Anonymous at Fri, 7 Jun 2024 02:59:04 UTC No. 16218732

same problem with lab grown organics it's not as efficient and to mimic the natural efficiency or more it's too expensive. Except it's way worse in lab grown organics because at least hydroponics still use plants.

Anonymous at Fri, 7 Jun 2024 03:15:19 UTC No. 16218751

hydro grown cucumbers taste like hydro solution

Anonymous at Fri, 7 Jun 2024 13:09:08 UTC No. 16219560

>>16218709
The initial costs are also a detractor.

>>16218751
So use compost tea

Anonymous at Fri, 7 Jun 2024 18:25:48 UTC No. 16220250

https://youtu.be/1KvYP5u9fM0

Anonymous at Fri, 7 Jun 2024 18:45:49 UTC No. 16220303

>>16218709
It's the cost of everything. Dirt is pretty much free (because the land was already bought and paid for ages ago).

Anonymous at Fri, 7 Jun 2024 18:55:05 UTC No. 16220321

>>16220303
>Dirt is pretty much free
Sure, disregarding fertilizer, losses to weeds, pests, and weather, the fact that all the shit they use to treat it ends up fucking with pollinators and everything downstream (albeit those costs aren't borne by farmers even though they should be), and the fact that if you mismanage the soil it will literally blow away.

And let's not even get into water waste. Multiple river, reservoir, and ground water systems are being destroyed by farming. The "costs" of not implementing better pricing and controls of agricultural water usage are high as fuck.

Anonymous at Sat, 8 Jun 2024 00:22:33 UTC No. 16220954

>>16218709
no

Anonymous at Sat, 8 Jun 2024 01:03:00 UTC No. 16221017

>>16218709
It's also an issue of being very high skilled vs a tractor and row crops. Also a lot of high tech expensive infrastructure must be built up front. The power is an issue but nuclear powered food factories would be low cost. But we run into the same problem flipping all ICE cars to EV's, it takes decades and would need to be rolled out slowly. Same with switching the world's agriculture methods.

I studied horticulture and I'm a huge fan of indoor hydroponic growing, my professors beholden to BigAg not so much. Loads of barriers to entry including hit men hired by John Deere.

>>16218732
110% not true. Plants are not cows, shocking I know. hydroponic plants grow faster, stronger, and yield more then dirt grown counter parts. When we factor in year round growth and other benefits a greenhouse/indoor farm gives us it's 10-50 times more efficient per acre than row crops grown with tractors and drip lines. Growing them indoors allows for recycling of unused fertilizer and little or no insecticide usage due to control measures. This alone saves money and makes the produce cheaper to produce.

>>16218751
Aquaponics would solve this but almost a valid response. The issue is most dirt grown produce is picked too early and breed for shelf life over taste. Compared to vine ripe vegetables from your own garden store bought vegetables are also flavorless. A decentralized system of organic home gardens is the dream but people are lazy and want to grocery shop instead. My tomato plants are 5 foot tall and fruiting now.

Anonymous at Sat, 8 Jun 2024 01:46:01 UTC No. 16221052

>>16221017
What do you think of aeroponics?

Cool thread, I just checked and there's a hydroponic greenhouse in my city. I might buy some hydroponic lettuce

Anonymous at Sat, 8 Jun 2024 02:21:58 UTC No. 16221101

>>16221017
>indoor farm gives us it's 10-50 times more efficient per acre than row crops grown with tractors and drip lines
sure, but farms can be thousands of acres.

Anonymous at Sat, 8 Jun 2024 02:25:37 UTC No. 16221104

>>16221017
>>16221052
NTA aquaponics and aeroponics are kino

Anonymous at Sat, 8 Jun 2024 02:28:05 UTC No. 16221113

>hmmm we have a perfectly good means of raising healthy delicious food crops inexpensive that works like a charm
>lets replace it with as much plastic and chemicals as possible so we can make everything 500% more expensive while reducing it's quality dramatically
>oh, and lets call this "progress"
why is science always like this?

Anonymous at Sat, 8 Jun 2024 02:33:17 UTC No. 16221119

>>16221113
Bold of you to suggest farms are plastic and chemical free. That's like saying boomers are lead free.

Anonymous at Sat, 8 Jun 2024 02:48:28 UTC No. 16221140

>>16221113
you are actually retarded

Anonymous at Sat, 8 Jun 2024 17:46:42 UTC No. 16222373

>>16221017
>my professors beholden to BigAg not so much
are they getting paid?

Anonymous at Sat, 8 Jun 2024 19:28:35 UTC No. 16222607

>>16221113
Because the opposite to Hydrophonics is shit like Bosch-Haaber process.
But as a rule of thumb: If somebody is coping because there is a possible futuristic tech advancement, there is a good chance the advancement isn't big enough yet.

>>16220321
Go back to India.

Anonymous at Sat, 8 Jun 2024 19:48:04 UTC No. 16222645

Hydroponics doesnt work because It's cheaper to grow food in the thirld world.

lmao.

You cannot compete with places like Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, China, India and west africa in terms of them having cheap as fuck labour and all year sunny days.

Anonymous at Sat, 8 Jun 2024 20:15:05 UTC No. 16222696

Why don't they grow vanilla or other incredibly expensive herbs like this?

Anonymous at Sat, 8 Jun 2024 20:25:55 UTC No. 16222711

>>16220321
>And let's not even get into water waste. Multiple river, reservoir, and ground water systems are being destroyed by farming.
>NOOOOOOOO MUH FISH SPEICEIS!!!!!!123123srgjhsdrg
found the anti-human socalist

>The "costs" of not implementing better pricing and controls of agricultural water usage are high as fuck.
Yep, you should executed by firing out of a cannon into a concrete wall.
If communists cocksuckers like yourself hadn't made water free, farmers would use less of it because it costs money. The entire reason the hoover dam's empty is because water is subsidized by the state. KYS faggot.

Anonymous at Sat, 8 Jun 2024 20:28:54 UTC No. 16222714

>>16218709
In essence the price of energy is too high because to make anything requires energy, so reducing the price of energy makes everything cheaper (also why communist carbon taxes will make everything expensive).

Another way to put it might be that the ratio of prices for land and energy are such that standard farming is cheaper.
Price of land in space is very high so you'd be doing hydroponics there instead of having a million tonne oneil cylinder.

Anonymous at Sat, 8 Jun 2024 20:34:51 UTC No. 16222729

>>16221052
>>16221052
It's the same issue here. Many fail because it gets more expensive on a large scale

Anonymous at Sat, 8 Jun 2024 20:37:59 UTC No. 16222739

>>16218709
can't really get proper economies of scale with things like wheat, rice, potatoes, maize, sugar cane, onions.
sure, it might become good business for greens and leaves. it won't feed human populations, though.
also, rural land as a factor of production is pretty cheap, mechanization becomes cheap for a larger area (as for automation of a giant hydroponic wheat warehouse, not so much), fertilizer is cheap, pesticides are cheap.
urban land, specialized labor, construction costs, energy draw and upfront capital costs are not cheap.
so forget about it, for now.
if you're into this because of the environmental impact of agriculture, don't be. only shithole countries are still opening new land. land use change is positive in the US, Europe, Japan, etc. transportation impact is indeed bad, but it can be offset in many ways, including by forcing rootless urbanites to take the subway and tram.
if you dislike agriculture for other reasons, then you're just autistic.

Anonymous at Sat, 8 Jun 2024 20:43:26 UTC No. 16222752

>>16222696
They do, at least the ones that are able to be grown that way. Not all plants are amicable to hydroponics.

Anonymous at Sat, 8 Jun 2024 20:43:27 UTC No. 16222753

>>16222714
why is the price of energy so high? how come science can't be used to make energy less costly?

Anonymous at Sat, 8 Jun 2024 23:50:33 UTC No. 16223167

>>16222753
>why is the price of energy so high?
from 1/3 to half of it are taxes
the rest is just that it is really expensive to distribute energy, install capacity, maintain the generators, buy the fuel (when it's the case).

Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 00:44:52 UTC No. 16223311

>>16222753
Energy prices can only be reduced by innovation; best done by free market capitalism.

Energy prices have slowed their reduction due to 2 things: Inflation, which is a tax created by governments by printing money, which works by devaluing the currency thus stripping wealth from anyone using it, this causes the price of energy to rise; and government regulations, which restrict innovation and ssometime a directly increase the cost of doing business, e.g carbon taxes banning oil, or nuclear regulations making nuclear unprofitable.

In short OP; government is the problem.

Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 02:24:32 UTC No. 16223519

>>16221052
You can get good results from most types of hydroponic methods. Some work better for some plants and vice versa. Aeroponics for instance works well in column grown produce like strawberries. But lettuce is best grown on rafts in a DWC style lake.
>>16221101
So can hydroponic greenhouses and food factories that are many stories tall. Also no food miles when you grow the vegetables year round in the city they will be eaten in. Per acre they are more productive so a 1000 acre row crop farm could only produce the yield of 20 acres of a food factory. Here this is copy pasta about Netherlands:

>How many acres of greenhouses are there in the Netherlands?
But it also provides vegetables to much of Western Europe. The country has nearly 24,000 acres — almost twice the size of Manhattan — of crops growing in greenhouses. These greenhouses, with less fertilizer and water, can grow in a single acre what would take 10 acres of traditional dirt farming to achieve

That's 240,000 acres worth of yield in 10% the space. KEK

>>16222373
>are they getting paid?
By the school for sure and the school works for BigAg. In the form of bribes? Who knows. Some kids were sucking up to professors for networking reasons to get jobs at ConAgra or whatever they call Monsanto now. Professors are greedy horrible people most of the time. A few are cool and legit smart but not many. My horticulture professors were some of the worst, shame really.

Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 02:59:10 UTC No. 16223581

Another thing to consider is whether or not hydroponic growing will become necessary in regions affected by significant plant disease presence. I don't know too much about it but I suspect that adaptations in response to future disease strains will be necessary and hydroponics will likely be a part of that. Needless to say, scaling up current hydroponics technologies to satisfy even a single mid-sized economy would put far too much strain on the real estate market. Practically every other building would need to be devoted to hydroponics.

Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 03:20:49 UTC No. 16223620

>>16223519
farmers want to make money just like anyone else. if there was money left on the table, there would be more adoption.
it's just uneconomical. upfront capital costs, variable costs of commodities, energy prices, construction costs. for planting strawberries? fine. wheat? no.
and for what? fewer miles from farm to table? cereals are usually processed outside of metro areas already (that is, when they're not processed outside of the country).
I still don't get why all the rage against normal farming anyway. it seems people have completely delusional ideas about commodity markets and logistics of food. if your diet consists entirely of legumes, leafy greens and local fruit, you'd not have any problems already. just go to a farmers market.
as for these dutch greenhouses, you're taking a cherrypicked example from a country which has a farming sector notorious for high capital expense, high yields and low availability of land. the opposite of most other places.

Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 03:26:05 UTC No. 16223626

If you boosted the co2 levels in an airtight hydroponics facility would that be worth the trade off?

Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 03:26:36 UTC No. 16223627

>>16223581
>would put far too much strain on the real estate market. Practically every other building would need to be devoted to hydroponics.
devoting scarce urban real estate to farms is a completely retarded idea. the only upside is... not having to transport food from places where it's already grown and processed? you'd have to build new processing infrastructure in your already packed urban areas.
there are other efficient ways of dealing with blight and other plant diseases - one of them is to keep genetic diversity, which, I agree, is something agribusiness companies avoid. and fungal diseases could also proliferate in vertical farming environments.

Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 09:34:03 UTC No. 16224101

We need to bring Chinampas back

the Aztec had the right idea

Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 15:53:15 UTC No. 16224674

>>16223626
Yes, many greenhouses are operating with elevated CO2 levels. Like 2000ppm+
>>16224101
There's still some of them in Mexico city in the few surviving parts of the old lake. Apparently they allow 5 harvests a year.
>>16223627
Refit roofs of supermarkets with greenhouses and hire a few gardeners. Fresh produce gets grown right on top of where its sold.
Add attached greenhouses to the southside of houses. People can grow their own veggies year round and it lowers heating costs.
Add big greenhouses to schools and university buildings. The students can learn about growing food and eat their own produce during lunchtime.

Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 15:56:08 UTC No. 16224680

>>16223626
I used to work in control system for a greenhouse simulation and the way best policies it found was always maxxpump CO2.

Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 16:23:21 UTC No. 16224757

>>16224101
Why did Eurangutans feel the need to destroy this?

Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 17:17:41 UTC No. 16224860

>>16224757
Jealousy and greed

Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 17:20:17 UTC No. 16224875

>>16223627
>scarce
Lol no.

Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 17:22:15 UTC No. 16224885

>>16218709
Land is too cheap compared to alternatives.

Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 17:26:41 UTC No. 16224892

>>16224885
land is also plenty and 90% of them are not used or something. better use land to cultivate food than let them go to waste.

Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 17:44:06 UTC No. 16224932

>>16218709
The cost of energy is the root cause of every problem in the universe

Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 18:06:36 UTC No. 16225003

>>16224892
>>16224885
>>16222739
>>16222714
>>16221113
>>16221101
>>16220303
>>16218732
Land won't stay cheap. We've already destroyed more than a third of the arable land available.

Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 18:07:41 UTC No. 16225008

>>16225003
>third of the arable land available
the number of "arable" land keep increasing with technologies. 100 years ago, most of canada was uninhabitable.

Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 18:19:31 UTC No. 16225046

>>16225008
Lol no.

Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 18:38:55 UTC No. 16225076

>>16218732
humic and fulvic acids in soild acts as a natural buffer for nutrient and water distribution. it's not as trivial to grow plants without it

Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 18:44:37 UTC No. 16225095

>>16223581
Greenhouses can and are strictly controlled for pathogens, both bugs and diseases as well as your molds and mildews. Often workers scrub in and can't wear outside clothes. Depending on the level of control workers would have to shower and wear literal scrubs inside the facility.
>>16223620
You're ignorant to the subject, please educate yourself. Many many many food factories and industrial scale hydroponic greenhouses exist around the globe and they make money. The farmers and investors did indeed see "money left on the table" that old school ignorant dirt farmers couldn't see. We call this "capitalism" where one group eventually sees an opportunity someone else missed and "capitalize" on that opportunity. You see the opportunity here is the increase yields per sqft and other benefits. They of course risk capital(money) up front and it's a large risk but in capitalism one must risk to get rewards. So they take a large risk, up front investment, to get that reward they anticipate on the other side. Again this is the core idea of capitalism, aka the free market. It works and people do it for profits. Simple as.
https://ggs-greenhouse.com/blog/world%E2%80%99s-largest-indoor-farm-produces-10000-heads-lettuce-day-japan
>>16223627
All nonsense
>>16224674
They hang propane burners in the greenhouses. Adds C02 and also controls heat. Two bids, one stone.

>>16225008
Soil science is a real thing, I'd know I practice it. I literally make all my own soil from scratch. Yes from scratch. I live deep in the woods and test things like this, many compost projects, soil less hydroponics. All of it. The industrial farming with harsh chemicals and plant hormones KILLS the soil. It's literally salting the earth. Most of the industrial scale farms have inert soil and nothing would grow without intense chemical fertilizers. It would take decades to rehab that farm land back to something healthy on a microbiotic level.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB7RYIlS6LQ

Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 19:04:55 UTC No. 16225138

>>16219560
SO THEY END UP TASTING LIKE COMPOST TEA ?!
Also this fails to address OPs question, you need the compost tea and you wont get a closed nutrient loop if you dont get hold of feeces and cadavers of your clients. Thus you need shit that grew conventionally to provide all the compost tea for hydroponics.
>>16218709
Hydroponics can be very very energy extensive. Thus it is not the energy requirement but the fact that there is no tnagible benefit offsetting the added cost.
Also hydroponic cultures fail very fast in case anything goes wrong.

Anonymous at Sun, 9 Jun 2024 19:56:54 UTC No. 16225222

>>16225138
It would taste like soil. What do you think you're tasting? It's mostly the micronutrients. Closing nutrient loops is for spacecraft, not planets.

Anonymous at Mon, 10 Jun 2024 06:14:28 UTC No. 16226293

Can't wait for $1/gallon vanilla.

Anonymous at Mon, 10 Jun 2024 06:45:52 UTC No. 16226316

>>16218751
Why are you drinking hydro solution and do you also know that hydro solution tastes like shit?

Anonymous at Mon, 10 Jun 2024 15:38:32 UTC No. 16226893

>>16225095
What, the real estate market is non sense? What the unit economics of a vertical wheat farm in midtown manhattan? Lmao

All of your "wildly successful" examples come from lettuce and other leafy greens farmers? Because, if that's so, it's pointless (and you know it). Where's the wheat? The cotton? Rye, søy, maize, potatoes?

Anonymous at Mon, 10 Jun 2024 15:40:32 UTC No. 16226896

>>16224875
Oh, you live in detroit? Sorry to hear about that.

Anonymous at Mon, 10 Jun 2024 15:42:59 UTC No. 16226900

>>16224674
>Refit roofs of supermarkets with greenhouses and hire a few gardeners
You really watched that simpsons episode and thought it was a viable idea? kek
You can get perfectly fresh produce from any farmers market already. What's the deal?

Anonymous at Mon, 10 Jun 2024 15:45:26 UTC No. 16226904

>>16225095
>strictly controlled for pathogens, both bugs and diseases as well as your molds and mildews. Often workers scrub in and can't wear outside clothes. Depending on the level of control workers would have to shower and wear literal scrubs inside the facility.
Sounds VERY capital-intensive to me.

Anonymous at Mon, 10 Jun 2024 16:32:17 UTC No. 16226978

>>16226896
You should look up how many empty homes and buildings exist in the US alone.

Anonymous at Mon, 10 Jun 2024 16:57:44 UTC No. 16227030

>>16221113
>t. redneck moron who doesn't actually understand how science works

The technology isn't perfect yet, but it's getting there and it's already more efficient than conventional farming. The main problem is getting the price of hydroponics down cheap enough that it's commercially viable, but in terms of space and grow time, hydroponics and GMO optimized crops are objectively superior to traditional growing methods.

Anonymous at Mon, 10 Jun 2024 17:00:04 UTC No. 16227036

>>16221113
The schizo fears what they do not understand.

>>16221119
This.

Anonymous at Mon, 10 Jun 2024 22:08:03 UTC No. 16227520

>>16226978
are you retarded? urban farming only makes sense in the first place for places which have enough population density. otherwise you'd just grow vegetables on land.
also, the fact that units are empty now don't mean they're cheap. rural land is always cheaper.

Anonymous at Mon, 10 Jun 2024 22:37:56 UTC No. 16227574

>>16227520
No buddy, you are retarded. You didn't look it up, did you? We have enough empty homes to house all of the homeless and we'd have housing left over. Same with empty buildings of all varieties. This is the direct result of the real estate boom causing projects to be built that were never needed on the assumption that the real estate market would never collapse. You can buy an empty office building for a very cheap price. Most legal pot farms are being build in defunct Kmarts and other abandoned warehouse style buildings.

Anonymous at Mon, 10 Jun 2024 22:47:58 UTC No. 16227595

>>16227574
>pot farms as an example
case closed.

Anonymous at Tue, 11 Jun 2024 04:04:02 UTC No. 16227917

>>16227595
You are an idiot.

Anonymous at Tue, 11 Jun 2024 12:35:51 UTC No. 16228302

If we're growing stuff inside, who cares about doing it locally?

Anonymous at Tue, 11 Jun 2024 12:59:07 UTC No. 16228332

>>16228302
Lower transportation costs and simpler logistics