WATCH NEXT: What is vertical farming and how does it work 👉 kzfaq.info/get/bejne/iMd0hNRjy629Y4E.html

Great video! I'm just finding your channel and have yet to watch through your videos but I'm glad that renewables for powering indoor farms was addressed. That's a big one. One of my favorite aspects of shifting to indoor farming is that restoring native grasslands can sequester significant amounts of carbon dioxide as organic matter into the soil as grasses grow and die. More than trees in old growth forests if I remember correctly. I know that shifting a majority of conventional farming indoors is not likely or perhaps a ways away, but with conservation and restoration of soil carbon stores in meadowlands, every acre counts.

Erh... If we're _really_ are to talk environment, then CO2 emission isn't the _only_ factor. Burning and chopping down rainforest for farmland and ranches, or farmland (just to feed cattle) is happening at alarming pace. The fact that you theoretically can have these farms in deserts with solar panels on the roof and let batteries run them at night, using up non-durable land, while being self-sustainable?

please dont stop posting, the perspective you are bringing is very valuable

Hello Oliver! A little less than a year ago, I started writing a business plan to open a Vertical Farm and I had done tons of research into it. Most of the things you covered I had read and was aware of. Although, I found that through reading countless articles and studies until I was blue in the face. That being true, I find that your video series breaks it down pretty clearly for anyone trying to discover more about vertical farming. It is a great departure point for anyone. It's been 11 months since you've put up a video. Will you get back to us soon? I've read a few articles recapping the year 2022 for vertical farming, and the gist of it was that although, some companies made it through, most of failed. And some of these had big funding behind them. Another sold one of its farms only to rent it back because it was cheaper to operate. I mean, a lot of crazy stuff went down in 2022 for vertical farming. Basically what I'm asking is... will you make an Update video on the current state of vertical farming? How some survived and some didn't? Hope to see another great video on your behalf.

Hi Oliver !! You are doing great job by making these videos on vertical farming!! Can you please suggest/make a video on whether vertical farms can be used for carbon capture ?

So, all i see i vertical farms having LEDs right above plants on racks. There are other configurations that could get more plant coverage per LED. I could see configurations that could do way more than 20% efficiency increase. Do you know studies on the best configuration for plants and LEDs?

There is a whole branch dedicated to researching sustainable ways of farming and there's even a few tomato farms that use hydroponics to grow their crops all year round. Maybe interesting to check them out.

I'm convinced! Vertical farming really is environmentally sustainable

Thank you for all the great videos

What area of solar panels is required to power a vertical farm?

Great videos thank you

Is it not possible to power the vertical farm using solar or wind power? I understand it would require a lot of power but it would at least cut the demand from the grid?

I would be interested in seeing your assessment of indoor growing system for growing animal feed. In this case, technologies like HydroGreen which goes from seed to feed in 6 days.

I had commented before (somewhere) to the effect that, wherever possible, vertical farm buildings should be installed with solar panels, raising panels overhead employee car parks as well as lorry/van delivery bays 'if' they are in a position to capture the sun. Also, the building could be used to capture or supplement its own water supply through guttering into downpipes, and then into underground tanks (these would be easy to install during the building of foundations). The water can then be treated and recycled as necessary (aquatic centres and shops can do it just fine) - but it's certainly better than letting it go down the drain. There's no telling 'when' rainfall is going to change in any area of the world as our climate continues to cross new tipping points. In addition to this, there are now mini-turbines that can be fitted inside downpipes, these sufficient to charge phones and work lights (and you could fit a few inside the downpipe of a large vertical farm building). Considering the high rainfall of some parts of the world, this would generate a regular trickle of electricity to feed a small percentage of the lights. It may be only a small amount of electricity - but that's because short lengths of LED strips are currently about 10W apiece? When they are finally something like 0.5W (which they 'will' be one day), this set up will then be sufficient to power quite a number of LED strips. Small/medium wind turbines would likely be unpopular if the building is situated right inside a neighbourhood with housing, but if it is just outside town and the position is right - a vertical farm could generate plenty of its own electricity this way. With regard to nutrients - I often hear people suggesting that fish are raised in a part of the hydroponic system, the fish poop then being the nutrient, the fish breeding to produce a saleable food product in itself or converted in agricultural fertiliser. Seems better than constantly dragging the things out of a heavily polluted sea. Certainly, vertical farms should be doing all they can to minimise their impact on the grid, wherever in the world they may be. Architects should certainly be looking at every option they could include to make their creations as self-sustaining as possible.

Damn, that's interesting, why does this have so few views ?

Be interesting to see how the power mix part would change in France

Also maybe a video on vertical aeroponics?

This technology is actually perfect for Russia and Norway. They have very cheap energy there due to oil, and low levels of sunlight for most of winter, so the LED light is super useful there.

is it the same case for aeroponics farming?

SOLAR, Geothermal, etc.

Actually in those countries where the sunny days are quite low for example UK, I think would definitely worth it, otherwise you cannot grow any leafy plants all year long, or just crazy slowly especially from September to May.

7:23 How ironic. Now in order order to power vertical farming you have to make photovoltaics stations that use more land than the one required to grow those vegetables directly

what about fiber optic solar?

What about saving space? If a form of agriculture could save enough space, and that space was used to recover forests, it would compensate for its impact.

Excellent Video. I do not agree completely with the study. Given that in glass greenhouses especially in the Nordics have embraced lighting systems to stimulate crop growth. See in Finland the Sigg greenhouses. Their cucumber greenhouses have about more then 20.000 Lux. I believe they don’t used LED because they use the access heat to party heat up their greenhouse. Led has in general a very impact in modern glass greenhouses. HPS users switch on a large scale to LED. More and more non-light-growers switch to LED. The step that many growers forget is that it also has a impact of climate systems. Temperature, humidity, etc etc are all impacted. I think it is very important to see the total energy use when comparing vertical vs other systems. Also to factored in that most greenhouses (vertical and horizontal) produce year round. Something traditional agriculture is unable to do. Vertical farming are more dependent on lighting systems but also good climate control and airflow is a struggle. This is due to the lack of space. I do agree that the cost of the systems have come down considerably also there are more solutions. Transport I think is still very one sided. You also need to take in consideration the transport and living cost of the employees. Compare it to cost for teachers in inner city schools. Same kind of debate. Plus the development of Electrification of transport can also change the impact. In Finland check Green automation. They produce hydrophonic MGS systems. It is still great tech, and you see allot of lessons learned that impact the entire industry.

The answer depends on the proportion of natural light (i.e. free energy from the sun) that is wasted.

Its more about the land usage and food quality. As we move into the future our power consumption is going to go up if you like it or not.

Supper

‘Improved LED efficiency” I will make this simple - there is almost no efficiency to be gained at this point. Almost all of the energy is being converted to light. The remaining heat and noise that is not light that can be converted to light is minimal. Even the heat from the light is being used to heat most of the facilities now so there really is not much energy loss anymore at all.

extreme weather events - these are uncounted in this - greenhouses are more and more often being destroyed by hail. As well insurance demands - often to get insurance the poly cover has to be replaced EVERY year to maintain your insurance even when they have 5 year plus lifespan depends on the type.

Farms have to run off-grid. This is very easy: 1- buildings must be built according to Passive Standard to reduce space heating and cooling demand. 2- All equipment must be low energy consuming and highly efficient. 3- All lighting must be low energy and highly energy efficient. 4- one must minimise waste and any waste that occurs must be turned into energy. 5- use renewable energy 6- use ground source or air source heat pumps for heating and cooling. 7- have as much natural light as possible and use mirror or fibre optics to rout natural light into rooms that do not have access to natural lighting. This reduces cost of using man made lighting which consumes energy.

In Europe currently traditional farming receives huge funds from the EU and States. Without this financial helps the economics of it would look darker. If horticulture can be done with lower impact on the environment in vertical farming with renewable energy EU and States helps should be moved from traditional farming to vertical farming making it profitable. This summer water was rationed in most of the EU, mainly to allow water inefficient farming to get what needed - and ok you mentioned greenhouse horticulture, in southern Italy you have traditional outdoor horticulture.

Personally, I'm more interested in finding ways to make transportation greener. Moving farming into cities wouldn't be necessary if we had more environmentally-friendly ways of shipping things.

I'm not sure how much sense it makes to use solar panels on the roof of a hydroponics farm. Like, maybe I'm just not familiar with how they do things, but wouldn't you be competing with the plants for the same resource? Why not let light in through the roof, and solar panel the parking lot? The only argument I can think of against that would be controlling light levels, but wouldn't greenhouses already have options for that? I don't know, maybe it's already been tried, and isn't efficient.

Since solar and wind are not 100% renewable and in fact unreliable technologies, I don't see how vertical farming will have less environmental impact than conventional farming.

I feel like the simple answer to increasing the sustainability of this farm would just be powering it through nuclear vs waiting for other renewables to catch up.

Solar needs constant replacement, wind constant maintenance, like i said modular nuclear reactors

If it can multiply production on less acres vs conventional agri of wheat, corn and rice. Yeah. Maybe.

That analysis probably doesn't include energy stotage. Also isn't it a bit ridiculous to build a sunlight gathering chip and then use it to power lights? Why not just leave the plants outside, or in a greenhouse? This would work in most locations and be way more sustainable, in addition to cheaper.

Just my opinion but even if it's less efficient power wise, it is far more efficient land wise. I'd rather have several tall structures surrounded by trees and vegetation than massive fields of greenhouses and farmland.

The idea of instead of using sunlight to grow plants, green houses use solar cells to make electricity using sun light, which then gets converted into UV light by LEDs in the green house, is rather amusing to me.

Anywhere in the Middle East or in desert area's where food can not be grown due to the soil not being fertile then on can use hydroponics. Why, because the food produced would be cheaper than imported food and more sustainable do to lower Co2 emissions. So Saudi Arabia should be a very good market. They import food night and day, they live in a desert with very low quality infertile land and they use fossil fuels for everything. So a hydroponic greenhouse is a no brainier and if it is run off of solar, it is a win-win.

He forgot solar panel?

So in simple terms, there is no viability to vertical farming. Using unreliable alternative energy cannot sustain the amount of vertical farms required to replace current farming of the same crops. Wheat, sun flower and corn are out of the equation. And the use of the word sustainable is an incorrect term, sustainable is not achievable. Sustainable just means once started it's basically self-reliant and can continue on unless acted on by an outside source. The square footage required to provide the leafy vegetables the US uses make the whole process unsustainable. But as individuals growing what they need in their own yard could be. When I looked into hydroponics a small greenhouse and a garden could supply my family with all the vegetables we needed.

I'm doing a blend of modern and old farming practices, specifically animal rearing but also robot farming.

Vertical farms have the potential to transform polar climate towns into an oasis from wind and solar renewable energy.

Wait, you are telling me that vertical farms aren't also farming energy by default? I thought it was a no brainer that they needed to do so to be sustainable.

Hydroponics works. Go harvest some seaweed, lilies, or wild rice from the lakes.

Certainly going outside the scope here but we could just forgo the energy costs all together if america got over its stigmatism of nuclear energy. Its the safest and most carbon neutral option that exists. From what i can remember at least.

So modular nuclear reactors for the win. Got it.

Proliferation of nuclear energy would go a long way to solving this problem.

A lot of talk about energy use and little to no discuss about the materials/infrastructure required. All of that equipment will age out and become waste, and the electronic waste has no real route to be recycled. Traditional farming is better when done correctly until we fix our waste issues overall.

From a commercial grower, this information is inacurate and highly skewed by only having 1 case study. Since when do we make decisions on one study?

It's practically the least sustainable version of farming there is. How much pollution and natural resources are mined, and areas destroyed just to fashion the infrastructure for one of these.

A wise sage once said: Reduce Reuse ecyc e

People are so blind to understand the environmental forward and backwards linkages. Calculate those and you will find that this practice is just as unsustainable as conventional agriculture. You need metals, plastics and other chemicals to industrially produce all the implements needed to create a vertical farm. You need high energy needs, high water needs. What about the forward linkages. The effluents of inorganic water waste. The PPE used is made of plastic and therefore contribute to increasing waste. And there is more.

What about flavour? We all know how bad hydroponic tomatoes taste and the soil grown ones change a lot depending on which soil they are grown even being the same variety... so if we are going to eat food with newspaper flavour... no thanks

Why wouldn't we invest in our sustainability?

I'm a Mexican software developer, I have always been skeptical of this high tech vertical farming. As Mexican I'm proud of my heritage like agriculture in chinampas, and other sophisticated low tech agriculture methods of the indigenous people of Mesoamerica. Also I know about Permaculture, Biointensive Agriculture, Forest Gardening, etc. And as engineer I love this systems because they automate by using what is already there in the behavior of plants, I think is stupid to add automation from our side because is fighting biology and is a wrong kind of redundancy. Plants have been around for billions of years and they know how to take care of themselves, so why don't take advantage of this? just like my Mesomaerican ancestors did when they designed the chinampa system. We should use a biology approach first in a vertical structure. Also the people that want to use high tech systems forget about classical analog Engineering Control.

Hydroponics allows the fast growth of things that LOOK LIKE food, but is far inferior to something I would put into my body. Then again, I know how God designed plants to be fed; by microbes in the soil.

issue for the poor