[ERT: 40 min.] - Exploring the the moral implications and considering the plants’ perspective - Vertical farms are hailed as the holy grail of future food production and claim they will "feed the planet" - but can they?
Although the author is way too optimistic, and doesn't consider material inputs to build vertical farms (only energy inputs), there's some interesting information in the article:
"While Plenty, Bowery and other vertical farms don’t release data on how much energy they use, the 2021 Global CEA Census Report found that greenhouse growers used 15-20 times as much energy, on average, and vertical farms used a little over 100 times as much energy as outdoor lettuce growers in Arizona. "
"[I]f you put a vertical farm in a skyscraper like the World Trade Center to grow lettuce and wanted to power it with renewable energy like solar, you would have to bulldoze the rest of the island of Manhattan to make room for panels to generate enough power just for the lights of that building."
Apparently reality slowly catches up with the hyperalienated techies that thought you can innovate and engineer your way out of food shortages through technology, increased control, and the ultimate domination of living organisms. Turns out all this is a lot more expensive than originally thought, and rife with other problems.
There are few things I hate as passionately as vertical "farms," so you can imagine how good I feel when I read about multi-million investments gone sour because people tried to improve upon Nature.
Hopefully this helps people realize that Silicon Valley investors are not the super-smart thought leaders spearheading the transition into high-tech utopia they imagine themselves to be, but pathetic, disconnected computer nerds who think life is a video game - the lesson we can learn is that whatever Silicon Valley plastic people do, we should do the exact opposite.
While still containing plenty of stupidity and hopium, it's definitely an article worth reading, despite its length. As they say in Germany, "Schadenfreude ist die schönste Freude!" - Schadenfreude (finding joy in someone else's misery) is the most beautiful of joys.
From the article:
"Adding renewable [sic] energy outside can help—and reduce the carbon footprint that goes along with that energy use—but putting a few solar panels on the roof can’t cover the total amount of electricity needed. 'In a typical cold climate, you would need about five acres of solar panels to grow one acre of lettuce,' says Kale Harbick, a USDA researcher who studies controlled-environment agriculture. A hypothetical skyscraper filled with lettuce would require solar panels covering an area the size of Manhattan."
"Startups have also wildly overestimated how quickly they can grow. AeroFarms, for example, said in 2015 that it hoped to build 25 farms in five years. Instead, it currently has two large commercial farms in the U.S. and an R&D facility in Abu Dhabi. And they’ve overestimated how quickly they can make money."
"Gordon-Smith says that most vertical farms in the U.S. are a long way from profitability. 'Based on an analysis we did for a large private-equity firm, we don’t actually see a scenario where in the next 10 years vertical farming will compete with field-grown at scale in North America,' he says."
Ur wrong about not being able to control the weather. It is being done even now. Why do you think it recently snowed in Texas? 10 tornados in OK? Iran continually complains to the UN that their people are being subjected to a drought as part of sanctions because "they" can now control when it rains or not.
Have a look up in the sky. See all those straight, white lines? Those are not exhaust fumes from jetliners. Those are chem trails. They eventually spread out and, depending on their chemical composition, affect the sun. Many are made up of Aluminum, which is why there are so many people with Alzheimer's now.
This must end. The patriarchal approach is not working, as you have so brilliantly exposed here. Keep writing. This is what I want to do. My grandfather had a farm up until 1970 or so. I want to use his farm again to grow normal food.
I was talking about controlling the weather for agricultural purposes, and apart from cloud seeding techniques with (at best) mixed levels of success I have not heard of a viable way to exert any kind of control over the weather. I certainly don't see how snow in Texas or a few dozen tornados would be good for crops. Those are not the results of control. If anything, extreme events like that are an example for weather out of control. We do change the weather, yes, but it is far beyond our control. The extreme weather events in the US and droughts in the Middle East are a direct result of the greenhouse effect - certain gasses in the atmosphere trapping heat and warming the planet, like in a greenhouse - caused by a steep increase in atmospheric carbon, which in turn is caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, agriculture, and a few other factors, including, as you pointed out, airplanes.
Airplane engines emit a number of gasses and chemicals, mainly water vapor, CO2, carbon black, and a few others. Needless to say, none of the constituents of airplane exhausts are good for the climate, the environment, or human health. One of the exhaust fumes' main constituent, water vapor (a byproduct of the combustion of all fossil fuels), condenses in the cold air, hence the white lines - more commonly called "contrails". They form easier in temperate climates, which is why in the tropics, where I live, we see contrails very seldomly, despite having quite a lot of airplane traffic. Just like car exhaust fumes that are only visible on cold days, airplane exhaust fumes are visible because the temperature at those altitudes is much lower, and the atmospheric pressure at said altitudes is low enough for them to dissipate only slowly, like other clouds.
I have heard people claiming that contrails contain aluminum, but I have neither seen any compelling evidence in favor of this theory, nor do I have the means to test or otherwise verify this myself. The soil in my garden doesn't contain elevated levels of aluminium other than naturally occurring aluminium oxide, which is a normal, biologically inactive component of all red tropical soils. I simply don't have the expertise in this precise field to have an opinion about such claims.
It's not that I don't believe governments and elites would poison people - they would, and they do. Poison is in and on our food - pesticides, refined sugars, sodium-based salt, hydrogenated vegetable oil, and the hundreds of chemicals (labeled "INS" plus a number between 100 and 1521) with sometimes horrific levels of toxicity. If they would want to poison us, they'd make us crave and buy the poison ourselves (that way they profit financially, too), which is exactly what's happening.
Other ways we are being poisoned is by airborne pollutants from factories and combustion engines, plastics and other hydrocarbons, endocrine-disrupting chemicals in food, water and the environment, and countless other artificial chemicals that were exposed to on a daily basis.
I sincerely hope you are able to return to the land soon, and I wish you success in your endeavor to grow your own food and start down the path to self-sufficiency! May the soil bring forth an abundance of life, and may you always stay as healthy as the ground under your feet!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/17/indoor-vertical-farms-agriculture?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
In the guardian today
Although the author is way too optimistic, and doesn't consider material inputs to build vertical farms (only energy inputs), there's some interesting information in the article:
"While Plenty, Bowery and other vertical farms don’t release data on how much energy they use, the 2021 Global CEA Census Report found that greenhouse growers used 15-20 times as much energy, on average, and vertical farms used a little over 100 times as much energy as outdoor lettuce growers in Arizona. "
"[I]f you put a vertical farm in a skyscraper like the World Trade Center to grow lettuce and wanted to power it with renewable energy like solar, you would have to bulldoze the rest of the island of Manhattan to make room for panels to generate enough power just for the lights of that building."
Haha yeah that’s hilarious. To grow lettuce for god’s sake
Apparently reality slowly catches up with the hyperalienated techies that thought you can innovate and engineer your way out of food shortages through technology, increased control, and the ultimate domination of living organisms. Turns out all this is a lot more expensive than originally thought, and rife with other problems.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90824702/vertical-farming-failing-profitable-appharvest-aerofarms-bowery?fbclid=IwAR3wmsXxdwqz6OBTdjoKWIt3QYZDhWRo7F41mVF9Zk7LCBX9VH_L4iY0dPs
There are few things I hate as passionately as vertical "farms," so you can imagine how good I feel when I read about multi-million investments gone sour because people tried to improve upon Nature.
Hopefully this helps people realize that Silicon Valley investors are not the super-smart thought leaders spearheading the transition into high-tech utopia they imagine themselves to be, but pathetic, disconnected computer nerds who think life is a video game - the lesson we can learn is that whatever Silicon Valley plastic people do, we should do the exact opposite.
While still containing plenty of stupidity and hopium, it's definitely an article worth reading, despite its length. As they say in Germany, "Schadenfreude ist die schönste Freude!" - Schadenfreude (finding joy in someone else's misery) is the most beautiful of joys.
From the article:
"Adding renewable [sic] energy outside can help—and reduce the carbon footprint that goes along with that energy use—but putting a few solar panels on the roof can’t cover the total amount of electricity needed. 'In a typical cold climate, you would need about five acres of solar panels to grow one acre of lettuce,' says Kale Harbick, a USDA researcher who studies controlled-environment agriculture. A hypothetical skyscraper filled with lettuce would require solar panels covering an area the size of Manhattan."
"Startups have also wildly overestimated how quickly they can grow. AeroFarms, for example, said in 2015 that it hoped to build 25 farms in five years. Instead, it currently has two large commercial farms in the U.S. and an R&D facility in Abu Dhabi. And they’ve overestimated how quickly they can make money."
"Gordon-Smith says that most vertical farms in the U.S. are a long way from profitability. 'Based on an analysis we did for a large private-equity firm, we don’t actually see a scenario where in the next 10 years vertical farming will compete with field-grown at scale in North America,' he says."
Ur wrong about not being able to control the weather. It is being done even now. Why do you think it recently snowed in Texas? 10 tornados in OK? Iran continually complains to the UN that their people are being subjected to a drought as part of sanctions because "they" can now control when it rains or not.
Have a look up in the sky. See all those straight, white lines? Those are not exhaust fumes from jetliners. Those are chem trails. They eventually spread out and, depending on their chemical composition, affect the sun. Many are made up of Aluminum, which is why there are so many people with Alzheimer's now.
This must end. The patriarchal approach is not working, as you have so brilliantly exposed here. Keep writing. This is what I want to do. My grandfather had a farm up until 1970 or so. I want to use his farm again to grow normal food.
Cheers!
Thanks for your feedback!
I was talking about controlling the weather for agricultural purposes, and apart from cloud seeding techniques with (at best) mixed levels of success I have not heard of a viable way to exert any kind of control over the weather. I certainly don't see how snow in Texas or a few dozen tornados would be good for crops. Those are not the results of control. If anything, extreme events like that are an example for weather out of control. We do change the weather, yes, but it is far beyond our control. The extreme weather events in the US and droughts in the Middle East are a direct result of the greenhouse effect - certain gasses in the atmosphere trapping heat and warming the planet, like in a greenhouse - caused by a steep increase in atmospheric carbon, which in turn is caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, agriculture, and a few other factors, including, as you pointed out, airplanes.
Airplane engines emit a number of gasses and chemicals, mainly water vapor, CO2, carbon black, and a few others. Needless to say, none of the constituents of airplane exhausts are good for the climate, the environment, or human health. One of the exhaust fumes' main constituent, water vapor (a byproduct of the combustion of all fossil fuels), condenses in the cold air, hence the white lines - more commonly called "contrails". They form easier in temperate climates, which is why in the tropics, where I live, we see contrails very seldomly, despite having quite a lot of airplane traffic. Just like car exhaust fumes that are only visible on cold days, airplane exhaust fumes are visible because the temperature at those altitudes is much lower, and the atmospheric pressure at said altitudes is low enough for them to dissipate only slowly, like other clouds.
I have heard people claiming that contrails contain aluminum, but I have neither seen any compelling evidence in favor of this theory, nor do I have the means to test or otherwise verify this myself. The soil in my garden doesn't contain elevated levels of aluminium other than naturally occurring aluminium oxide, which is a normal, biologically inactive component of all red tropical soils. I simply don't have the expertise in this precise field to have an opinion about such claims.
It's not that I don't believe governments and elites would poison people - they would, and they do. Poison is in and on our food - pesticides, refined sugars, sodium-based salt, hydrogenated vegetable oil, and the hundreds of chemicals (labeled "INS" plus a number between 100 and 1521) with sometimes horrific levels of toxicity. If they would want to poison us, they'd make us crave and buy the poison ourselves (that way they profit financially, too), which is exactly what's happening.
Other ways we are being poisoned is by airborne pollutants from factories and combustion engines, plastics and other hydrocarbons, endocrine-disrupting chemicals in food, water and the environment, and countless other artificial chemicals that were exposed to on a daily basis.
I sincerely hope you are able to return to the land soon, and I wish you success in your endeavor to grow your own food and start down the path to self-sufficiency! May the soil bring forth an abundance of life, and may you always stay as healthy as the ground under your feet!