
Japanese plant experts produce 10k lettuce heads a day in LED-lit indoor farm - monort
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/japanese-plant-experts-produce-10000-lettuces-a-day-in-led-lit-indoor-farm-9601844.html
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greenyoda
_" Plant physiologist Shigeharu Shimamura wanted to explore ways that man
could keep up with the ever-increasing food demand while bypassing the risks
brought on by drought, crop disease and natural disasters."_

Unfortunately, growing lettuce isn't going to keep any people alive if
drought, crop failures or natural disasters occur, since lettuce is mostly
water by weight and has low amounts of macronutrients (2.23g carbs and 1.35g
protein per 100g lettuce).[1] I wonder how much harder it would be to produce
crops like rice or beans indoors?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lettuce#Nutritional_content](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lettuce#Nutritional_content)

~~~
frozenport
Or do people just need to eat a lot of lettuce?

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Tepix
I find it strange that paying for artificial light would be more effective
than using the free sunlight that is perfect for life on this planet because
the life has adapted itself over millenia to this light. It's not as if
sunlight is a sparse resource (on a global scale).

~~~
Hemospectrum
> It's not as if sunlight is a sparse resource (on a global scale)

But land is, particularly arable land, and particularly in a country like
Japan. You can see for yourself in the picture that they have ~15 tiers of
gardens, compared to a maximum of two or three when using sunlight. And sure,
you could probably devise some method of piping and reflecting sunlight
through to the lower tiers just to avoid consuming electricity, but then it
wouldn't work at night, wouldn't work as well in winter, and so on.

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Nexxxeh
July 2014

