Does Vertical Farming Work? 

It's funny how many people arrived at this series from Minecraft. I first came across vertical farms in Minecraft alpha, I didn't realize that it was a real thing at the time! That was quite a while ago now...

I've thought recently about what if we could make something very efficient in minecraft, to prototype things like supply chains or devices, and then use them in real life. If successful, that would be crazy and awesome. Gamification in it's rawest and best form lol

@@yourhomegreens8489 Minecraft is nowhere near realistic enough to simulate a real-life design. Large amounts of effort have to be spend on things like "structural integrity" and "water transportation". Farming in minecraft is, quite literally, a bit of infinite water, some dirt, and a seed, for exponentially growing amounts of food, provided unlimited space.

@@ExaCognition lol same here I found vertical farms years ago, From minecraft. Though this time was straight from my recommendation list.

@@tristanmitchell1242Unless we make mod for it--

Short Snort same lol

Now if only Minecraft physics applied to the real world ;)

yep same

With that profile pic, you seem tired. If only Golems can do more than just be bodyguards.

​@@hectorvega621 ?

Yeah, I definitely was a bit brief on the rooftop and wall segments for the sake of scope. I generally agree that more green in the city is a positive.

I love the idea of rooftop gardens, but i think that area is better suited for solar panels.

@@arccv depends on the building. Wide squat buildings would br good for either. Maybe even do a 50 50 mix. But for skyscrapers i would think putting solar panels on the south facing (in north hemisphere) walls would be more effective.

how about making city look better with decorative plants instead, because that kind of "farming" makes food really sad to eat - air pollution in most big cities makes it unhealthy

@@MortyrSC2 an even better option would be fruiting trees. They dont make any fruit for several years but would scrub the air in that time.

France uses mostly nuclear power

Because of public opinion. While nuclear is the cleanest, and arguably the safest, one accident means hundreds of squared kilometres rendered uninhabitable. Until 2011, most of us thought it can only happen in countries like the former soviet union, but as Japan, arguably the most developed nation on earth, faced a similar disaster at Fukushima, there has been a huge pressure from public opinion not to build additional nuclear reactors. Especially in Germany, which is since barely a nuclear nation anymore. (Though, an important thing to note: Germany still produces less CO2 and has not been more reliant on coal than before. It was fairly stable and now starts to fall. Though it is sure it could have been way faster if they kept their nuclear plants). (+ nuclear accidents happened elsewhere, like in France, the UK, and the USA as well. Though much smaller in scale. (Windscale, Three miles island, etc...)

@@evoluxman9935 "one accident means hundreds of squared kilometres rendered uninhabitable" No, it doesn't. Seriously, who comes up with this crap? Chernobyl didn't explode like a thermonuclear weapon and the area around it has a radiation exposure level of about 1 microsievert per hour. A single CT-scan gives you a dose of about 6900 microsieverts, for example. I mean, FFS, the global average background radiation on any day is between 0.17-0.39 microsieverts per hour depending on where on the planet you're at that time. You get up to 7 microsieverts per hour on a flight between New York, USA and Tokyo, Japan (for example) cause by cosmic radiation. As for Fukushima, it was an old reactor (built in the 70s) and was nearing the end of its lifespan (in fact, it had probably been pushed beyond its lifespan). Furthermore, the light-water reactor design has been noted to be flawed since the 1970s, while US (and France) use a different and better light-water coolant design (pressurized water). However, that is also mitigated if we would built fast-neutron reactors, since it doesn't require liquid coolant (ala Fukushima) and could eventually be cooled with molten salt. And yea, Germany gets a lot of its power from nuclear still...they just buy it from France.

This is more about land and water use as well as food transportation than about electricity. Although electricity will be required. That said. You can work it out based on researching current prices yourself. Building a large wind/solar farm with large battery backup for day night energy availability is simply cheaper than a nuclear power plant in the majority of locations in the world. It's cheaper than building all but the largest coal plants in the coldest regions. And it's even cheaper than building peaker gas turbine power plants in many use cases. It's even in some regions becoming cheaper than operating existing coal or gas power plants. So the owners of such power stations are simply mothballing the stations and building renewables. Because there's more profit. Just cheaper overall. Worldwide hundreds of coal stations and nuclear builds have been stopped in the middle of building them simply because they could get more and cheaper power by using the remaining funds to build renewables. And the prices are still falling. For both renewables and batteries. And renewable installations are almost infinitely more likely to be build in a fraction of the time, and on time. PLUS you can as easily build many smaller renewable installations rather than a few big fossil fuel/nuclear stations. Looking at the big picture, which includes transmission costs and load balancing costs it has thus far turned out that medium sized solar installations with capacities in the order of one or two hundred MW is economically optimal. I know many people absolutely adore nuclear as THE ANSWER. But... It's actually quite expensive overall. Going into the billions to build. Hundreds of millions to maintain and fuel, and often enough more billions to decommission at the end of their operating lives. The building and decommissioning costs often largely subsidised from public funds. Whereas many independent renewable energy suppliers have become profitable with relatively minimal subsidisation. And there's a lot of headaches and risks in general which are near 100% non-existent with renewables. Even if it was at one point a good answer to fossil fuels doesn't mean it's the best answer anymore. People should just accept it. While they lament the decline in nuclear builds and capacity, energy companies are just going where the profit is in the meantime. Seems like a pointless ongoing debate to me at this stage. Nuclear is neat, but it has become a bit of a dinosaur. The world of renewable energy has moved on quickly in the last decade. For part of the decade it was barely an ideological nice to have. Leading to more expensive energy bills for consumers. Now it's just simply the best answer with the most profit. Leading to lower energy bills for consumers. Where will it be in another 10 years? Probably in another 5 years people will laugh at companies building fossil/nuclear. And more and more at companies just operating existing fossil/nuclear. As stupidity. Already in Saudi Arabia solar has come in at 1.7US cent per kWh. "Per kWh"! It should be no surpise that the Saudis have seen the writing on the wall and have taken Aramco public. I even fully expect that by the time ITER manages profitable fusion energy in 30-50 years time (if they ever do!) then people will be left wondering why the hell they would want it. Apart from maybe for large centralised server farms and military installations. Who knows. Maybe there will be no use cases for fusion at all unless somebody can come up with a cheap compact solution. There are more than 4x the renewable power capacity worldwide now compared to the beginning of the decade. Mark my words. Now that it has become so cheap, and is still becoming cheaper we will see an 8x increase by the end of this coming decade. At least.

With the amount of Earthquakes I don't think NA would be a good place for one lol

I would love to see at least small scale vertical farms employing homeless people and growing medicinal quality herbs and leafy plants for herbal teas... it would be good to have all our ingredients for our teas grown in or near our cities.

Fair play, great to see a content creator making an effort to show sources. Too many big channels like Crash Course don't bother to post their sources and, this makes them untrustworthy.

@@catherineleslie-faye4302 I would like to make a video on small scale home/local vertical farms. Will they work? can they be cost effective? how much could you grow? etc. It seems like a good follow on to this series (which is mostly focused on the larger scale Plant Factories).

@@mickmickymick6927 Thanks! I want to do a better job of posting the sources and calculations in future videos. So the the information becomes a sort of open source document. I was also thinking about crowd sourced knowledge too, as I'd imagine that would improve the quality of the research.

I am looking forward to such a video...

You do have a point, it makes me wonder what technologies of tomorrow are dismissed today, and on the flipside, what technologies that we tout for tomorrow, that will fail to materialize. In the case of Plant Factories, it looks to me like they are here to stay. For me, the question is more about how much they can scale and how soon they can do it.

As long as they keep going. Industries seem to be quite reluctant to do anything different or simply creative these days for fear of loss of profit. In this way, new technology and practices seem to be more at threat by the companies that make them; rather than those who do not. Still, I praise those who push to better our future by sticking to it, such as those who run the facilities shown in this video. Achievements are made not simply by those who have power and creativity, but by those who use those qualities to their fullest, and are persistent in doing so.

@@ExaCognition As much as we want, as soon as we want to.

@@gregorymckenzie7511 muskets were worse than crossbows when they first became a thing. It's all about seeing what it will be not what it is

@@gregorymckenzie7511 You can blame shareholder culture for that - stock buyers want company profits to double and triple every quarter, and that discourages long-term growth and experimentation. Gotta reinvent the stock market first.

Cheap buildings is certainly an important element, and something skyscraper farms couldn't reasonably achieve. There are a lot of elements to a Musk style approach, I suspect his approach of extreme vertical integration could go someway to improving the cost competitiveness. Interestingly enough, his brother Kimbal founded a container farm company - Square Roots.

@@ExaCognition - The key to all this working out is creating cheaper electricity. We would have to also get off fossil fuel powerplants as well if we want to really lower our impact on the environment. Solar and wind farms are still expensive and would take up the same or more space than we'd save with the best vertical farms. Therefore, in my opinion, the key is in new-age nuclear reactors which produce the same electrical output for a cheaper price with far less nuclear waste, compared to the 50+ years old designs we are currently using, which also has a much lower half-life and which allows us to save our fossil fuels to be used for other things at a, possibly, lower cost due to a lowered demand once old fossil-fuel based power plants are replaced by new, cheaper, more efficient, and safer nuclear plants.

A Musk approach to problems is beginning to produce for the rich people to finance his cars and then gradually, as technology and production methods improve, also produce for poorer people.

I think it should be like manufacturing industry. Because to reduce cost, the have to set industries that are kind of mass producing all the necessary equipment and materials for the farm plants. And the vertical plants farm should produce it's own sustainable energy with biofuel.

@@Yetipfote "produce for the rich then as production improves produce for the poor" That's just manufacturing in general, new products will always be more expensive for a given level of quality than something that's already been established which makes it easier for the wealthy to get newer stuff. That's just how all manufacturing works, not really relates to a "Musk approach".

Yes you are right. A lot of architectural concepts for say skyscraper farms put them in the middle of the city, this is partly with then intention being close to the consumer and probably partly for the aesthetics of a design concept. The ability to place vertical farms pretty much anywhere is a distinct advantage. Existing companies such as Spread place their vertical farms surrounded by farm land on the edge of suburbia, such that they are close to a consumption center but also close to transport networks. The flexibility of placement is very useful for keeping land and building costs low. Companies like aerofarms have relatively urban production and have managed to leverage cheap real estate by re-purposing existing real estate, such as an old steel mill and a disused nightclub. There are plenty of smaller operations in both urban and rural settings. I think I could have done a better job of getting across the location flexibility advantage in this series.

​@@ExaCognition Aesthetics are such a waste. Just buy an existing, boring, rectangular warehouse. Nobody's gonna convince anyone we're being sustainable if we see them throwing billions of dollars away on some futuristic arcology when what we really needed was cheap land.

Kevin C I cultivate lettuce and micro greens vertically via hydroponics in a shipping container turned into controlled environment agricultural facility! This week we had a 105 lb lettuce harvest from our one container!

@@snailordskates384 Awesome! High density, purely functional, efficient. That's what we need our agriculture to look like. And ideally, local.

Kevin C we’re centered in the middle of Miami and our customers both local restaurants and residents get their produce delivered same day as harvest!

Hi, could you provide me more information on your farming activity? I am looking for small scale solutions and for mass production. 🙂 my mail is: bela.deri@ferovia.co.uk.

What did they do with the money? Analysis? Feasability plans?

@@Simboiss It is likely "Union fees and Management payrolls" there is an episode from the comedy show Yes Minister that had a similar situation with "the best (government) run hospital in London" that was costing in the millions and not a single patient or doctor! :)

I don't know. They redrew the plans for the building at least two times. I presume a lot of money went to paychecks and to markering the project to potential investors in order to keep the paychecks to the management flowing. In my opinion building a highrise greenhouse in a low population density area with lots and lots of farmland was utterly silly in the first place.

@@greghall4836 Yeah that sounds utterly silly. I mean it should be something unique like an automated export farm or automated industrial production building for the benefits they could bring.

@@greghall4836 Classical scam. Come up with shiney cool idea with nice visuals and hefty promises of solving all the moral dilemmas with futuristic technology! Then as they get the money they can burn it on paying them selves trying to figure out how to actually make it work, only to run out of money, begging their investors for ever more swearing they are so close to getting it to work, until one day the investors finally have had enough and have spoken to someone with an actual clue that can show them how this team is actually useless and wont ever make their idea work as they promised. Then they go bankrupt and go on with their lives having made a killing without producing any value for anybody. They probably justify it to them selves as taking rich peoples money so it's fine or something like that.

What is symbolism

It makes me wonder how big the corporate symbolic shovel market is!

Triple Shovel is called a Plow - Horse or Ox Not Included

@@TheEvilProfessorMonoCulture ... Hindsight is 20/20

@@TheEvilProfessorMonoCulture In russia women is replacement for horse or cow at age 30 plus.

That can be said about many technologies tho

dude....I know what you're saying.....but the way that you say it is the reason why economists or "the elites", as you perhaps even call them, ton't take you seriously. If you can calculate the long-tern value accumulation of sustainability as part of a marketing/branding strategy then go and make a fortune with it. But spitting halfassed ominous one-liners ain't gonna save the planet :/ So get off your high environmentalist horse and start learning some math ;)

@@vincenthellsing5655 That has always been a argument. It is too expensive to do now but in the future it will be even more expensive if we don't do it. The problem is that is speculation, There was starvation then GM plants came about, another food shortage occurred then fertilizers came out. I am in agreement in high density farming but that is because the things that are grown are FOOD, does this mean they suffer yes but it also means I can afford meat. Needs drive innovation we do not need this atm as standard farming is still viable for countries with the people most likely to figure something out. Until someone can make money off it there is no drive to do it.

“For 80k you buy a shipping container ... this low cost entry” So for 80k you can, at best, produce 1/5th of an acre’s food. You can do that in the ground on a quarter acre or more for 5-10k. So for far less capital investment you can out produce it, and with a less sensitive setup. You can produce 25% more for 1/8th of the cost. I would certainly not call the 80k up front cost a low cost entry. Hydroponics systems aren’t *finnicky* at best. Why do you think the referenced “plant factories” go to such extreme lengths to cut the variables down? Moving to a “plant factory” model isn’t doing anything for the land that has been biologically mined to near sterility. It does nothing to restore what used to be many feet of quality soil. The largest barriers to food production over time are not land but quality land, they are not lack of hydroponics but lack of soil maintenance and management. We know how to restore the soil, and it takes much less time than most people think. We also have learned (or re-learned some might say) that multi-use is not only efficient but effective. The “market gardener” level is the truly scalable option. We have more back yard space than rooftops. Your back yard is the ultimate in locally grown. But that doesn’t sit week with the big wigs in the city who don’t have them. They only see and think in terms of their city. The amount of space and investment needed to grow your own herbs - even for city denizens, is shockingly low. The water requirements for small scale farms (“market gardens) is much lower than large ones which lose most of their water due to the sheer size of the area it is spread over - and the means of delivering it to that area. These are not problems at the smaller scale. It isn’t about growing all, or even most, of your food in your yard. Instead it is about growing “enough” in your yard. And most people are gobsmacked at how cheap and easy that is. This video referenced several options that seemed to come in at “saving about 2%” and they were all expensive. High up front costs and high maintenance, and distribution it even factored in. However, if just 10% of households were able to grow just an average of 20% of their plant based foods in situ, we can get there with far less money needed. Growing that portion yourself is even possible for city dwellers. For those of us with lawns shifting from turf grass to food and ornamental gardens will usually result in a reduction of water use. Turf grass is a thirsty crop. In terms of water usage it is the largest single irrigated crop in the U.S. - while only covering a total area the size of Texas. Because if this, shifting from turf grass to family foodstuffs means a net decrease in local water requirements. We would also see a return of local biodiversity, which improves ecological resiliency. Vegetable producing land in the U.S. is around only 3 million acres. We have some 42 million acres of residential lawns. If only ten percent of that were converted to vegetable and herb, it would be more space than is used for *all* of our current domestic vegetable production. All of it and then some. This is why it is “low value” - because it is cheap, easy, and distributable. It is why high rises are a *waste* of space for this purpose. If you are the kind of person that likes big initiatives, let me out this in that perspective. Spend 500 per residence to pay for them getting started and converting half of their yard to garden, figure a million people. So half a billion dollars and, based on average sizes, you’ve now “expanded” vegetable farm are by around 125,000 acres and every bit of it local. You’ve also cut down each of the water usage for each of those places by as much as 38% in the summer on average. How much do those “plant factories” cost again?

Maybe doing to the soil our current farming is using. If we can fix that will help combat a lot, increase nutrients and the land they're being grown on will suck our excess carbon dioxide the soil around the world being sucked up.

Garrett Robison but skyscrapers would waste money in real estate value if used ONLY for farms if it’s offices n living spaces with farms supplemented it’s fines cuz ur not giving up solar space

@@saulw6270 These vertical farms do not need to be built in cities. The main benefit of these is that they need far less land to grow on. This way more habitats can be kept intact.

yes, it's LEDs and only the colors which plants absorb the most but it's still energy that has to be produced instead of being given by the sun. and no you can't get far more efficient, the only energy loss is heat .. have you ever seen an increddibly hot LED? (outside of high power tech products) so for me, the question is .. can we produce energy highly efficient, cheap (!) and as free of pollution as possible.. THEN vertical farming becomes a real thing untill then .. it's a "green" hype but not good for the environment

thats just wrong. 65 uplikes... people dont fact check or think at all...

That's ultraviolett light not "blue and red LEDS" my guy.

Exo's proud mama bear wind and solar power maybe? The buildings are in the sun and some of them are high up. In places with heavy rain fall we could utilize it with strategically placed water wheels that move, and create energy for generators. I saw an experiment done with high currents were they made a generator powered by moving currents that did supply power for half a city.

@@beatrixthegreat1138Wind and solar power are too expensive though. I would say more advanced nuclear energy would make things a lot cheaper.

Exo's proud mama bear but the cost of nuke power is much higher. Solar and wind would be cheaper in the long run with the right administration

@@beatrixthegreat1138 Not really if you look at the amount of electricity and cost rate, nuclear energy is much proficient. This is why even the most developed countries can't turn to solar and wind energy fast even they don't want to use nuclear energy anymore.

Exo's proud mama bear I’m talking about the danger aspects like Fukushima. It’s still leaking and every robot they send in to repair burns up before it can even start the job.

I think this is a fair point. The comparison between vertical farms and the current general state of agriculture isn't really a fair one, since I was largely looking at the latest and best in the case of vertical farming. There is a lot of latitude for reducing the global challenges by scaling existing sustainable agriculture techniques. Delving into sustainable ag was beyond the scope of this series, but it's something I'd like to come back to. In many cases the impacts can be fairly significant and relatively easy to implement.

@@ExaCognition I'm glad this came up. A lot of the fanfare numbers in these technologically intensive tend to compare themselves to worst-case wasteful scenarios (overhead watering and open irrigation ditches which lose a lot to evaporation) rather than much more conservative irrigation methods like drip. One can imagine, too, that with all of the pipework involved in a plant-factory, the inevitable leak-maintenance that emerges as these shiny new ventures begin aging will significantly tarnish both cost and water conservation. If you do a follow-up video, I'd also love to see what you can find about the embodied energy and upkeep of these facilities; the fact that their marketing focuses so narrowly on operating consumption is a curious one.

Thanks, I don't know if it will be cost effective for you because you already have a big subscriber base. It seems to be helping with jump-starting a new channel though.

Thanks for your words. Mirrors are definitely an opportunity for improving the efficiency of growing and they can be implemented without much cost. It's fairly common for even small scale growers to use artificial lights in combination with mirrored tents to trap as many photons as possible. Mirrors can create a few operational issues however, trapping the light also tends to trap the heat and limit airflow. Environment control is a big advantage of plant factories, so you need to be mindful of how mirrors affect that. With that said, I'd expect to see the use of mirrors more and more going forward. It seems ironic to use solar to capture light when plants already do it themselves, at first glance, it appears to be a wasteful endeavour. In the best case scenario, after converting sunlight into electricity, and then passing that electricity through LED's to create light again, you only have around 11% of the light energy than you started with (89% light loss). If you've lost a magnitude of your energy, how can it possibly be considered energy efficient? There's more to this than meets the eye however and as a system it's possible to more than overcome these loses. It's important to remember that plants grown outside are hugely inefficient at turning sunlight into edible mass. You might think that these losses must be equally true of plants grown in plant factories but that's not the case. For a start, the LED's don't return sunlight, they return very specific wavelengths that the plants can use. Much of the suns radiation cannot be used for photosynthesis, but can be captured by a solar cell. In a sense, you could say that the solar cell allows you to turn unusable photons from the sun into usable photons (PAR - Photosynthetically Active Radiation). For this reason, the 89% loss of energy is misleading, because the plant couldn't use half of the sunlight in the first place because it was an unusable wavelength. Factoring this in, we are still looking at 77% efficiency loss. Of course this is still a bit of a simplification, even with PAR, not all of light absorbed with the same efficiency, the energy delivered across the spectrum (spectral irradiance), the quantity and wavelength of light at growing phases (Spectral Photon Flux Density), the hours of light etc. All of these have a big impact on growing efficiency of a plant. Outdoors, you get what you are given, indoors you can precisely control these parameters for maximal efficiency. As a result, the growing control of LED's enable much high growth per photon than is possible than with sunlight. Beyond LED's, there are other parameters that improve the efficiency of growing indoors. Temperature, Humidity, CO2 enrichment, root oxygenation etc. The net results is far more edible mass per photon of light, and this is more than enough to overcome the 77% efficiency loss. It's control and growing density of vertical farms which allow them to be net energy efficient. You don't need solar to see these efficiencies, just electricity for your LED's, though it can be a clean and cheap source if the location is right. I want to go through a more detailed analysis in a future video, but I hope this helps illustrate the solution to the seeming efficiency paradox of using solar power to generate light for plants.

@zztop3000 Damn, chill out bro

Thanks! I'm glad you found it helpful. The source and calculation doc that I'm adding to is based on the original sources and calculations that were used for the video series for the sake of continuity. I've got plenty more to add, it's going to take some time. I started researching the vertical farm series in 2017 and as you say, a lot of the sources are circa 2015. It would be a huge undertaking to update the sources for the latest, but I would like to do it as part of a video though. I was thinking of doing a video along the lines of Vertical Farming in 2020/21, were I would go through and update/make corrections to my original series and to see how the models are holding up, making new conclusions/predictions if necessary. I'd provide a new source/calculation document along with it (completed and linked with the initial video launch though!).

Much appreciated!

Thanks, I hope the studying goes well!

lucky you. I have never studied something so interesting in education

Glad you liked it. Quite a lot of research went into the vertical farming video series but I'm glad it's worth it.

Let’s push sustainability together. Elon musk does his part and the rest of us should do what he does not have energy or time to do.

Same here

Thanks, I've got two more videos on this topic myself, that follow on from this video. After that I think it's a case of understand what you are looking to learn. There aren't many detailed videos about plant factories, but there are many related to some of the key topics in this video. For example, a bit part of the success of plant factories is tied to the future of energy production and storage techniques. There are lot's of good videos on that from channels such as Real Engineering.

Glad you enjoyed it!

Sources are on of the most requested items. I initially was going to post them with the videos but the calculations and data sheets got very messy. I wanted to tidy it up, so that it was easy to follow but it's a fairly big job and I never got round to it. I don't have much time at the moment but since these videos have got a lot of traction recently, I can't put it off any longer. By the end of the week, I will add a link to a source document, and then I will try and add small updates to it regularly until it's completed. Otherwise it could be months before I get round to adding it.

I totally agree with you... The data were so impressive that I wanted to read them. Myself... I went to the description box but found no source....

This will be part of my next series on the current/future state of energy.

Well Solar farms are extremely poor and near worthless. A single piece of charcoal that you use to grill with contains more energy than you get from Solar in a year. Now that's a decent comparison. The biggest reason for this, even if Solar is passive, it takes about 200 years for a single solar panel to even offset the actual cost of production. While Coal or Nuclear plants may deal with finite resources but output so much more energy that anyone that think of Wind or Solar or Wave technology to get energy are lunatics. Wind only exist to kill birds, Solar and cold climate or sandy climate doesn't work together, hail destroys the panels and the not so environmentally friendly toxins that are necessary for solar to function leak out, and sand will either cover the panels in sandy environments and grind down the surface of the solar panels over time... So Solar is out of the picture always. The only power source that we'd need in the future is hydrogen into helium fission plants. And the Helium produced could be stored and sold, because we're actually coming up on a Helium-3 shortage. And an eventual Helium-4 shortage as well.

@@livedandletdie The Major no offense brother, but you sound like you're just spewing all the Fox News alternative facts. And your comparison of charcoal to solar is laughable. I'd advise you to take a look at the government's own studies on wind and solar. They wouldn't invest in them if they weren't viable sources of energy. But I know you won't do it. You'll probably delete your comment when you see that I'm not going to be swayed by some guy who's trying to sound smart, but won't provide any sources.

@@shookings It's either the capitalist conspiracy or the Green Party propaganda. Either way is shit if you think one is perfect and the answer to all our problems. Renewables are shit if you want to power industries and urban cities. Too much power consumption on very dense areas while you would need a crap ton of space for power to break even. On the other hand, its perfect if you're just living on the suburbs with only your family in one household. A solar panel or two on the roof could solve your power costs for years since those panel don't have to supply 10 floors of tenants' rooms with maybe 5 on each floor. The windmills could also provide for a nice view while on a highway drive which sure can't be done in the middle of New York. Non-renewables are shit since they destroy the environment and would run out in the future once everywhere on Earth has been excavated for fuel. It's not as if we didn't mine the materials to use on our renewable power out of the ground as well. Not to mention that you would also need a crap ton of lot of it if you want to out a panel or a windmill on every house and community out there. Then there is the proven nuclear energy and maybe fission but oh no, Chernobyl, Fukushima. It will kill us all, it's too dangerous for your health. We can't trust our engineers and scientists, we can't understand all those headaching sciency gibberish they say. We would rather listen to what Auntie Betty has to say on social media or what is on Karen's script on the news, or what's written on first page google. Edit: Shit's became a rant somewhere. Probably not talking about you anymore, but goddamn I hate some people. Need another drink. Probably read some other comment and it got into writing this, too lazy to take this down now. Ty for reading even this part ahahaha

Great to hear! I´m glad you like it!

I've just linked the first sources, there's a LOT yet to add, but it will contain a lot more and calculations over time.

Thanks, I intend to tone back the background music a bit going forward. The source and calculation document is only a tiny fraction of complete at the moment, I'm going to try and get a few more updates over the next few weeks.

I don't really see skyscraper farms as an effective and scalable strategy. The capital required to build them isn't offset by their growing density. The shading as is quite an issues as you mentioned. You can supplement skyscraper farms with artificial lighting, but the net efficiency is quite a bit lower than plant factories, once you factor in thermal efficiency, growing density, light and climate control, capital requirements etc. That said, plants grown in skyscraper farms aren't dangerous, it's just that they aren't cost effective. Plants grown hydroponically in Plant Factories, can match and exceed the nutrition of outdoor products. This is especially true if you can locate the vertical farm close to the point of consumption.

@@ExaCognition But how do the plants match up with naturally grown plants in point of nutrients? Thats the question.

@@flowgangsemaudamartoz7062 They match up better actually. Also they can be grown pesticide free (which soil grown plants are pumped full of). They are a far better alternative to be honest. The really high upfront costs are the main impediment. Once they are in business and selling they can grow better quality stock and more quickly with optimised environments.

There are a number of Plant Factories doing this, it's a really interesting area. Essentially they are running tens of thousands of experiments, with many types of sensors fed into an neural net (or other ml approach). It's so much easier to control the conditions indoors, so it's much easier to eliminate noise from the analysis and run more powerful experiments.

@@ExaCognition It's essentially doing what humans have been doing naturally for centuries more efficiently... Which is awesome in my book.

Sending energy down is cheaper then sending it up, same with water, and really everything. Plus geothermal heating/cooling effects making temp control cheaper, might actually be on to something

The cost of construction underground is much higher than above ground.

Building down is far more difficult and expensive than building up, more importantly, you can't build down in many areas, either because of the type of ground or just pre-existing infrastructure already occupying that space. Building up is essentially something that can be done anywhere.

@@RandyrheBlackKnight how is building down more expensive?

@@mondaysinsanity8193More maintenance, more earth needs to be moved, more reninfocrment is needed. Especially if you're building down in an earthquake zone, which is significantly more of the US if you'd think. Or a Flood Zone. Building Down is only really easy in very stable mountains or plains. And Again in many areas you'll have to deal with increased permitting and other rules and fees as underground tends to be where most municipalities shove their water, sweage, and heavy power infrastructure there to keep it out of the way.

Throw these farms into the desert and put solar panels all over them and in the space between the buildings. Or, even better, put the buildings below the desert and the solar panels on top. Plenty of energy to be harvested and put into use there. It wouldn't take much of Sahara to power several countries. Imagine how well it could power these plant factories

Fighting gravity is costly.

@@Simboiss an yet we must in order to reach the stars

@@Arterexius sounds like a terrible idea. Where would you get the water from?

If the main big concern is energy cost I think we would want cheap energy, not necessarily green energy

Felix Forthwind the entire video is about how little of an impact this would actually make lmfao

Also in what time frame is the 2 billion coming, that number doesn't mean much without a timeline lol, 2 billion next year? Next 10 years?

We are almost or already at 8 billion aren't we? I believe I read a paper a few years ago that had results that believe the world will never see 10 billion because birth rates even in third world countries were slowing down.

@@ambeegaming76 correct! the world average is 2 births per couple but the elderly are filling up, as in in a lot of places there will be more once that fills it should level out. estimates vary ofc thats just what i've read, it might be leveling out here idk.

Or people can stop having too many kids.

Aerofarms have this philosophy, they have a large operation in location that used to be a New Jersey nightclub. They've also turned an old steel mill and a paintball arena into vertical farms.

@@ExaCognition Do you think old shopping mall could provide enough space as well, also taking parking spaces into consideration. Not to mention close proximity to consumers lessening costs of shipments

An old mall would likely have more than enough space, and as you say, the location is likely to be fairly optimal from a consumer perspective. I'd imagine the main factor is much it costs to purchase/rent the land. Depending on the size of the mall, you would likely only need a relatively small part of it.

Roof farming was definitely glossed over in this series as I wanted to focus on areas with a greater measurable impact, given the limited role rooftop farming can have from a growing density perspective. With that said, I do agree with your premise, more greenery in urban spaces is something I would personally like to see more of, and the evidence does support the role it can have in making us healthier. In many cases, rooftops aren't really utilized yet they often can be, I can also see how the community/hobby space can be valuable too. It's tricky to measure the impact, but I do support the principle.

@@ExaCognition Absolutely! Honestly I couldn't imagine the hoops you would need to jump through to set up even a small garden on a roof of a building you don't already own, which makes it very impractical for hobbyists and pretty much anyone that wants to make something nice. Though maybe sometime in the near future we may see a change if it gets more popular. Not too optimistic thought, considering nobody has time anymore, even for their own kids let alone a garden haha.

Gage Owens roof top farms are super cheap. what he was saying us they aren't enough

Uranium is a fossil fuel. It will help humanity become green for a few years but at the moment, nuclear power is nothing more than a temporary solution. At least until fusion becomes a viable option.

Thorium salt reactors. Supplies energy for desalination and farming, then use the water for farming and the salt from desalination for reactors

@@diamanteduul8084 Rethink that for a moment. Radioactive water for farming? That will not turn out great. Besides, even Thorium isn't anything more than a temporary solution. Thorium isn't a renewable resource.

@@rendomstranger8698 Not exactly a fossil fuel, as they are from long dead animals (dinos), but certainly not a renewable one either.

@@Arterexius radioactive water? WTH

Stop making sense! Its hurting my head! ;(

+ using robots to maintain everything, which will allow use even less space and cheaper cost=)

It doesn't make intuitive sense to turn sunlight into electricity and back into light. Afterall, this double conversion process is only 10% efficient (even with a good setup). However, there is more to it than is immediately obvious. For a start, sunlight is only about 50% Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR), whereas solar can capture across the spectrum and the LED's can emit only PAR. Even factoring this in though, you are still changing a 90% loss to a 80% loss. If that was all there was too it, then this would be a very wasteful approach. Plants grown in Plant Factories are far more efficient at turning photons into edible mass. There are a number of reasons for this, temperature, humidity, CO2 enrichment, root oxygenation, nutrient supply, light recipes, photoperiod etc. All these have a huge effect on the growing efficiency of the plant and you can only leverage the full extent of these benefits with artificial lighting. This essentially means that you have a much smaller area of solar panels than you would need if you grew the same amount food in a field. So you could say that using solar is net land efficient, even if the logic of that seems counter intuitive. Generally speaking, the current state means that this is an effective way to produce high nutrient but low calorie food. It will need to become more efficient and require cheaper energy, to be able to supply our main calories such as wheat and rice though.

@@ExaCognition good point. I actually thought of it after posting, that the maths is probably not that simple. But I would still argue that bulldozing a forest to build solar power plants is a terrible idea. We should only install solar power in places where it doesn't displace any more plant life.

Depreciation cost is the reduction in asset value (such as building and equipment) over time. The LED's used have a limited lifespan, so the expense needs to be factored in. If a plant factory uses extensive use of automation, it will reduce it's labor cost, but the depreciation costs will rise because of the equipment expense.

My thought exactly. Other alternatives: Biogas created from leftovers of the plants (and fish if aquaponic), as well as human manure from workers and surrounding houses, food scraps, etc, which can be used to power a generator that creates not only electricity but also heat.

nah

From what I can tell, a lot of the controversy stems from the confusion around the different types of vertical farm. I've seen analysis that conflates skyscraper farms with plant factories, which leads to different conclusions about their viability. I think the general concern relates to them either being cost ineffective solutions and/or too energy intensive. There is some merit to these critiques, especially against some of the more hyped claims regarding vertical farms. That said, it's becoming increasingly hard to ignore that vertical farms are viable and there are many being run profitably around the world. It's true that the type of viable product is still relatively limited, but that is changing year on year. The main point of contention going forward is likely how much impact this technology can have, and that is largely related to it's ability to grow the energy intensive staple crops like rice and wheat. That said, I think many acknowledge that vertical farming doesn't have to be able to grow everything to be useful, it can be part of the solution, not the be all and end all. Based on the research I've done, the criticism surrounding this technology generally appears to be grounded in reality, though somewhat overblown. It seems to me that this technology does have the scope for a pretty large impact, though vertical farming is at least a decade away from reaching the scale needed to start having a significant impact.

Thanks! I'm not actually in the vertical farming business, I'm an engineer whos trying to model future technologies as a point of interest. I decided building a channel around this would be a good way to push me to learn more about technologies and also share my learning. I probably did way too much research on this topic but I can't help myself sometimes.

@zztop3000 lol

to be fair, such a building back then probably occupied enough land to build a castle on; which there is no evidence of a building that large near a waterway (would've needed one) anyway.

They cut down costs by using such old technology as slavery, not something we can utilize today

Elaborate.

@@SecretLars water, pressure to pump the water through the farms and electricity all in the same place. Less steps where you need to convert energy so it's more efficient.

@@Dewkeeper Sorry that still doesn't make sense for me. Pumped-storage hydropower (PSH) utilizes turbines to rotate from the decrease of potential energy of the elevated water. The vertical farms feed the water to the plants. How would you suppose that the water goes from a lake at a higher elevation then down to a and up again to a (let's say 14 stories tall building) high rise and then down yet again to the turbines to make up for the loss of energy? Have you factored in that sort of system would require even more energy to pump all that water through that lenght of piping? Not to mention depending on the length of piping you'd need extra pumps, sort of like a valve system. Or is it in a sor of triangular open-"loop" PSH where you have one pump for close by elevation storage then another sepperate valve to lower elevation have the turbines and then the vertical farms where the water preassure from elevation pushes the water up the building and through the hydroponics and then finally out to the same stream lower down the river?

@@SecretLars I was thinking more along the lines of placing the vertical farm adjacent to the higher elevation water, then diverting a portion of that down the piping for the farm system. If it's a water storage system you have one system that does all the upward pumping and the farms just use a portion of the potential energy. Either way because you don't have a separate mechanism to pump water up into the farm it should be more efficient and reliable if you were already going to have that dam or storage facility there anyway. I wasn't exactly worrying about the specific methods only the overall number of steps where you can lose efficiency or have interruptions to the water or power that could kill the plants.

@@Dewkeeper So basically the farm using part of the stored energy instead of using it for energy generation? You'd still need the energy to pump up the water. You've just moved the building and not changed the costs.

Thanks, a few people have mentioned this, I've been gradually lowering it for future videos to try and find a better balance.

no reason you couldn't put an array of panels on the roof.

@@franklyanogre00000 Here are the reasons: 1.> Needed daily sunshine rarely guaranteed 2.> Not much electricity generated by comparison 3.> Panels damage easily, especially in areas where hail and other storms are common Solar is good as a secondary source, not as a main supply.

Thanks, the appendix is mostly scripted but I've got to finish the Vertical Farm series first. There are another 2 videos to squeeze in.

@@ExaCognition Looking forward to upcoming videos. I'm doing a project on the feasibility of vertical farming and how to scale up the practice in Scandinavia, so I was curious about some of the sources for the video ;). Anyways, keep up the good work :)

Oh that sounds pretty cool. Well my source doc is a bit of a mess at the moment but all the sources are there. If you have any specific sources or calculations, then let me know, I can send you the source links.

I do agree with you. The focus on scalability was a result of investigating how large that industry and the impact can potentially get (a common critique I came across). From that perspective, the microgreens etc. we often see, don't have a huge future impact (directly). With that said, the current generation of plant factories only exist because the previous set were profitable, the R&D and technological progress to this point has largely been thanks to leafy greens. So you are right, Vertical Farms only exist in their current form thanks to leafy plants, and they are continually being accelerated technologically thanks to them.

you need to make the farm float using an anti gravity engine

Japan has some of the largest Vertical Farms in the world. In fact, the Japanese government invested in Plant Factories to develop their food security in response to the 2011 earthquake. Many buildings in Japan are developed to be resilient to earthquakes, this can apply to Plant Factories too.

Today is 22.12.2019(Day.Month.Year). We haven't reached 2020 yet.

@@asrnyigit4040 my bad. 2012 was when i started

I have a source and calculation excel file but it's a bit of a mess. I wanted to tidy it up and post it with my appendix video. I didn't expect it would take me so long to get round to. In the mean time, if there's anything specific your interested in, I can send you the sources and calcs.

Nah, just hella increase CO2 levels and have fast growing CO2 eating plants such as Azolla which as far as we know it is the fastest growing plant on Earth, as it doubles it's biomass between 3 and 10 days. Which means, that if you have 1g of it, and good enough conditions aka a fuckton of CO2 in less than 2 years you've grown enough of it to cover the Earths surface in a 30cm thick layer. However seeing as it may be toxic to humans, due to containing BMAA it's used as livestock feed, which means it's effectively the best plant to grow for livestock feed, in the long run, only problem is you need to capture enough CO2 for it to grow, well that's a problem with any plant except for maize because maize is a low CO2 consuming plant... and therefore grows slower than other plants in a high CO2 environment, but let's forget new world plants and go back to old world plants who need CO2 en masse to grow properly.

High Q factor fusion would absolutely transform the viability of vertical farms (and many other industries). That said, I would imagine that the majority of crop types will already be viable in vertical farms before high Q-factor fusion arrives.

For over 50 years nuclear fusion has always been only 30 years away, and yet molten salt thorium reactor is what we could have had 30 years ago. LED light and control chips, make it possible to run on renewables energy, thorium reactor or fusion??? Will take it to the next level. But to me they are called warehouse farms, because it's a warehouse that stacks plants on shelf.

@@drmosfet ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-_g54PJhXYxU.html sorry but...

The source I used was from page 108 of "Plant Factory, An Indoor Vertical Farming System for Efficient Quality Food Production". It's worth remembering that this value chances overtime as lighting gets more efficient, so it will be less than 80% in a modern Plant Factory. It also gives the value of 16% for cooling (heat pumps, air conditioners) and 4% for "others" (Water pumps, fans, etc.) Heaters themselves generally weren't needed, as the byproduct of heat from the lights provides sufficient heating even in the middle of the Japanese winter. Energy is needed to remove the excess heat produced by the lighting. Even adjusting for the latest LED's, the lighting is still likely to be the highest factor in energy costs, since more efficient lighting reduces the energy needed to remove the waste heat through air conditioning system. In some locations, heating may well be needed in winter for modern lighting systems, but I haven't come across the data to validate that. It's worth remembering that tech improvement aside, that figure will also see high variance due to Vertical Farm location, size, building properties, crop type, growth phase etc. So I would only really use it as fairly crude generalization. Going forward, I would expect lighting costs to continue to fall along with cooling costs, while heating costs may start to appear in some locations. Pumping costs though small will remain relatively similar, so they will increase in percentage terms of electricity cost as the other factors get smaller. --- The greenhouse/outdoor water and land data are taken from the paper "Comparison of Land, Water, and Energy Requirements of Lettuce Grown Using Hydroponic vs. Conventional Agricultural Methods". Again, this data is highly variable a lot of factors so I wouldn't take is as more than a general guide. The Plant Factory data for water/surface is taken/calculated from the data on the Spread TechnoFarm website.

@@ExaCognition thank you so much for those precisions and nuances. What a good density of information backed up by references, this is so scientificly cool :)) Do you also know the difference in terms of technics on the pumping between aeroponics and Hydroponics? I mean, does the aeroponics continuously provide fog of water or is it only periodically? That could also impact the energy consumption. I have the feeling that generally aeroponics perform way better, needs less strong structure (because of less presence water on the vertical structure) needs less pumping but is always more sensitive to diseases.

Thanks! Unfortunately I don't have a lot of information for aeroponics. A lot of the top systems are proprietary and information is deliberately spars. Companies like Aerofarms appear to have advanced aeroponics but it's hard to benchmark due to a lack of data. My assumption is that aeroponics uses less energy, providing you can successfully deliver all of the required nutrients in your water jets/ droplets, although it depends on the methods used. In a traditional hydroponic system, the water is the medium, and you necessarily pump more water than needed as certain volumes of water are required to fill the bay and completely saturate the root, a certain level of flow is also needed to ensure recycling of nutrients and suspension of nutrients (though in-bay mixers can help). This requires a lot of mass to be moved via the pump and thus energy. If an aeroponic system, can successfully deliver the required nutrients, then less mass is needed to be pumped (although the "high pressure" jets do require a fair amount of energy). This nutrient delivery is likely managed by spraying the water nutrient mix through varying levels of droplet size, from broad jets, to fine mists. It's certainly not easy to achieve this, certain systems use ultrasonics to control the mix delivery. There are examples I looked into that used both a water and air pump, to make things easier. First they submerge the roots in a water nutrient mix (primarily to deliver "heavy nutrients"), using the water pump. Then they drain the water and spray a water/nutrient mix spray to create constant suspended/moist atmosphere using the air pump, this process is repeated periodically. I'd imagine this process of pumping and draining isn't super efficient from a purely energy perspective. It's worth remembering that even if aeroponics uses more energy directly than a traditional hydroponic system (and I don't think it does), it's likely to still deliver a net energy saving. One of the primary aims of aeroponics is to deliver oxygen saturation to the roots, and this can deliver quite significant boosts in growth rate and plant mass (though the amount varies for different plant types). In other words, aeroponics can boost absolute yield, which translates into an energy saving, likely more than enough to offset any additional energy cost for most plants. In terms of diseases, it's certainly a risk, but if your vertical farm uses a clean room environment like we see in Plant factories, then this risk is significantly reduced. It's worth pointing out that you can also achieve oxygen saturation through a traditional hydroponic system using aeration (pumping air/oxygen through the water nutrient mix). I don't have the data to compare them directly but it's fair to say that advanced aero/hydroponics can save a lot of water and thanks to the yield boost: a fair amount of energy too. It might be worth showing some examples with real data in future videos, thanks for the idea!

Thorium salt reactors. Supplies energy for desalination and farming, then use the water for farming and the salt from desalination for reactors

nah, we don't want radioactive plants.

Aggu Kristian NuClEaR eNeRgY sCaRy

Nuclear plants aren't renewable no matter how many people wish to claim that. They all use up a set of unstable elements (usually uranium) and those elements aren't infinitely present on Earth. They do not reform and even though they take a long time to burn out, they still aren't carbon neutral as the mining operations on Earth are one of the most polluting industries existing. Even more so than the production of Lithium-Ion batteries and other renewable energy sources. As a matter of fact, we actually do not know what to do with the toxic mining waste that sits next to all modern mining facilities today. It just slowly poisons the environment. Hell, we don't even know what to do with radioactive waste, other than bury it and wait for it to decay naturally. The most polluting part of renewable energy is the production of Lithium-Ion batteries, as well as what to do with them when they die. The rest is easily reused. Hell, the silicon used in solar panels are way more abundant on Earth than any of the radioactive elements. Silicon is made from quartz, which is literally the most common rock on Earth. The only problem with batteries is Lithium being the best solution so far for making high power batteries that last a long time. But even with Nuclear energy, this would still be a problem. There isn't a single nuclear fission reactor that can beat the reuse ability of renewable energy machines. Not even Thorium Reactors. The only thing that comes close is Fusion and once we master that, then I'll be all in for replacing renewable machines with fusion power plants. They can deliver way more energy than any renewable resource. They mostly take up space below ground and if they malfunction, they will most likely explode, but leave no radioactive fallout afterwards. It will just be a massive explosion that will kill everything around it, but the area can be settled afterwards, so fuck off to fission and welcome to fusion... Once we have a plant running smoothly that is 😂 That said, nuclear fission energy is hella viable for space travel. Not so much for getting out of the atmosphere, but definitely for traveling between Earth and the other planets in our solar system. We seriously need to develop space engines that can utilize the immense power potential of fission powered spacecrafts. Perhaps Ion engines would be suitable. They barely burn fuel in their ionization process and are thus an excellent match for long running spacecrafts.

It's small in business terms.

that's actually rather affordable. the real question is can that one unit produce enough to overcome the costs of operating it and and produce a profit?

What do you mean

@@TheLuckyguy218 The lesson from the Icarus story is to take care to not become overly enamored with your cleverness and carry it to a fatal extreme. I think the projections this video makes for this type of growing are vastly overstated. None of it looks realistic to me. I myself know a guy whose hydroponic operation was a total failure because he underestimated the high costs of nutrients, maintenance costs, and bacterial contamination. There is a reason this not already a common practice.

@Cesar Salcido A lot of people eat bugs, and a lot of people eat cats and dogs in Asia. Your definition of regular isn't objective.

@Cesar Salcido How is cannibalism related to this? It is worse to eat unconsenting humans than eating cats, dogs or insects, which is as morally wrong as eating cows. Is it connected to morality?

@Cesar Salcido You realize pigs are smarter than a lot of dog breeds, right? Plus cows are also smart animals too. Hell, most mammals are incredibly intelligent compared to birds, insects, fish, etc. The other guy was right, YOUR morality is subjective. Hell, people in India see us as monsters for farming and killing cows en masse, and that population is getting close to outnumbering Western society. Plus, if plant-based protein is getting close to meat in terms of texture and flavor, what would stop you from eating insect mass if they could be made to taste similar? Don't be pathetic and weak-stomached.

@@Swordsman99k .....well the population of India is at 2 kids per family & dropping steadily ...so yeah India will peak at 2050 (maybe earlier) & then decline as India has the highest no# of voluntary sterilization in the world..as far as China - population decline will happen by 2030....Yes Africa will be the world populator in the nxt half of this century...btw 30% of India's population are vegetarian..so their food choices are called "vegetarian" & non - vegetarian....as vegetarian is the norm & anything that is not veg based is considered as "non-vegetarian"...

No. It's not. It is a ridiculous myth that insects are efficient at food conversion. Social engineers just want to make people eat insects to control them.

I want to do a video looking at the viability of this technology on a small or even consumer scale.