I mean, they could be replace at the moment but it would cost more. This idea could be or all the “green” and “sustainable” that is advertised but at the end of the day, this is a company ruled by profit (as all the other technological agriculture ones).
To really create a system that can sustain humanity, they need to apply this to high starch foods like potatoes and rice. If they can make that work, this could be the key to living on other planets.
High starch and carbohydrate foods are leading more and more people to obesity and diabetes. This is having disastrous negative outcomes like weakened immune system, heart disease, etc. worldwide. So I'm not sure if I agree with your statement. If anything, we need to be consuming more protein and less carbohydrates.
@@ICDeadPeeps I am speaking to the ability to feed a given population on-mass and under constraints of space and resources. No natural food is unhealthy when unprocessed and consumed in moderation within a balanced diet. Fats and starches contain more kilojoules of energy by unit weight.
I read that google had a project a while ago and tried exactly that, trying to grow what they called staple crops. But they ended up abandoning the project as they were not able to.
@@ICDeadPeeps thats true, but not because people are eating potatoes and rice, but because people eat ultra-processed foods. Cereals and tubers should account for 25% of our diets (referring to whole grains preferably). These foods are full of carbohydrates, but it should not be confused with free sugars like sucrose (table sugar) or fructose. Instead, these carbohydrates are know as “slow releasing” and they are essential for our metabolisms. Plus, they are a great source of proteins (yes, around 7-10% of the cereal nutritional content are proteins), fibers, vitamins and other essential nutrients.
@@ramramakrishnan3025 google is known to give up on things that do work they cancel services all the time. I'm sceptical on if they actually tried properly.
@@grodt88You need to transport produce from farms to stores, and vertical farms can be located closer. Land and fresh water are finite resources. Plenty can produce 350% of the produce of a conventional farm in the same land area, while using only 1% of the water a conventional farm uses. Indoor farming does not replace conventional farming; they have different strengths.
The marketing with "renewables" is eye roll induing. You can now add extra steps and cover fields with solar panels instead of plants, basically defeats the entire point of it. Places where renewables are cheap is also where its simpler to grow things the old fashioned way. The technology becomes interesting when you can pair it with compact & reliable power sources, like nuclear energy. This allows for year round 24/7 operations that are not dependent on the environment. This could make food that normally has to be imported producible locally no matter the climate region your in. This can also be useful for nations that don't have lots of arable land to become self reliant and generally help with global food security. I also really like the automation here, its impressive, it would be wonderful to eliminate the grueling, inhuman and underpaid labor that farms currently use.
Easy pest control is an aspect of indoor farming that I haven't heard mentioned before. Since eliminating pests and pathogens from the environment eliminates undesirable chemicals while preventing crop damage, food is produced organically and chemical free with no yield downside, and less expensively. And by precisely controlling light supply, the energy from the sun isn't wasted on damaging heat and over-saturation.
Capitalism and greed. It WILL be the destruction of our society unless we can change people's views. We need a system that isn't based on money and personal greed. Where Hoarding resources for yourself is viewed by all around you as selfish and looked down upon. We should judge billionaires harshly for their practices and ethics, not kiss the ground they walk on.
@@osc3892 the man who invented the patent for insulin sold it for $1 because he thought it was unethical for one person or company to own something that could benefit billions of people. Maybe it’s time to take an ethics class…
@@peepeepoopoo969 I know the history of that, which is why I find it extremely unethical that the insulin patent is handled the way it's handled. A president, any president, should do an executive order to have that patent transferred to the public domain. My other thing is if research that leads to a patent uses any kind of public funding at all, it should immediately transfer to the public domain as soon as the RND company recoups it's money (plus some margin). If a company uses only their own money though, it is truly their patent and property, even if it can help billions. I'm not some pro-corporation lunatic, but we also can't just be the wild wild west
Consider the fact that water is much more scarce than electricity, and not mentioned in this video, vertical farms use something like 3 or 4% of the water compared to conventional farms.
@@dmcarstensen Digital Electricity from Voltserver could power it all. Another company calls their version Digital Current, but I think Voltserver may have more experience in the indoor agro space.
Excess business office capacity easily converted to food production. Plus in places around large volumes of fresh water (Great Lakes, NYC) would benefit the most.
Despite all the promises of vertical farming, this industry has been struggling with reaching economic feasibility. I wonder if this company managed to solve this problem.
if they could get the same farming subsidies that traditional farms get they would break even very quickly. if they do it without then they're doing very well.
It appears from this video like they've automated away many of the labor costs. The other two major reasons indoor farms struggle is location and equipment cost. Compton is in a high population area and I think they're at least somewhat vertically integrated (no pun intended) with regard to equipment.
@@menzlo Well, I've seen other automated vertical farms and high operational cost inputs such as electricity and chemical fertilizer prevented them from becoming economically feasible. So, what I want to know is what this company is doing that is drastically different in terms of efficiency gains that the other automated vertical farms haven't been able to do.
@@ICDeadPeepsNothing to do with efficiency and all to do with lacking subsidies. You think farmers aren't using fertilizer? Of course they get subsidized as a farmer, and these guys are treated like a tech company with billions in easy investment potential.
I work in IT everyday and all I have to say is wow the application is amazing ! Imagine the Egyptian with access to engineering like this groundbreaking what a time to be alive
Now this is a perfect partner for large Solar Farms. Supplies power while the sun shines and does not matter if the power takes a dip in the evening. Field crops don't get twenty four hour sunlight after all. So it does not matter that the power is intermittent. Though you'd have to have some base load power for the data systems. But that's small potatoes compared to the energy those grow lights must consume. Still, SMRs would be even better. Imagine a fifty Mw pocket nuclear plant centered on an area with dozens of these facilities. They are already working on such plants that can be factory built and fit in a large shipping container. Just imagine plants like this in the far north, where out of season greens are incredibly expensive. Right now they use diesel generators, but small nuclear would be clean and cheap in comparison. And six months of no sun with infrequent wind would make it the perfect power source.
Yah I don't like the marketing here, With "renewables" you can now add extra steps and cover fields with solar panels instead of plants, basically defeats the entire point of it. Places where renewables are cheap is also where its simpler to grow things the old fashioned way. The technology becomes interesting when you can pair it with compact & reliable power sources, like nuclear.
How can this kind of approach to food production address these shortcomings: 1) High energy consumption: just how much electricity does it take to make 1 head of lettuce for example, and how much power as a whole? If they were to strictly use renewables, is it even possible? 2) Local jobs: how many people from the community does the business hire? Since it’s all automated, it hardly needs workers. Do they support scholarships so locals can learn high levels skills like engineering? 3) Profit sharing: how much of the revenue benefits the locality? They probably pay taxes. But does the majority of the profits leave the area and into the hands of VCs who funded it?
The idea is brilliant. The nutrient density from bio external grown is questionable however if it reduces cost and can override unhealthy choices like non-bio, processed and fastfood it is a certainly a win. The plastic is bad in every angle. There is no plastic that does not releases chemicals into the food, it supports the petrochemical industrie, there is a waist cycle which does not work always very well and again costs more energy and chemical industry. If they can guarantee that it has not been sprayed for a long shelf life, as is now the case with all pre-packaged lettuce and is very bad for your microbiome, it has another plus point.
Great way to farm underground, in bunkers, on moon or mars... But we should combine that with hydrofarming and roach farming so u dont use any fertilizers or pesticides.
Most likely, those towers must be pumped up with CO2. Also, using renewable energy instead of the plain solar light will be a major contribution to saving the planet.
Is the price of the end product really sustainable for the average American family though? A 4.5 oz Plenty crispy lettuce is around $5.39 before tax in Southern California.
Look at vertical farms in places like Dubai where there is plenty of sunshine and solar would become a viable energy source to power AI/high tech vertical farms. They have some pretty impressive ones on the Tube. I'm very interested in doing this. I see this as a way to feed the world. Notice there are little to no field crops in these farms yet. If you could get corn, soy beans, rice and crops like that to grow in these places, that would be a game changer. You could grow your own energy - ethanol. There are new kinds of energy sources being developed now, that could change the economics of generating the power to run these farms on site. When that happens in an economical way, this kind of farming will change the world.
Yes! Eliminating all the costs of major transport. Plus, less or no chance of being exposed to toxins everywhere, beginning from seed to eventually the grocery store refrigerated shelfs.
The arc of history has been to innovate, so we can live better, with fewer hours devoted to mere survival, so we have more time for quality of life and have the time to think and create. Energy is the key and we are not that far off from massive increases in the use of hydrogen power sources, cleaner and safer nuclear, and the promising liquid fluoride thorium reactors. A new nuclear reactor recently went on line in Finland and for a short time the energy costs were less than zero per (I forget the unit they used). Cheap, reliable, abundant energy will change the world. Maybe we should focus more R&D on that.
Maybe they should be focusing on deploying AI and robots for all the types of mind-numbing assembly-line tasks they're suited for first instead of having them draw bad art and be wrong on the internet?
That will happen eventually, it started decades ago in the car industry. The robots doing all the labor here is the only reason it's at all viable. As a warning though, once all manufacturing jobs are gone and unemployment rates skyrocket, we're *GOING* to need a new economics system, OR we're going to need a Universal Basic Income in order to support the system from crashing. Having our world structured around a system requiring constant growth, in a world of finite resources, is a really dumb thing we've done for ourselves.
Mass production of vertical farms would allow mass production of freeze-dried food for a rainy day. Food depot filled with freeze-dried foods can be placed throughout the world just in case a catastrophic event occurs. Coupling vertical farms with renewable resources, we can even end food shortages throughout the world. Also, wouldn't it be nice if every country can mass produce vertical farming and provide free food for all of its citizens to eliminate one necessity we don't have to spend time procuring.
It's a good idea, but if you can't do this with grains like corn, wheat and rice, or starches like potatoes and carrots, you're not going to solve food insecurity.
There are some other vertical farm companies that grow other plants, such as strawberries and tomatoes, along with greens. There is a large one in Kentucky.
Farmer: I left the city after I lost my job to the robots. Now they are taking my farming job. What should I do next? Career advisor: join the revolution to overthrow the robot overlords.
If the earth gets hit by a massive meteor or if a super volcano goes off, and we end up with a nuclear winter where zero light is getting through to planet earth for a decade or two. Then this technology will save a few rich people.
This method isn't really the answer for climate change. Farming should not only about growing food but also about building holistic ecosystem and carbon sequestering into the soil.
It's best to use a multifaced approach. This method solves many problems (land use, water use, transportation, pesticides). Conventional farming methods actually release carbon in the tilling process. We should get them to adopt sustainable farming methods such as cover cropping , inter cropping, etc.
@@menzlo There is movement called regenerative farming and ranching which one of the components is no-tilling and let the soil, microbes, and fungi structured not disturbed. Organic is not enough, regenerative is better. At the small scale there is guy like Charles Dowding who popularized no-dig garden.
And most of the stuff tastes watery with very little flavour and aroma. Solution to save nature is to reconnect with nature. Manmade procedures like these have landed us in trouble in the first place.
could you provide some data as to the co2 emissions and energy and various other ressources consumption of this process compared to regular farming? We can't make our minds on this technology just based on vague "we cut the transport emissions" statements
They lost me at "controlling plant behaviour via light spectrum". This is synonymous to chicken farms simulating two sunrises and two sunsets in 24 hours to stimulate the chickens to lay twice as many eggs.
It all comes down to what they are feeding these plants. If we are still using oil based fertilizers, we are missing vitamins and minerals that soil brings to the party. Soil is a living thing that exchanges vitamins and minerals for sugars from the plant. The plants look fine, but they are lacking for what our bodies are use to. Everything our ancient bodies have evolved having. I am skeptical, but hopeful.
Not only the rich soil, but also the natural light, not mentioning other factors that make plants thrive in a natural environment. If it can work, maybe, but there’s no way this is an ideal solution. Why not permaculture instead?? Less sexy for a tech-oriented society, I guess.
Vertical farming can free up grounds for nature, agro-forestry and free range live-stock to return and provide a reliable food source while climate change is increasing the chances of failing harvests. To do this though it will need governmental support financially or via legislation because in good harvest years and with increasing vertical volumes it can't compete with produce from the soil. A governments basic functions are to safe-guard the food supply like fresh water, housing, protection and medical care.
please use "low carbon" instead of "renewables" in your videos. Greenhouse effect isn't due to non renewability, it is due to carbon dioxide. Excluding nuclear from the solution makes no sense and greatly harms the cause
Plenty was valued at a whopping $2.3B at one point. And flush with cash, most vertical farming companies didn't bother to spend it efficiently, either in capex or opex. They overbuilt expanded their presence or their CEA products too quickly, and all the while not minding their burn rate. Many assumed, and not without reason, that they could just get more money. In a recent Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the vertical farming space, a basic business question arises: do they have a sound business model but just structured poorly? Or is it a fundamentally bad business model to begin with?
we haven't quite "cracked the code" so to speak on other plants, for now it's only truly viable with leafy greens and a select couple others. We're REALLY close for potatoes, and I've heard some companies are starting to look into wheat, but being such a tall plant, and the growth cycle it has, it makes it a whole different beast from what I understand.
Hey let's grow lettuce and spinach with expensive artificial light and store in plastic containers rather than using sunlight and selling without containers... for the environment 😂😂😂
I’ll be honest, this innovation isn’t as impressive as people think. What matters most is finding a more ethical and sustainable way to produce meat like chicken and beef.
