Less land and water, but what about energy? It's extremely foolish and naive to waste the power of the sun.
Solar panels lead to lots of tech trash, e-waste which destroys the environment. Not to mention the buildings themselves and all the electronics required to keep such a farm running.
This kind of over-engineering will simply never work without a fundamental re-understanding of how our world works. It's just such a waste of resources. The "Mercedes" model. Make a really nice car for the first 50k miles, then sell it for $5,000 because each successive year of maintenance costs more than the car is worth.
Why do we want livestock long term? It should be theoretically much more efficient to grow the meat in large vats in factories without the immorality of making intelligent mammals suffer. We already use this approach for insulin production via bacteria, I predict livestock will be phased out in a few decades in rich countries.
You are implying you can mimic all the required processes and not end up with too much or too little macro/micro nutrients.
This is not possible due to nature's complexity. Until we will be able to use nanomachines to analyize individual proteins and cells we won't know how the body works on a global scale so you will end up with incorrectly guessing how much micro/macro nutrients the meat will have.
Over time artifical meat will be a disaster as far as nutrients go, saying that you can "grow good meat that can compare to natural meat and has all the required nutrients as natural meat" is arrogant and shortsighted, but I don't expect anything more from modern scientists.
>Over time artifical meat will be a disaster as far as nutrients go, saying that you can "grow good meat that can compare to natural meat and has all the required nutrients as natural meat" is arrogant and shortsighted,
indeed. then we will do the rational thing and learn to live without an excess of animal protein. it is simply not necessary to consume so much in excess as we do right now.
One argument I never hear with these verticle farms is consistancy. Having grown up around farmers my whole life, they are literally always complaining that it rains too much or too little. A bale of hay when you need is a worth a hundred unneeded bales. Imagine "just in time" farming.
This type of farm produces expensive feed in the form of sprouted wheat grass- the article mentions harvesting after only a week. I have to imagine it would be far more expensive for the room and maturing to get proper bales...
This is currently being done, and is called sprouted fodder.
The livestock (cows, chickens, pigs, goats, etc.) eat the roots, greens and the remainder of the seed. Each type of livestock requires a different amount of fiber, so the length at which the seed is sprouted differs; chickens only get sprouted a few days, just long enough that the enzymes in the seeds break down the starches and make them more bio-available. While cows will have something that looks closer to grass.
Sprouted fodder is a scam? I'm not sure I know what exactly the concept behind sprouted fodder is, and who would stand to profit from such a scam. Maybe You could explain the details?
I do throw whole wheat grains into my chicken run's deep litter every time I put a new layer of chips or hay down. I personally do this more to encourage the hens to scratch for sprouts and fermented seeds. IMHO this scratching has value as it keeps the birds active in cold months and keeps the bedding compaction down which makes spring cleanout easier but I also believe it provides some benificial nutrients.
Silage tarps over hay, especially hay that didn't get cut before heading out due to wet weather, results in sprouted fodder of sorts and that definitely increases the nutritional value of seedy hay.
My only experience is with small urban farming, feeding my own livestock of chickens and rabbits. I'm not utilizing any lights, just off the shelf containers with decent success.
This is already happening in villages of India. Mostly corn is grown as it is fast growing and has better nutrient content. YouTube has been used extensively by the farmers to make this grow. The setup is typically in the open in a make-shift tent with no artificial lighting.
Big Ag is about economies of scale. Free water from the sky is cheaper than piped water. Free sunlight better than electric lights. Expensive tech-based hydroponics isn't going to win there.
Well, yes, but it's not so simple. Water is free when it comes from clouds and they block the sun. So it's kind of an either-or thing. Cali's central valley gets great sun but it must pipe in the water from the Sierras. That's not free. If there's a drought, well, you can't buy the water for any price.
Another problem is that this cheap land with free water and sun is often a long way from the people who will eat the food. That means transportation and that also means you're still paying something even if the land, water and sun are free.
Another interesting feature is the way that solar cells can capture the energy from a broad spectrum of the sunlight and then the LEDs can be tuned to the narrow spectrum that the plants absorb. Even with losses to resistance and conversion, you could end up ahead eventually.
Plants take a season to grow. Rain clouds blocking the sunlight is not a real objection.
Transportation is solved, in bulk, with trains and trucks. It costs pennies a ton. Also not a real objection. Not at scale, which is hopefully what we're talking about.
The local argument is a good one, but certainly not for the OP topic. It's useful for just-in-time locally-grown specialty crops. Just not livestock feed.
I know more about hydroponics than what these guys are doing, but you can compensate for mineral by adding them to your nutrients mixture (typical N-P-K) and will contain the 16 nutrients needed (Sulfur/Calcium/Magnesium/etc...).
It comes in powders that you can just mix to your water.
Except meat doesn't require any[0] kwh of electricity which vertical farming needs to buy. So I guess we've found the one agriculture practice for sustenance that is less efficient and practical than raising livestock.
You got hit by downvotes but it's absolutely the case here. Their system only produces 2% of all the feed for their livestock so the answer is effectively "no".
Solar panels lead to lots of tech trash, e-waste which destroys the environment. Not to mention the buildings themselves and all the electronics required to keep such a farm running.
This kind of over-engineering will simply never work without a fundamental re-understanding of how our world works. It's just such a waste of resources. The "Mercedes" model. Make a really nice car for the first 50k miles, then sell it for $5,000 because each successive year of maintenance costs more than the car is worth.