edible mass. You might think that these losses must be equally true of plants grown in plant factories but that's not the case. For a start, the LED's don't return sunlight, they return very specific wavelengths that the plants can use. Much of the suns radiation cannot be used for photosynthesis, but can be captured by a solar cell. In a sense, you could say that the solar cell allows you to turn unusable photons from the sun into usable photons (PAR - Photosynthetically Active Radiation). For this reason, the 89% loss of energy is misleading, because the plant couldn't use half of the sunlight in the first place because it was an unusable wavelength. Factoring this in, we are still looking at 77% efficiency loss. Of course this is still a bit of a simplification, even with PAR, not all of light absorbed with the same efficiency, the energy delivered across the spectrum (spectral irradiance), the quantity and wavelength of light at growing phases (Spectral Photon Flux Density), the hours of light etc. All of these have a big impact on growing efficiency of a plant. Outdoors, you get what you are given, indoors you can precisely control these parameters for maximal efficiency. As a result, the growing control of LED's enable much high growth per photon than is possible than with sunlight. Beyond LED's, there are other parameters that improve the efficiency of growing indoors. Temperature, Humidity, CO2 enrichment, root oxygenation etc. The net results is far more edible mass per photon of light, and this is more than enough to overcome the 77% efficiency loss. It's control and growing density of vertical farms which allow them to be net energy efficient. You don't need solar to see these efficiencies, just electricity for your LED's, though it can be a clean and cheap source if the location is right. I want to go through a more detailed analysis in a future video, but I hope this helps illustrate the solution to the seeming efficiency paradox of using solar power to generate light for plants.
@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug
@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug 4 жыл бұрын
Vertical farms powered by solar electricity is mostly just stupid, the losses in energy conversion means you're probably better off just growing the plants where the solar electricity plant would have been. It only makes sense in an area where you have way more sun per square meter than the crops require and where outside farming is hard or impossible, like in a desert (or on a space colony). Otherwise it only makes sense if the power source is something more compact such as nuclear, geothermal, hydro or possibly wind in an area where wind is more plentiful than daylight (such as arctic coastal areas); or of course fossil fueled power plants but that's not environmentally friendly anyway.
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
It doesn't make intuitive sense to turn sunlight into electricity and back into light. Afterall, this double conversion process is only 10% efficient (even with a good setup). However, there is more to it than is immediately obvious. For a start, sunlight is only about 50% Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR), whereas solar can capture across the spectrum and the LED's can emit only PAR. Even factoring this in though, you are still changing a 90% loss to a 80% loss. If that was all there was too it, then this would be a very wasteful approach. Plants grown in Plant Factories are far more efficient at turning photons into edible mass. There are a number of reasons for this, temperature, humidity, CO2 enrichment, root oxygenation, nutrient supply, light recipes, photoperiod etc. All these have a huge effect on the growing efficiency of the plant and you can only leverage the full extent of these benefits with artificial lighting. This essentially means that you have a much smaller area of solar panels than you would need if you grew the same amount food in a field. So you could say that using solar is net land efficient, even if the logic of that seems counter intuitive. Generally speaking, the current state means that this is an effective way to produce high nutrient but low calorie food. It will need to become more efficient and require cheaper energy, to be able to supply our main calories such as wheat and rice though.
@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug
@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug 4 жыл бұрын
@@ExaCognition good point. I actually thought of it after posting, that the maths is probably not that simple. But I would still argue that bulldozing a forest to build solar power plants is a terrible idea. We should only install solar power in places where it doesn't displace any more plant life.
@MrFelixFB
@MrFelixFB 4 жыл бұрын
with 2 billion ish more people on the way, this technology needs rapid expansion (froim an ecological perspective)
@jimmyfafal6607
@jimmyfafal6607 4 жыл бұрын
Felix Forthwind the entire video is about how little of an impact this would actually make lmfao
@aidenwhiting5131
@aidenwhiting5131 4 жыл бұрын
Also in what time frame is the 2 billion coming, that number doesn't mean much without a timeline lol, 2 billion next year? Next 10 years?
@ambeegaming76
@ambeegaming76 4 жыл бұрын
We are almost or already at 8 billion aren't we? I believe I read a paper a few years ago that had results that believe the world will never see 10 billion because birth rates even in third world countries were slowing down.
@MrFelixFB
@MrFelixFB 4 жыл бұрын
@@ambeegaming76 correct! the world average is 2 births per couple but the elderly are filling up, as in in a lot of places there will be more once that fills it should level out. estimates vary ofc thats just what i've read, it might be leveling out here idk.
@plinyelder8156
@plinyelder8156 4 жыл бұрын
Or people can stop having too many kids.
@emanate0
@emanate0 4 жыл бұрын
you forgot to mention susceptibility to disease and environmental cost of fertilizer.
@icanstillfly
@icanstillfly 4 жыл бұрын
I'm here from the vertical farm video by Grateful, it seems pretty legit
@nikitkothale2388
@nikitkothale2388 4 жыл бұрын
Same here
@simi3275
@simi3275 5 жыл бұрын
My presentation exam is about this topic! Its so interesting and im glad that you did so well in your research haha
@bambimamalon6738
@bambimamalon6738 4 жыл бұрын
@zztop3000 Damn, chill out bro
@besearchingforwisdom6267
@besearchingforwisdom6267 4 жыл бұрын
You are doing an outstanding job of communicating these ideas and issues...keep going and I'll help get the word out also. Subscribed and studying
@frostytokes7427
@frostytokes7427 4 жыл бұрын
these look like the farms i make in minecraft
@bonefetcherbrimley7740
@bonefetcherbrimley7740 4 жыл бұрын
What a fascinating video. I have no idea why it was recommended to me but I approve, have a like!
@gnomad3143
@gnomad3143 4 жыл бұрын
I like this Video, but I feel like the Roof top farms may have more benefits than you have described here. In general, its scientifically proven having access to plant-life or just being In the proximity of plants improves cognitive function and psychological health. Especially as unhealthy as it is already to live in cities, I personally would rather see more green in cities, even if its only cosmetic.
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
Roof farming was definitely glossed over in this series as I wanted to focus on areas with a greater measurable impact, given the limited role rooftop farming can have from a growing density perspective. With that said, I do agree with your premise, more greenery in urban spaces is something I would personally like to see more of, and the evidence does support the role it can have in making us healthier. In many cases, rooftops aren't really utilized yet they often can be, I can also see how the community/hobby space can be valuable too. It's tricky to measure the impact, but I do support the principle.
@gnomad3143
@gnomad3143 4 жыл бұрын
@@ExaCognition Absolutely! Honestly I couldn't imagine the hoops you would need to jump through to set up even a small garden on a roof of a building you don't already own, which makes it very impractical for hobbyists and pretty much anyone that wants to make something nice. Though maybe sometime in the near future we may see a change if it gets more popular. Not too optimistic thought, considering nobody has time anymore, even for their own kids let alone a garden haha.
@goreobsessed2308
@goreobsessed2308 4 жыл бұрын
Gage Owens roof top farms are super cheap. what he was saying us they aren't enough
@shoebahmed65
@shoebahmed65 5 жыл бұрын
I appreciated you man for your work and this presentation on Vertical Farming. I am studying this topic and your video make a huge impact on my studying. Keep going man. Peace ✌
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 5 жыл бұрын
Thanks, I hope the studying goes well!
@seankilburn7200
@seankilburn7200 3 жыл бұрын
lucky you. I have never studied something so interesting in education
@undertow2142
@undertow2142 4 жыл бұрын
Enable cameras and perform AI controlled selection -would be highly efficient able to detect small size and structural differences and evolve the produce over time. And optimize growth within the conditions of a factory farm.
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
There are a number of Plant Factories doing this, it's a really interesting area. Essentially they are running tens of thousands of experiments, with many types of sensors fed into an neural net (or other ml approach). It's so much easier to control the conditions indoors, so it's much easier to eliminate noise from the analysis and run more powerful experiments.
@hanro50
@hanro50 4 жыл бұрын
@@ExaCognition It's essentially doing what humans have been doing naturally for centuries more efficiently... Which is awesome in my book.
@Lugmillord
@Lugmillord 4 жыл бұрын
I am kinda optimistic and hopeful that vertical farming will take off, at the moment it seems to be limited to leafy greens for the most part. I hope science will find ways to diversify this.
@livinthatlife
@livinthatlife 5 жыл бұрын
Found you on your Instagram ad! Ha! I gotta try that haha. Nicely done. Been following this future tech topics for years
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 5 жыл бұрын
Thanks, I don't know if it will be cost effective for you because you already have a big subscriber base. It seems to be helping with jump-starting a new channel though.
@WolfiiDog13
@WolfiiDog13 4 жыл бұрын
Green rooftops and wall farms might not solve the food production problem, but they reduce the temperature inside buildings, thus making for a really good solution to cool buildings as well
@aleksandrabissani567
@aleksandrabissani567 4 жыл бұрын
The problem with the skyscrapers is that the sun doesn't shine on the scrapers. north side of them is shaded. The vertical, soilless growing of vegetables is very dangerous because doesn't supply all the minerals the plants usually take from the soil. The plants are beautiful but don't be fulled, the plants are lacking of nutrients.
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
I don't really see skyscraper farms as an effective and scalable strategy. The capital required to build them isn't offset by their growing density. The shading as is quite an issues as you mentioned. You can supplement skyscraper farms with artificial lighting, but the net efficiency is quite a bit lower than plant factories, once you factor in thermal efficiency, growing density, light and climate control, capital requirements etc. That said, plants grown in skyscraper farms aren't dangerous, it's just that they aren't cost effective. Plants grown hydroponically in Plant Factories, can match and exceed the nutrition of outdoor products. This is especially true if you can locate the vertical farm close to the point of consumption.
@flowgangsemaudamartoz7062
@flowgangsemaudamartoz7062 4 жыл бұрын
@@ExaCognition But how do the plants match up with naturally grown plants in point of nutrients? Thats the question.
@felicitatumfortunae
@felicitatumfortunae 4 жыл бұрын
@@flowgangsemaudamartoz7062 They match up better actually. Also they can be grown pesticide free (which soil grown plants are pumped full of). They are a far better alternative to be honest. The really high upfront costs are the main impediment. Once they are in business and selling they can grow better quality stock and more quickly with optimised environments.
@thewingedhussar4188
@thewingedhussar4188 4 жыл бұрын
So again the main big concern is energy costs. Even more reason to get into green energy
@Arterexius
@Arterexius 4 жыл бұрын
Throw these farms into the desert and put solar panels all over them and in the space between the buildings. Or, even better, put the buildings below the desert and the solar panels on top. Plenty of energy to be harvested and put into use there. It wouldn't take much of Sahara to power several countries. Imagine how well it could power these plant factories
@Simboiss
@Simboiss 4 жыл бұрын
Fighting gravity is costly.
@thewingedhussar4188
@thewingedhussar4188 4 жыл бұрын
@@Simboiss an yet we must in order to reach the stars
@baardi2
@baardi2 4 жыл бұрын
@@Arterexius sounds like a terrible idea. Where would you get the water from?
@binyaminschein5783
@binyaminschein5783 4 жыл бұрын
If the main big concern is energy cost I think we would want cheap energy, not necessarily green energy
@SmokeyAndTheBud
@SmokeyAndTheBud 4 жыл бұрын
Let me posit something for you... vertical isn’t just up, it also includes building down. Wouldn’t it just be easier to have the vertical farms beneath skyscrapers? The cost is about the same whether building up or building down
@mondaysinsanity8193
@mondaysinsanity8193 4 жыл бұрын
Sending energy down is cheaper then sending it up, same with water, and really everything. Plus geothermal heating/cooling effects making temp control cheaper, might actually be on to something
@JAN0L
@JAN0L 4 жыл бұрын
The cost of construction underground is much higher than above ground.
@RandyrheBlackKnight
@RandyrheBlackKnight 4 жыл бұрын
Building down is far more difficult and expensive than building up, more importantly, you can't build down in many areas, either because of the type of ground or just pre-existing infrastructure already occupying that space. Building up is essentially something that can be done anywhere.
@mondaysinsanity8193
@mondaysinsanity8193 4 жыл бұрын
@@RandyrheBlackKnight how is building down more expensive?
@RandyrheBlackKnight
@RandyrheBlackKnight 4 жыл бұрын
@@mondaysinsanity8193More maintenance, more earth needs to be moved, more reninfocrment is needed. Especially if you're building down in an earthquake zone, which is significantly more of the US if you'd think. Or a Flood Zone. Building Down is only really easy in very stable mountains or plains. And Again in many areas you'll have to deal with increased permitting and other rules and fees as underground tends to be where most municipalities shove their water, sweage, and heavy power infrastructure there to keep it out of the way.
@keepmoving1185
@keepmoving1185 4 жыл бұрын
What if we focused on nutrient rich foods only?
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
By nutrient rich, do you mean foods that people eat more for a diversity of minerals, rather than caloric value? If that's the case, then that is largely the focus for now, as providing significant calories via artificial light is too inefficient relative to sunlight with current technology.
@kingleecedillo
@kingleecedillo 4 жыл бұрын
I don’t know what’s so controversial about vertical farming.
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
From what I can tell, a lot of the controversy stems from the confusion around the different types of vertical farm. I've seen analysis that conflates skyscraper farms with plant factories, which leads to different conclusions about their viability. I think the general concern relates to them either being cost ineffective solutions and/or too energy intensive. There is some merit to these critiques, especially against some of the more hyped claims regarding vertical farms. That said, it's becoming increasingly hard to ignore that vertical farms are viable and there are many being run profitably around the world. It's true that the type of viable product is still relatively limited, but that is changing year on year. The main point of contention going forward is likely how much impact this technology can have, and that is largely related to it's ability to grow the energy intensive staple crops like rice and wheat. That said, I think many acknowledge that vertical farming doesn't have to be able to grow everything to be useful, it can be part of the solution, not the be all and end all. Based on the research I've done, the criticism surrounding this technology generally appears to be grounded in reality, though somewhat overblown. It seems to me that this technology does have the scope for a pretty large impact, though vertical farming is at least a decade away from reaching the scale needed to start having a significant impact.
@kairon156
@kairon156 2 жыл бұрын
Thanks for doing this video. I've always been a fan of vertical farming, while looking into it I realized some notions of it were flawed but it can work for the right reasons and methods. in 20-30 years growing food on farm donuts in space would be our best bet. Some reasons I like it is; 1 control over it's environment, making it so pesticides and the like aren't needed and fertilizers can be used much less often. 2 Food security, Russia and Ukraine exports something like 30% of the world's wheat product and right now neither are exporting very much. So if more nations had vertical farms instead of importing that would help out quite a bit.
@shookings
@shookings 4 жыл бұрын
I would love a video or series of videos from you on the viability of plant factories/solar farms/battery blocks (like Tesla) built in tandem
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
This will be part of my next series on the current/future state of energy.
@livedandletdie
@livedandletdie 4 жыл бұрын
Well Solar farms are extremely poor and near worthless. A single piece of charcoal that you use to grill with contains more energy than you get from Solar in a year. Now that's a decent comparison. The biggest reason for this, even if Solar is passive, it takes about 200 years for a single solar panel to even offset the actual cost of production. While Coal or Nuclear plants may deal with finite resources but output so much more energy that anyone that think of Wind or Solar or Wave technology to get energy are lunatics. Wind only exist to kill birds, Solar and cold climate or sandy climate doesn't work together, hail destroys the panels and the not so environmentally friendly toxins that are necessary for solar to function leak out, and sand will either cover the panels in sandy environments and grind down the surface of the solar panels over time... So Solar is out of the picture always. The only power source that we'd need in the future is hydrogen into helium fission plants. And the Helium produced could be stored and sold, because we're actually coming up on a Helium-3 shortage. And an eventual Helium-4 shortage as well.
@shookings
@shookings 4 жыл бұрын
@@livedandletdie The Major no offense brother, but you sound like you're just spewing all the Fox News alternative facts. And your comparison of charcoal to solar is laughable. I'd advise you to take a look at the government's own studies on wind and solar. They wouldn't invest in them if they weren't viable sources of energy. But I know you won't do it. You'll probably delete your comment when you see that I'm not going to be swayed by some guy who's trying to sound smart, but won't provide any sources.
@madensmith7014
@madensmith7014 4 жыл бұрын
@@shookings It's either the capitalist conspiracy or the Green Party propaganda. Either way is shit if you think one is perfect and the answer to all our problems. Renewables are shit if you want to power industries and urban cities. Too much power consumption on very dense areas while you would need a crap ton of space for power to break even. On the other hand, its perfect if you're just living on the suburbs with only your family in one household. A solar panel or two on the roof could solve your power costs for years since those panel don't have to supply 10 floors of tenants' rooms with maybe 5 on each floor. The windmills could also provide for a nice view while on a highway drive which sure can't be done in the middle of New York. Non-renewables are shit since they destroy the environment and would run out in the future once everywhere on Earth has been excavated for fuel. It's not as if we didn't mine the materials to use on our renewable power out of the ground as well. Not to mention that you would also need a crap ton of lot of it if you want to out a panel or a windmill on every house and community out there. Then there is the proven nuclear energy and maybe fission but oh no, Chernobyl, Fukushima. It will kill us all, it's too dangerous for your health. We can't trust our engineers and scientists, we can't understand all those headaching sciency gibberish they say. We would rather listen to what Auntie Betty has to say on social media or what is on Karen's script on the news, or what's written on first page google. Edit: Shit's became a rant somewhere. Probably not talking about you anymore, but goddamn I hate some people. Need another drink. Probably read some other comment and it got into writing this, too lazy to take this down now. Ty for reading even this part ahahaha
@xDanoss318x
@xDanoss318x 4 жыл бұрын
The background music makes me think i'm watching thunderfoot debunk the shit out of something. Good video tho.
@robertsilvermyst7325
@robertsilvermyst7325 4 жыл бұрын
The energy problem can be solved with nuclear energy. Carbon neutral, feeds on its own waste, and with modern day technologies, can prevent past problems that nuclear had. Not only could you power these plant factories easily, you could power an entire city of plant factories and employee houses. I know a lot of environmentalists like to go for solar, which creates far more pollution in their creation and are not very reliable, and wind, which once again, not very reliable and dangerous to native bird populations. Nuclear is the cleanest and most reliable energy source, and with current technology, is also very safe.
@franklyanogre00000
@franklyanogre00000 4 жыл бұрын
no reason you couldn't put an array of panels on the roof.
@robertsilvermyst7325
@robertsilvermyst7325 4 жыл бұрын
@@franklyanogre00000 Here are the reasons: 1.> Needed daily sunshine rarely guaranteed 2.> Not much electricity generated by comparison 3.> Panels damage easily, especially in areas where hail and other storms are common Solar is good as a secondary source, not as a main supply.
@JeppeHagh
@JeppeHagh 4 жыл бұрын
Just found your channel and loving the content. Can't believe you don't have more subscribers yet. Keep up the good wotk and I'm sure your channel is gonna blow up soon!
@F-J.
@F-J. 4 жыл бұрын
We're talking about food and conservation of water. Not something we can compromise on in the near future.
@RR-us2kp
@RR-us2kp 3 жыл бұрын
This technology is exactly like nuclear power. Incredibly large capital costs and relatively small profits in short term. That's why all short sighted small minded people oppose to this. Because just like nuclear power, it takes about 30 - 40 years for this to be profitable. It's just like how France invested in expensive nuclear power while rest of Europe invested in cheap coal and oil power plants years ago. And now, France has plenty of cheap clean electricity while the rest are struggling with massive emissions and not enough money to invest in new power projects.
@shawnlowe153
@shawnlowe153 4 жыл бұрын
Oh shoot I thought this was a Minecraft tutorial
@mrjaz666
@mrjaz666 4 жыл бұрын
No, they can't be solar powered reasonably. You can't use a roof space with solar, which gives 25% efficiency, and then spread that power over multiple levels.
@GodActio
@GodActio 4 жыл бұрын
With the new micro fission nuclear reactors, we can provide green, cheap power to whole groups of farm factories. Imagine planting that micro reactor and then building an industrial sized region of factory farms around it, allowing the operation to expand as needed, propping up more micro fission reactors as required. Their small size and advancements takes the already safest energy technology in the world and makes it even safer.
@andrealighieri6295
@andrealighieri6295 4 жыл бұрын
Stop making sense! Its hurting my head! ;(
@neddragon8395
@neddragon8395 4 жыл бұрын
+ using robots to maintain everything, which will allow use even less space and cheaper cost=)
@monad_tcp
@monad_tcp 4 жыл бұрын
But is photovoltaic power generation more efficient than photosynthesis? I doubt, but Farm Factories would work with Nuclear power.
@ryanpanes1457
@ryanpanes1457 5 жыл бұрын
sorry pal, am late on your channel, pls thank kurzgesagt :) yours is way underrated, I'll gonna share this :)
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 5 жыл бұрын
Great to hear! I´m glad you like it!
@mkwarlock
@mkwarlock 4 жыл бұрын
When nuclear fusion becomes viable and mainstream, vertical farms will explode in popularity... It will be amazing... I really hope I will be able to witness it.
@khalinglallemmoi7678
@khalinglallemmoi7678 4 жыл бұрын
The video is very helpful...its impressive you added so many data... But, I would be soooooo happy if you add the ref. Too. 😜
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
I've just linked the first sources, there's a LOT yet to add, but it will contain a lot more and calculations over time.
@DashCrist
@DashCrist 4 жыл бұрын
Of course they will work, because the chunk is always loaded when you do stuff at home. Wait. Wrong lifestyle.
@acoral1035
@acoral1035 4 жыл бұрын
So, once there would be a major portion of fusion/fission power - we will have those green skyscrapers and a food nearby.
@rendomstranger8698
@rendomstranger8698 4 жыл бұрын
Uranium is a fossil fuel. It will help humanity become green for a few years but at the moment, nuclear power is nothing more than a temporary solution. At least until fusion becomes a viable option.
@diamanteduul8084
@diamanteduul8084 4 жыл бұрын
Thorium salt reactors. Supplies energy for desalination and farming, then use the water for farming and the salt from desalination for reactors
@Arterexius
@Arterexius 4 жыл бұрын
@@diamanteduul8084 Rethink that for a moment. Radioactive water for farming? That will not turn out great. Besides, even Thorium isn't anything more than a temporary solution. Thorium isn't a renewable resource.
@Arterexius
@Arterexius 4 жыл бұрын
@@rendomstranger8698 Not exactly a fossil fuel, as they are from long dead animals (dinos), but certainly not a renewable one either.
@ls200076
@ls200076 4 жыл бұрын
@@Arterexius radioactive water? WTH
@TRAILLER
@TRAILLER 4 жыл бұрын
Plant factories are a viable obtion in Canada then, as 60 % of the electricity is water turbine, 15% nuclear fission, 7% non hydro renewables, and less then 18% coal/gas/oil/others, acording to their survey of august 2019. Once we achieve nuclear fusion (a bit of sun in a bottle) we're golden.
@plinyelder8156
@plinyelder8156 4 жыл бұрын
Just wait for the US to develop the technology so your country can piggy back off the progress as they usually do.
@TRAILLER
@TRAILLER 4 жыл бұрын
​@@plinyelder8156 Developing nuclear fusion is actualy a race. Japan could also be the one to get to it first.
@VelvetEagleI
@VelvetEagleI 4 жыл бұрын
Nuclear plants could be what they need for power
@diamanteduul8084
@diamanteduul8084 4 жыл бұрын
Thorium salt reactors. Supplies energy for desalination and farming, then use the water for farming and the salt from desalination for reactors
@Inuitman
@Inuitman 4 жыл бұрын
nah, we don't want radioactive plants.
@CrazyLikeUhFox
@CrazyLikeUhFox 4 жыл бұрын
Aggu Kristian NuClEaR eNeRgY sCaRy
@Arterexius
@Arterexius 4 жыл бұрын
Nuclear plants aren't renewable no matter how many people wish to claim that. They all use up a set of unstable elements (usually uranium) and those elements aren't infinitely present on Earth. They do not reform and even though they take a long time to burn out, they still aren't carbon neutral as the mining operations on Earth are one of the most polluting industries existing. Even more so than the production of Lithium-Ion batteries and other renewable energy sources. As a matter of fact, we actually do not know what to do with the toxic mining waste that sits next to all modern mining facilities today. It just slowly poisons the environment. Hell, we don't even know what to do with radioactive waste, other than bury it and wait for it to decay naturally. The most polluting part of renewable energy is the production of Lithium-Ion batteries, as well as what to do with them when they die. The rest is easily reused. Hell, the silicon used in solar panels are way more abundant on Earth than any of the radioactive elements. Silicon is made from quartz, which is literally the most common rock on Earth. The only problem with batteries is Lithium being the best solution so far for making high power batteries that last a long time. But even with Nuclear energy, this would still be a problem. There isn't a single nuclear fission reactor that can beat the reuse ability of renewable energy machines. Not even Thorium Reactors. The only thing that comes close is Fusion and once we master that, then I'll be all in for replacing renewable machines with fusion power plants. They can deliver way more energy than any renewable resource. They mostly take up space below ground and if they malfunction, they will most likely explode, but leave no radioactive fallout afterwards. It will just be a massive explosion that will kill everything around it, but the area can be settled afterwards, so fuck off to fission and welcome to fusion... Once we have a plant running smoothly that is 😂 That said, nuclear fission energy is hella viable for space travel. Not so much for getting out of the atmosphere, but definitely for traveling between Earth and the other planets in our solar system. We seriously need to develop space engines that can utilize the immense power potential of fission powered spacecrafts. Perhaps Ion engines would be suitable. They barely burn fuel in their ionization process and are thus an excellent match for long running spacecrafts.
@DkKombo
@DkKombo 4 жыл бұрын
Can you imagine a point in the future where we can have these vertical farm fixtures in our houses and buildings? We can use them in businesses on the bare walls we don't use as spare lighting and decoration, and even use them in hotels and homes! Now THAT would be some awesome use of space!!!
@deepamanichan8666
@deepamanichan8666 4 жыл бұрын
Hi! I just got into this topic so thank you for this video. I like how you’ve covered the topic from multiple angles :) Is there more content on plant factories that you recommend? Thanks
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
Thanks, I've got two more videos on this topic myself, that follow on from this video. After that I think it's a case of understand what you are looking to learn. There aren't many detailed videos about plant factories, but there are many related to some of the key topics in this video. For example, a bit part of the success of plant factories is tied to the future of energy production and storage techniques. There are lot's of good videos on that from channels such as Real Engineering.
@oBseSsIoNPC
@oBseSsIoNPC 4 жыл бұрын
Skyscraper vertical farms don't make sense. The best concept are one level buildings that may use artificial light, but rely heavily on sunlight. Like a green house. This brings costs down to a minimum where you only have heating and water moving costs. Skyscraper designs would be ok, if mostly artificial light is considered and the purpose is density and severely lowering the costs and time it takes, to move the food from farm to the markets. When you rely heavily on artificial light, power outages cannot occur, replacement lights must be at hand. Many generations of crop can die very quickly, ESPECIALLY when using hydroponics or aquaponics, when relying on electricity. Growers tend to forget, that soil based growing can act as buffer for water, temperature and nutrients. Power outages won't effect a crop for at least 3 days. media-less growing takes less than a day to kill or severely stress plants.
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
I agree that skyscraper farms don't make sense, the growing density versus capital required is not favorable. Greenhouses are effective for growing and their ubiquity is not a surprise. That said, there are trade offs and limitations inherent with greenhouses when compared with Plant Factories. Greenhouses are cheaper to setup and cheaper to run, but being dependent on sunlight greatly reduces the growing density, control and yield. Which turns out to be the most effective solution is dependent on a number of factors: Location, Land Cost, Local Produce Prices, Electricity Cost, Labour Cost, Product Produced etc. There isn't a universal case where one is more cost effective than the other. That said, the use cases of greenhouses are a lot more versatile in terms of the places they can grow economically and the variety of products they can produce. Plant Factories, are lot more niche in terms of their viability. That said, in the niches where they are cost effective, they actually out compete greenhouses in terms of production stability, quality and even cost. It's also important to be mindful that the size of the niches are expanding over time. Power outages are manageable for plant factories, though it comes at cost. Those that are in a location to leverage cheap solar, are likely to also deploy storage to manage the inconsistent and cyclic nature of supply, so will already have this technology in place. In the case of storage for Plant Factories reliant on grid supply, it's a cost they need to consider weighed against the risk.
@MrGeneralPB
@MrGeneralPB 4 жыл бұрын
it is probably a very old technology as Hammurabi's Hanging Gardens did much the same 3000 bce
@MrGeneralPB
@MrGeneralPB 4 жыл бұрын
@zztop3000 lol
@vaelophisnyx9873
@vaelophisnyx9873 4 жыл бұрын
to be fair, such a building back then probably occupied enough land to build a castle on; which there is no evidence of a building that large near a waterway (would've needed one) anyway.
@mrninet645
@mrninet645 4 жыл бұрын
They cut down costs by using such old technology as slavery, not something we can utilize today
@noustrant
@noustrant 4 жыл бұрын
Imagine in the near future (20-30 years ahead) when we can invent alternative energies and plants varieties that does not needs a lot of lights to grow / produce faster, vertical farming can be an answer in global environment and hunger.
@michaelwatts5481
@michaelwatts5481 4 жыл бұрын
What if there’s an earthquake where those vertical farms are?
@gf6368
@gf6368 4 жыл бұрын
you need to make the farm float using an anti gravity engine
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
Japan has some of the largest Vertical Farms in the world. In fact, the Japanese government invested in Plant Factories to develop their food security in response to the 2011 earthquake. Many buildings in Japan are developed to be resilient to earthquakes, this can apply to Plant Factories too.
@Phantombit
@Phantombit 4 жыл бұрын
If we switched to nuclear we could reach 0 carbon emissions while being able to sustain current energy consumption with expansion potential for future generations, AND Unlike Solar technology which has plateaued in it development despite significant funding, and that takes the land we would be looking to save with stacked farming, Nuclear power requires very little land INCLUDING the nuclear waste that is created, Which even with the lack of funding it has has had developments into the USE of the nuclear waste to further generate power, while simultaneously reducing the radioactivity.
@vaelophisnyx9873
@vaelophisnyx9873 4 жыл бұрын
best part: liquid salt thorium reactors could be a better option that would use less space and produce even less problematic and more useful wastes (such as refissionable uranium isotopes)
@piroskapajor4972
@piroskapajor4972 4 жыл бұрын
Such an amazing topic and video! You've amazed me with how detailed and interesting you've made this! I was like 16 minutes is a long time for a KZbin video, but you've done such great research that you have kept my interest up until the very end!!! instant subscribe:) keep going!!!
@KyleTranel
@KyleTranel 4 жыл бұрын
Take lettuce and other leafy greens out of this equation and vertical farming falls flat on its side. I really don't like how so many of these videos just gloss over the types of plants these vertical farms are producing. No vertical farm currently produces a calorie dense plant like potatoes, rice, corn, or wheat. These 4 crops arguably sustain our modern life and without them we'd see starvation at massive scales. You can't feed the world on lettuce and kale. The reasons no vertical farm does this are well documented. These crops are dirt cheap to sell and are only profitable in bulk. For all the hype that vertical farms give about crop density, the building you'd need to create to compete with a regular 200 acre farm would be immensely expensive and have energy requirements that would close your doors as soon as you opened.
@akapilka
@akapilka 4 жыл бұрын
Watch his last video about this. Your nuances are answered there.
@SalvadorCiaro
@SalvadorCiaro 4 жыл бұрын
Energy=you need Nuclear fusion
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
High Q factor fusion would absolutely transform the viability of vertical farms (and many other industries). That said, I would imagine that the majority of crop types will already be viable in vertical farms before high Q-factor fusion arrives.
@drmosfet
@drmosfet 4 жыл бұрын
For over 50 years nuclear fusion has always been only 30 years away, and yet molten salt thorium reactor is what we could have had 30 years ago. LED light and control chips, make it possible to run on renewables energy, thorium reactor or fusion??? Will take it to the next level. But to me they are called warehouse farms, because it's a warehouse that stacks plants on shelf.
@SalvadorCiaro
@SalvadorCiaro 4 жыл бұрын
@@drmosfet kzbin.info/www/bejne/lZiYZYOAnb2Mrrc sorry but...
@wcdeich4
@wcdeich4 4 жыл бұрын
How do you prevent mold / mildew? Reducing water use with condensation in a sealed building is great - but how do you prevent mold / mildew growing like crazy?
@ambeegaming76
@ambeegaming76 4 жыл бұрын
Something they put in the air maybe. They could have airflow vents keeping everything moving too.
@wcdeich4
@wcdeich4 4 жыл бұрын
Hi. @@ambeegaming76 I'm perfectly fine with putting anti-fungal chemicals in the air - but then, some people would call it "non-organic" & not buy it, or not pay as much. But if they open vents, then water vapor escapes & it is not so water efficient anymore........ maybe there is another solution I do not know about, but it seems like quite a conundrum to me.
@ambeegaming76
@ambeegaming76 4 жыл бұрын
@@wcdeich4 Internal vent system air goes from one side of the room to the other. Line the pipes with UV lights to keep the water vapour from molding in the pipes.
@wcdeich4
@wcdeich4 4 жыл бұрын
Hi @@ambeegaming76 - wow, cool :)
@Dewkeeper
@Dewkeeper 4 жыл бұрын
They should integrate vertical farms with water energy storage systems or dams 🤔
@SecretLars
@SecretLars 4 жыл бұрын
Elaborate.
@Dewkeeper
@Dewkeeper 4 жыл бұрын
@@SecretLars water, pressure to pump the water through the farms and electricity all in the same place. Less steps where you need to convert energy so it's more efficient.
@SecretLars
@SecretLars 4 жыл бұрын
@@Dewkeeper Sorry that still doesn't make sense for me. Pumped-storage hydropower (PSH) utilizes turbines to rotate from the decrease of potential energy of the elevated water. The vertical farms feed the water to the plants. How would you suppose that the water goes from a lake at a higher elevation then down to a and up again to a (let's say 14 stories tall building) high rise and then down yet again to the turbines to make up for the loss of energy? Have you factored in that sort of system would require even more energy to pump all that water through that lenght of piping? Not to mention depending on the length of piping you'd need extra pumps, sort of like a valve system. Or is it in a sor of triangular open-"loop" PSH where you have one pump for close by elevation storage then another sepperate valve to lower elevation have the turbines and then the vertical farms where the water preassure from elevation pushes the water up the building and through the hydroponics and then finally out to the same stream lower down the river?
@Dewkeeper
@Dewkeeper 4 жыл бұрын
@@SecretLars I was thinking more along the lines of placing the vertical farm adjacent to the higher elevation water, then diverting a portion of that down the piping for the farm system. If it's a water storage system you have one system that does all the upward pumping and the farms just use a portion of the potential energy. Either way because you don't have a separate mechanism to pump water up into the farm it should be more efficient and reliable if you were already going to have that dam or storage facility there anyway. I wasn't exactly worrying about the specific methods only the overall number of steps where you can lose efficiency or have interruptions to the water or power that could kill the plants.
@SecretLars
@SecretLars 4 жыл бұрын
@@Dewkeeper So basically the farm using part of the stored energy instead of using it for energy generation? You'd still need the energy to pump up the water. You've just moved the building and not changed the costs.
@DFPercush
@DFPercush 4 жыл бұрын
Congrats on the algorithm boost all of a sudden lol... Anyway, one point I see is, you lose a lot of efficiency in converting solar energy to electricity and then back to light. I think a solar collector and a series of mirrors would be better from a pure thermodynamics point of view. Literally pipe in sunshine. But, one of the benefits of artificial lighting is that it can be on for more hours of the day. So the plants grow faster, if you're willing to spend the energy. I'm not sure how that equation balances out, but in a mostly sunny area, like a desert, it could be viable. A solar collector would have to cover a larger area than the building, but I suspect not as much as if the crops were planted in rows in a field. As long as it's focused exactly where it needs to be, anyway. Not all of that building's surface area is plants.
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
Thanks! It's certainly counter intuitive as to why you would ever consider a solar and LED combination, or really any artificial lighting system vs sunlight. In the case of solar, you are converting photons into electrical energy and back into photons. Even with a good setup this is around 10% efficient. With that said, your solar panel can capture photons across the spectrum and have your LED's only emit Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR). While only plants can only use around 50% of the suns photons. Still, that still leaves us with a just 20% relative efficiency. Plants in Vertical Farms are much more efficient at turning photons into edible mass, thanks a level of control much higher than can be achieved outdoors: Temperature, Humidity, CO2, nutrients, light recipe, photoperiod, root oxygenation etc. This is ends being a large enough effect to offset the efficiency loss of double conversion. Much of this can control can only be achieved with the help of artificial lighting. Light recipes, trigger changes in the plant, similar to how changes in light levels during the seasons trigger changes. These recipes accelerate plant growth, flowering, reduce root growing etc. This is something you can't realistically achieve with sunlight. As you mentioned, the LED's can grow at different hours, in fact many don't stick to a 24h growing cycles, as is helps them save energy and increase the number of harvests per year.
@mihirkotak5616
@mihirkotak5616 4 жыл бұрын
I dont get the obsession with solar and wind. They will never replace fossil fuels. The only viable option is nuclear power. Especially since the next generation nuclear reactors are meltdown proof and fuel efficient. Look up thourium reactors: safe, meltdown proof, fuel efficient, zero emissions. Power these plant factories (and cities) with thorium reactors and reduce global carbon emissions substantially.
@lancem7811
@lancem7811 4 жыл бұрын
Every star in the universe is powered by nuclear fusion. Our own system's sun is estimated to burn for another 5 billion years before swelling to a red giant and consuming everything on this side of the asteroid belt. Creating ultra-efficient solar powered technology gives us a virtually unlimited source of energy that's not reliant on a grid. There's only so much thorium and it has to be mined from somewhere and by someone, which goes against the trend of automation our market seeks. Imagine no more grid saturation and brownouts or blackouts because every home and structure is independently powered. That's the advantage of solar over nuclear, and while land based fusion still isn't production ready, solar is already alive and kicking, it just needs to be refined. In wartime, attacking a nuclear power plant cripples a city and sows chaos, however EMP proof solar generators/panels are already available. Because every point on the grid is a potential power supply, the solar option can be far more resilient and the learning curve for maintenance is much lower. Also, there's infrastructure costs; It's still up to the power company to decide how much to charge the consumers for that thorium generated nuclear electricity, which could be very expensive if someone in charge gets greedy. The video already pointed out 80% of the cost comes from electricity use, and the provider isn't cutting them any slack just for the sake of fresh produce. So, a solar powered urban/rural plant factory is far more self sufficient than a nuclear powered one and would likely profit quicker with higher ROI.
@broerymarantika853
@broerymarantika853 3 жыл бұрын
Thanks for this informative video 👍🏼
@texmex8220
@texmex8220 4 жыл бұрын
As far as locations, set up in former warehouses and recently shut down factories. Allowing for revitalization of urban locations, If needing to use soil, implement a compost incentive for waste management companies,
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
Aerofarms have this philosophy, they have a large operation in location that used to be a New Jersey nightclub. They've also turned an old steel mill and a paintball arena into vertical farms.
@texmex8220
@texmex8220 4 жыл бұрын
@@ExaCognition Do you think old shopping mall could provide enough space as well, also taking parking spaces into consideration. Not to mention close proximity to consumers lessening costs of shipments
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
An old mall would likely have more than enough space, and as you say, the location is likely to be fairly optimal from a consumer perspective. I'd imagine the main factor is much it costs to purchase/rent the land. Depending on the size of the mall, you would likely only need a relatively small part of it.
@TheKillerman3333
@TheKillerman3333 4 жыл бұрын
I had the idea of vertical farms almost 20 years ago when i learned about sky scrapers. "why can't we use skyscrapers for farming?" I got laughed at by my teacher, the students, and then later by my own mother who later beat me because i asked "why is it so funny?" I was 7 and somehow this was one of my "stupid ideas" that will never be a success. It wasn't the only "stupid" idea i had as a kid.
@animagamer2
@animagamer2 4 жыл бұрын
The quality of content, just from a pure presentation perspective, was impeccable! It stunned me to learn how small your channel actually is, this is the type of content I'd expect from someone who's been doing this for a while- not the 3rd video on a channel! The algorithm seems to be playing nice with this video, I hope the rest of your videos gets some more eyes on it as well. Assuming they're half as good as this video, they'll deserve it. I'll likely check out some of your other stuff later and give my thoughts on them there, but my main point of feedback from this video was the description box; I'd have loved if there were sources/other useful links there to support further reading. I personally love educating myself on topics like these, and I assume the audience for this type of content does as well. I think it could be beneficial to your, hopefully growing, fanbase if your videos served as more than visually appealing presentations, but also entry points they could use to bolster their own understanding of the topics being presented. Since you likely do most of this research yourself anyway, it shouldn't be too much of an additional cost to provide sources, no?
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
Sources are on of the most requested items. I initially was going to post them with the videos but the calculations and data sheets got very messy. I wanted to tidy it up, so that it was easy to follow but it's a fairly big job and I never got round to it. I don't have much time at the moment but since these videos have got a lot of traction recently, I can't put it off any longer. By the end of the week, I will add a link to a source document, and then I will try and add small updates to it regularly until it's completed. Otherwise it could be months before I get round to adding it.
@khalinglallemmoi7678
@khalinglallemmoi7678 4 жыл бұрын
I totally agree with you... The data were so impressive that I wanted to read them. Myself... I went to the description box but found no source....
@Jfreek5050
@Jfreek5050 4 жыл бұрын
Heres my hot take... We need more GMOs. Plants that can grow in the worst of conditions, that use up resources in the most efficient manner possible, that retain most of their nutrition value after going from farm to store to table, that dont decompose as easily or take as long to expire, etc. GMO organisms are the ONLY way I can think of that will enable us to have plant life keep up with our expanding populace and consumption, not to mention the long term climate changes both natural and artificial that could kill them off. Traditional methods of genetic modification like selective breeding will take far too long to achieve results we need, and the fear surrounding it is exaggerated and overblown anyway.
@RnBsks
@RnBsks 4 жыл бұрын
actually most wild plants meet those requirements you just stated, the plants we grow today are mostly selected to taste, yield and low difficulty to cultivate. These selections have been made before all of today's problems occured. So my hot take is to take a look at nature today and see which plants are more interesting to us. In the wild you rarely see a plant completely eaten by pests, no one ever fertilized a forest, or watered one. So why are we struggling so badly at growing plants? I believe we must start to cultivate perennial plants in a way more divers system. These systems can and already have been realised but fail to compete with big-scale monocultures economicly. The solutions we seek are actually solutions to problems we created ourselves, so let's take a look at the problems and let's try to resolve them rather than fighting the symptoms.
@dooseyboy
@dooseyboy 4 жыл бұрын
you lost me when you started using real estate as a barrier.
@mkuc6951
@mkuc6951 4 жыл бұрын
why? its totally a barrier.
@namonaite
@namonaite 4 жыл бұрын
Maybe everyone should just have a small hydroponics setup on their balcony
@quentinbean348
@quentinbean348 4 жыл бұрын
This is why we need nuclear energy.
@Banzybanz
@Banzybanz 4 жыл бұрын
It can indeed work but not on sunlight, the way it is popularly illustrated. LEDs are a cost efficient manner of converting electricity to light, so they could be used. I have seen some indoor farms (no sunlight) where plants are grown in multiple layers that have several times the output of a traditional farm. The extra cost of the lighting is financially covered by the better yeild. The environmental cost of the extra electricity needed is covered by the acres of saved grasslands/forests as usually these have to be razed down for farmland. Vertical housing (apartments instead of single family homes) are effective for this very reason.
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
Yes, this often gets missed. Intuitively it makes sense to supplement sunlight as much as possible, but this actually limits growing control and yields. The energy and cost of artificial lighting is more than made up for through the significant yield boost, at least for leafy greens (and more and more vegetables now).
@halleffect5439
@halleffect5439 3 жыл бұрын
1kg rice = 15.000.000 Joule 50% is fiber Efficiency of photosynthesis = 2% Cost of 1kWh = 10 Cent => 40 dollar
@hooliganbubsy7298
@hooliganbubsy7298 4 жыл бұрын
Once GM is perfected we'll have crazy vegetables that go from seed to harvest in a week.
@livedandletdie
@livedandletdie 4 жыл бұрын
Nah, just hella increase CO2 levels and have fast growing CO2 eating plants such as Azolla which as far as we know it is the fastest growing plant on Earth, as it doubles it's biomass between 3 and 10 days. Which means, that if you have 1g of it, and good enough conditions aka a fuckton of CO2 in less than 2 years you've grown enough of it to cover the Earths surface in a 30cm thick layer. However seeing as it may be toxic to humans, due to containing BMAA it's used as livestock feed, which means it's effectively the best plant to grow for livestock feed, in the long run, only problem is you need to capture enough CO2 for it to grow, well that's a problem with any plant except for maize because maize is a low CO2 consuming plant... and therefore grows slower than other plants in a high CO2 environment, but let's forget new world plants and go back to old world plants who need CO2 en masse to grow properly.
@ajwaldsouza8812
@ajwaldsouza8812 4 жыл бұрын
Great content. I like it. But I have one suggestion- please keep the music volume a little lower for your future videos. Thanks!
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
Thanks, a few people have mentioned this, I've been gradually lowering it for future videos to try and find a better balance.
@PKSkeith
@PKSkeith 4 жыл бұрын
"For $85,000... This low cost of entry." Yeah I just won't buy that 6th mansion I was planning on.
@alejandroguerra9413
@alejandroguerra9413 4 жыл бұрын
It's small in business terms.
@androth1502
@androth1502 4 жыл бұрын
that's actually rather affordable. the real question is can that one unit produce enough to overcome the costs of operating it and and produce a profit?
@boobatherapper2595
@boobatherapper2595 4 жыл бұрын
But... the light electricity comes from national oil burning facilities(depends on country).So this project is not 100% natural..It still distroys nature🙃.I think we should use more of the sunlight!!unless you use photovoltaic plaques ☺
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
Yes you are right. If you get your energy from CO2 emitting sources, then you can expect a not insignificant amount of carbon to be released. It's important to balance the damage done in existing agriculture vs vertical farms. Which type does more damage? It's dependent on the energy supply for the vertical farm and the type produce grown. Generally speaking, the environmental profile of vertical farming is better than traditional agriculture. However, if you tried to grow an energy intensive crop such as wheat with today's setup and technology, it could not be considered environmentally friendly, because the energy required to do so would be huge. You could of course use a solar and storage solution to reduce the carbon footprint, but it would still be too expensive. However, if you are growing say lettuce or vegetables, the energy cost is over a magnitude smaller and you can run these with solar and storage solutions. In many locations, using solar and storage is actually the cheapest option too.
@Aedi
@Aedi 4 жыл бұрын
I think you're underselling the importance of lettuce and other leafy plants being grown in this sort of farm. Yes, they make up a small, a very small, portion of the world's agriculture, but they make a real, economic incentive to improve our ability to create and run these farms, one that has immediate rewards, not just one that has potential benefits. This will inevitably push the technology forwards, further and faster than just sustainability or something like that would.
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
I do agree with you. The focus on scalability was a result of investigating how large that industry and the impact can potentially get (a common critique I came across). From that perspective, the microgreens etc. we often see, don't have a huge future impact (directly). With that said, the current generation of plant factories only exist because the previous set were profitable, the R&D and technological progress to this point has largely been thanks to leafy greens. So you are right, Vertical Farms only exist in their current form thanks to leafy plants, and they are continually being accelerated technologically thanks to them.
@averagejoe6890
@averagejoe6890 4 жыл бұрын
once we achieve fusion power
@mrninet645
@mrninet645 4 жыл бұрын
Have no idea why we don't just harvest energy directly from the sun and send back to Earth energy cells to power up huge underground farming facilities
@dennisvisser3910
@dennisvisser3910 4 жыл бұрын
you don't want to know the costs of that trip from the sun to earth...... it's alot. and to diliver enough for the world we would need hundred's of thousands of ships. and not to even begin about the distance witch adds on the inportance of infrastructure and ships required. plus maintance witch will be delayed until the system breaks of it's self.
@Noah-gt9ym
@Noah-gt9ym 4 жыл бұрын
You know the sun is hot right?
@rithikagarwal4202
@rithikagarwal4202 4 жыл бұрын
Why 30% depreciation
@horseradish7105
@horseradish7105 4 жыл бұрын
This technology is easily scaled down to the consumer's kitchen. At the very least, medical cannabis patients could stop inhaling noxious chemicals. Hope this boomer lives to see sanity prevail.
@asiburger
@asiburger 4 жыл бұрын
Why do pot heads try to inject their garbage into everything.
@horseradish7105
@horseradish7105 4 жыл бұрын
@@asiburger I do not answer loaded dumb ass questions.
@mrjaz666
@mrjaz666 4 жыл бұрын
I would like to point out that growing leafy crops with artificial light is much more energy efficient, as fruiting plants require higher light intensity.
@matthewrobinson6091
@matthewrobinson6091 4 жыл бұрын
This will become use for whe thorium reactors start going into mass production and use.
@ValerieRaya
@ValerieRaya 4 жыл бұрын
My thought exactly. Other alternatives: Biogas created from leftovers of the plants (and fish if aquaponic), as well as human manure from workers and surrounding houses, food scraps, etc, which can be used to power a generator that creates not only electricity but also heat.
@Inuitman
@Inuitman 4 жыл бұрын
nah
@jamespercy8506
@jamespercy8506 3 жыл бұрын
How much light bandwidth is preserved when sunlight is piped?
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 3 жыл бұрын
I'm afraid that while it sounds like a promising idea, it's actually a false economy. The benefit of 100% artificial light is the gain in cultivation rate and yield, but this gain is derived from plant factories to control the environment to grow edible plant matter with far fewer input photons than sunlight. It's counter intuitive, but from a growing perspective, you want to either go for sunlight and as little supplementary light as possible, or to go 100% artificial light. The middle grounds actually ends up producing the worst of both worlds. We'd reasonably expect that if we could pipe in 30% of our light from windows/mirrors/fibre optics, that it would represent a 30% energy savings, but it actually costs us far more. 100% LEDs give us the following benefits: Full control over photoperiod (day night cycles), such that we can even go from say a 24 hour light cycle to say a 16 hour light cycle, and get "more than 7 days of growing" in the week. Full control over spectrum, that means using specific wavelengths of light at specific growth phases of the plant to shorten the the growth phases we don't want, and maximize the ones we do. --- These are things we lose when we mix in sunlight and it has a significant cost in energy efficiency. On top of that, we add a lot of variation that we can't easily control, such as light levels, temperature regulation and it even has an impact on airflow and convection currents. Unfortunately, these drawbacks outweigh the benefits of the energy we would save overall.
@kirkjohnson9353
@kirkjohnson9353 4 жыл бұрын
And so, the story of Icarus is played out on land...
@TheLuckyguy218
@TheLuckyguy218 4 жыл бұрын
What do you mean
@kirkjohnson9353
@kirkjohnson9353 4 жыл бұрын
@@TheLuckyguy218 The lesson from the Icarus story is to take care to not become overly enamored with your cleverness and carry it to a fatal extreme. I think the projections this video makes for this type of growing are vastly overstated. None of it looks realistic to me. I myself know a guy whose hydroponic operation was a total failure because he underestimated the high costs of nutrients, maintenance costs, and bacterial contamination. There is a reason this not already a common practice.
@wohdinhel
@wohdinhel 4 жыл бұрын
tfw ppl who grew up on minecraft gon save humanity
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
Play minecraft. Save the world! That's the lesson I have learned.
@Omnomftw
@Omnomftw 4 жыл бұрын
Insect meat is much more environmentally friendly than livestock, so we could theoretically farm ethical meat in a vertical farm if it is insectoid.
@asrnyigit4040
@asrnyigit4040 4 жыл бұрын
@Cesar Salcido A lot of people eat bugs, and a lot of people eat cats and dogs in Asia. Your definition of regular isn't objective.
@asrnyigit4040
@asrnyigit4040 4 жыл бұрын
@Cesar Salcido How is cannibalism related to this? It is worse to eat unconsenting humans than eating cats, dogs or insects, which is as morally wrong as eating cows. Is it connected to morality?
@Swordsman99k
@Swordsman99k 4 жыл бұрын
@Cesar Salcido You realize pigs are smarter than a lot of dog breeds, right? Plus cows are also smart animals too. Hell, most mammals are incredibly intelligent compared to birds, insects, fish, etc. The other guy was right, YOUR morality is subjective. Hell, people in India see us as monsters for farming and killing cows en masse, and that population is getting close to outnumbering Western society. Plus, if plant-based protein is getting close to meat in terms of texture and flavor, what would stop you from eating insect mass if they could be made to taste similar? Don't be pathetic and weak-stomached.
@universeofopulence
@universeofopulence 4 жыл бұрын
@@Swordsman99k .....well the population of India is at 2 kids per family & dropping steadily ...so yeah India will peak at 2050 (maybe earlier) & then decline as India has the highest no# of voluntary sterilization in the world..as far as China - population decline will happen by 2030....Yes Africa will be the world populator in the nxt half of this century...btw 30% of India's population are vegetarian..so their food choices are called "vegetarian" & non - vegetarian....as vegetarian is the norm & anything that is not veg based is considered as "non-vegetarian"...
@genli5603
@genli5603 4 жыл бұрын
No. It's not. It is a ridiculous myth that insects are efficient at food conversion. Social engineers just want to make people eat insects to control them.
@515161
@515161 4 жыл бұрын
Nuclear energy for the win.
@Mic_Glow
@Mic_Glow 4 жыл бұрын
"this technology has the potential to return farmland to the forest" Or to give it to developers and allow for another population boom- cheap houses, more food etc.
@viktoriyaserebryakov2755
@viktoriyaserebryakov2755 4 жыл бұрын
@Who Cares No. Two people to replace two people equates to no population growth as every child must partner with another individual to produce yet again two people to replace them.
@viktoriyaserebryakov2755
@viktoriyaserebryakov2755 4 жыл бұрын
@Who Cares Who are you even talking to because you sure as hell aren't addressing anything anybody here has said.
@viktoriyaserebryakov2755
@viktoriyaserebryakov2755 4 жыл бұрын
@Who Cares 'Two children per generation multiplies the population.' It takes two to make two. 'Some cultures have more than two children per generation.'
@Mic_Glow
@Mic_Glow 4 жыл бұрын
@Who Cares Somewhere between 2-3 kids average is neutral, it offsets the people who don't have children for various reasons. Atm in developed countries the average is below 2.
@viktoriyaserebryakov2755
@viktoriyaserebryakov2755 4 жыл бұрын
@EliT Is nobody reading his first comment?
@tsilb
@tsilb 4 жыл бұрын
11:05 "Can they be solar powered?" ... No, because LEDs use a specially-formulated kind of electricity. Of course they can. Anything can be anything-powered. Silly question.
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
It was intended to mean: "Is practical and economically viable to use solar power".
@Trazynn
@Trazynn 4 жыл бұрын
You measure food by tonnes produced but what really matters is the calories produced. Vertical farms produce low-caloric crops for direct human consumption whereas the farms that level the rainforest are producing soy, cassava and corn which is being used for livestock feeding. This reduces vertical farming to a very narrow sliver of the overall purpose of farming and is therefore a marginal solution to our current consumption.
@ExaCognition
@ExaCognition 4 жыл бұрын
This is something I address in following videos. Current production is only viable for leafy greens and some vegetables. As long as this is the case, the impact of vertical farming will indeed be marginal. As a simplification, the more calorific the food, the more lighting energy required. The core staple crops that are needed to make a big difference (like you mentioned) can be crudely thought of as requiring 30x times the energy input as lettuce. Such an energy requirement is not viable. That said, there are 3 key parameters that have a significant impact on the energy requirements and they are improving at a dramatic rate: Absolute Yield(surface area, not footprint area), LED efficiency and cost of electricity (solar in particular) are all project to improve dramatically, as LED and Solar have been improving somewhat exponentially for some time. The convergence of these technologies may turn out to be considerable in bridging the energy gap. In the most optimistic scenario, we are talking at least a decade, though realistically, I would say it's longer than that. The two videos in the series try to put some numbers to this.
@stefangrobbink7760
@stefangrobbink7760 4 жыл бұрын
Vertical farming sounds nice, but isn't very useful if the energy used is from fossil fuels or heck, even solar panels. Then there's also the cost of construction, the pollution during the manifacture of electronics and so on. Traditional farms have the advantage of just using sunlight but need a lot of space and transport and water. One could also optimise existing farming techniques to: either make them more efficient, such that you need less land for your food. Spread out your cities to the countryside, and always live close to your food. (Maybe even just eat more locally produced stuff) With the world being connected by the internet, it might not even be necessary to live close to your work, unless you do physical work, which obiously requires your physical presence. Or third: you could try and make your farms blend in with nature, with polyculture farming (growing a mixture of crops, to use less pesticide), or go a step further and go multilevel farming (not just grow multiple crops, but instead a mixture of plants, trees and bushes.) The downside of the third is that our current farming machinery is optimized for monoculture, and polyculture is more difficult for automation, which means either more expensive machinery, or a lot of work, especially with mutilevel farming, since is near impossible to automate that. Another point to note is that there's not just food that needs to be grown, there's also a need for biofuels and bioplastics and chemical precursors, all of which are currently from fossil sources. Techniques are underway to produce them from bioresources, which could be agrowaste. If planned well, waste streams from farming could be enough to cover this need. There could be a need for extra production from this source, so there's that. I hear ya thinking: why biofuels, we have electric cars right? I'd say we need a combination of techniques, and biofuels can be a suitable alternative for a few cases where electric cars fall short: biofuels are usefull for long distance travelling, especially for those who can't really just stop to recharge (think of trucks and maybe planes too) and secondly: in areas where there's no source of electricity, or it's not cost effective to build such infrastructure (think of places like the australian outback, confict zones, and places like that) If there's one thing to learn about this climate crisis: it's that no single technology will be enough to tackle it. What we need is many different technologies, across all areas of life. And even when a technology might solve a certain aspect in one part of the world, a wholly different technique might need to be applied elsewhere. Life, as we know it, might just get a whole lot more complicated.
@Simboiss
@Simboiss 4 жыл бұрын
I think poly culture solves at least part of the problem of having the adequate nutrients for the crops you are growing, which is, in my opinion, the priority way before production volume. You can have a mix of many types of vegetals and animals that complement each other. Hens eat some insects, while bees pollinate the trees, animals produce fertilizers, etc.
@Stefan-wk8zq
@Stefan-wk8zq 4 жыл бұрын
@@Simboiss With polyculture farming I primarily meant growing multiple types of crops on a single area of land, primarily to reduce the need for pesticides that are used to keep the crops free of, well.. pests. The multilevel farming takes this even further, by growing different types of plants. One could take this even further by designing a full human ecosystem, with plants and animals living there that create a full ecosystem that can support a human population. Fruits, nuts, animals and insects could be harvested from this forest for human consumption. I don't think this is somthing that is in development just yet, while the first two are in various stages of development. It should be noted that multilevel farming as well as intercropping are more labour intensive methods than is our current monoculture method, which is a major deal in the western world, where labour costs are especially high. Here are some sources for further reading: Intercropping: www.wur.nl/en/newsarticle/Intercropping-replaces-monoculture-for-sustainable-agriculture.htm Multilevel farming: www.agrifarming.in/multi-layer-farming-process-and-benefits
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