Dutch PlantLab Revolutionizes Farming: No Sunlight, No Windows, Less Water, Better Food

Originally posted by stirling
reply to post by ArMaP

 

I think the cost of diesel fuel would surprise you when it comes to farming.
The heavey equioment is very expensive as well as requiring maintenance etc.
The small prive one would pay for electricity, even with the accessories running would not come close to ordinary farm costs and it would be far greener than farming .....less air pollution pesticides etc etc.

Small price for electricity?????? Do you have any idea how much electricity we're talking about. The sun provides a gigawatt of light to every square kilometer of farmland. That's a third of the total output of the world's largest nuke plant running at 100% capacity. That nuke plant takes up about 10 square kilometers of land. Even if you double the efficiency at the growing end of the chain you need five times more land to generate the power than area of farmland that you are replacing with a vertical farm. And that's not even counting the land surrounding the nuke plant that has to be taken out of agricultural use because of the radiation hazard and land that must be torn up to mine the nuclear fuel.

If you use solar power to generate the electricty, you still get less light from the LEDs than the light needed to generate the power. So you need several square kilometers of solar panels to power one square kilometer of artificial lighting. It's more efficient to farm the old fashioned way.

This whole concept is a MacGyverism. Even at its theoretical best, it is at least an order of magnitude short of practicality. It has no application except possibly in places that get little or no sunlight for extended periods (like Antarctica, the Moon or Pluto).

reply to post by speculativeoptimist


Oh yes! Of course! We are all convinced and believe it anytime, that artificially grown food, even without sunlight, is much much better then natural grown ones. You eat the articicially grown ones, I stick to the ones grown in soil and under sunlight, okay!?
Why do people always jump for joy, everytime some scientist weirdos mess with our food that has served us well for millions of years??

The Dutch have probably figured this technique out by secretly growing marihuana in their atiks....-

This screams SHTF food payed for none other then a government ready for it to happen. Kinda creepy really, i dont know how to explain it just seems preprepared ya know.

reply to post by Daygone23

Let them eat it who are so happy about its existence. Maybe then, we'll need less fuoride in tap water...-

reply to post by speculativeoptimist


Right on the money dude. You can see how small the plants in the trial are too. Less support structure, quicker to produce fruit and veg, less time, less money, less power per plant, less maintenance etc.

This is a wealth of information on the topic with much more detailed explainations for any who are seriously interested. LED vs traditional sources etc. solaroenergy.com...


reply to post by Phractal Phil


You cannot use the sun to compare with leds. Read my earlier post on this topic for a brief outlay on it. Basically sunlight is broadband spectrum and a large majority is reflected by plants and not required for photosynthesis. If we needed 1kw/m2 of light to grow plants then glasshouses would have dead and wilted plants if they even grew... A more realistic middle of the road number would be around 80w/m2 led (with approx 30-40% efficiency..) with superior photosynthesis to any other technology, sun included. This would be for leafy plants. Led spectrum can be adjusted for periods requiring more light (fruit production etc) which is another advantage.

So take 80w/m2 in a huge multilevel 5000m2 farm, take 20% off that figure for accessways (4000m2), you're left needing 320kw of power. The production rate would be vastly superior to anything - zero pesticides, pests and almost no stress for the crop, hardly any water, no ridiculous temperatures or ventilation. 4km2 of crop for 320kw is not shabby at all.

And Monsanto buys them and destroys the technology in 3...2...1...

Wow, am I really that cynical?

Yeah, actually, I am.



Sadly.

reply to post by speculativeoptimist


Brilliant! Wonderful Post thankyou for sharing this with everyone!

reply to post by speculativeoptimist


Excellent post, i have been reading up on this recently, it is quite amazing.

Good too see something good and natural happening in food production instead of all the crap they put into everything, this could possibly be the answer for certain types of food production, certainly a more healthier type of food, salad here we come, now just to get rid of all the gmo's out of the food chain.

Also think of how many empty buildings there are lying around doing nothing, perhaps it could stimulate the economy in a few years lol.

Did you all go nuts??
Food is not about money! Its about health!
But nowadays its abvious that people say:

""Right on the money, Dude! You can see how small the plants in the trial are too. Less support structure, quicker to produce fruit and veg, less time, less money, less power per plant, less maintenance etc. "" Yea, and with less nutritonal value. Monsanto will not buy the patent and destroy it, they will by the patent and feed the crap to us! How can you believe that there is a technological way to grow food thats better then the natural way??? You are Americans, right? Well, take a look at you, over weight, fat asses, big as trucks... The way you look today, is the result of your belief, the money value of food is more important then its nutritional value.

Originally posted by CarlitosAmsel
Did you all go nuts??
Food is not about money! Its about health!
But nowadays its abvious that people say:

""Right on the money, Dude! You can see how small the plants in the trial are too. Less support structure, quicker to produce fruit and veg, less time, less money, less power per plant, less maintenance etc. "" Yea, and with less nutritonal value. Monsanto will not buy the patent and destroy it, they will by the patent and feed the crap to us! How can you believe that there is a technological way to grow food thats better then the natural way??? You are Americans, right? Well, take a look at you, over weight, fat asses, big as trucks,,. The way you look today, is the result of crappy beliefs like this.

edit on 15-8-2011 by CarlitosAmsel because: (no reason given)

This cannot be patented. A large variety of companies produce LED chips and an even larger array produce lights using these chips. Nutritional value is just the same if the right nutrients are used, the reason it is about money is because LED technology has only just broken the 'prohibitively expensive' barrier. Money is all the beancounters care about when pushing this technology. The point is that LEDs do the same job as sunlight and better, producing food faster. People who have eaten LED food say it is delicious and outgrows anything else they have seen!

If you give your food love and care it matters not wether you use LEDs or sunlight, or anything else for that matter.

reply to post by GhostR1der



Well, as I understand it, this article is less about the LEDs and more about the plants you can grow with them.
And it is just not true that the nutritional value of food crops depend on the nutrition you give them. I live a stones trow away from the dutch border and I can tell you that the Vegetables coming from Holland taste like water and cells and no more, but I asure you, they have been grown with the proper nutrition. Same in spain. Take a red pepper from spain and let it out of the fridge, it will turn to red water within 24 hours...- There is more to food crops then light, water and crumbs of molecules.

We are talking about artificial mass production here, and when you talk about giving love, you dont know what you are talking about...- How do you square "giving love" with artificial mass production of food crops???

Originally posted by GhostR1der
With tomatos at $15/kg here, it's worth investing in LEDs for winter.

I don't know how that translates into Euros, but I can buy (on a large supermarket) tomatoes as low as 0.58 Euros/kg, so I guess we don't need these methods here in Portugal.

Originally posted by CarlitosAmsel
How can you believe that there is a technological way to grow food thats better then the natural way??? You are Americans, right? Well, take a look at you, over weight, fat asses, big as trucks... The way you look today, is the result of your belief, the money value of food is more important then its nutritional value.

edit on 15-8-2011 by CarlitosAmsel because: (no reason given)

The natural way... which way is that exactly? Farming is not natural. Natural is just gathering up whatever you can find, wherever it grows. Once man began farming, it ceased to be the "natural way"

Lets look at the following scenarios:

Scenario "A"

There is a plant growing in a field, the plant sprouted without any intervention from humans. By all accounts, this is a totally "natural" growing plant. Now, this particular plant is growing in soil that lacks nutrients, has a PH that is way off, gets exposed to too much wind, it's a little bit too hot for this particular plant, and the air is a little bit too dry. The plant also doesn't get enough sun.

Scenario "B"

After studying this particular plant, someone found the ideal environment for this plant to grow. So, it was grown in a grow warehouse, using LED lights. The soil is VERY rich in nutrients. The PH and moisture level of the soil is PERFECT for this particular plant. The light cycle is PERFECT, the temperature is PERFECT, the humidity is PERFECT.

So for whatever reason you would be under the impression the plant in scenario "A" would be better? How? Care to explain why a plant grown in LESS THAN IDEAL conditions is going to be better than a plant grown in IDEAL conditions, just because it happened to sprout without a human being involved in it? That sounds borderline NUTTY in my opinion.

Although, I shouldn't be surprised by your lack of critical thinking skills, judging by the fact you can't contribute to a thread about GROWING TECHNIQUES without insulting Americans. I mean honestly, where did that even come from? How off-topic and abusive can you really get? Grow up.

Originally posted by CarlitosAmsel
You eat the articicially grown ones, I stick to the ones grown in soil and under sunlight, okay!?
Why do people always jump for joy, everytime some scientist weirdos mess with our food that has served us well for millions of years??

OK, I will, if they are available.

Can you tell my how your sunlight grown veggies are better than ones grown with LEDs, HPS, or Metal Halide lamps? Do you have any science to back this up, or just some nonsense you made up one day?

LIGHT IS LIGHT, do you fail to understand this simple concept? Plants only use a certain spectrum of light. If you reproduce that, it doesn't matter if it comes from the sun, or a light bulb.

What makes these people weirdos? Because they are trying to solve a problem of not having enough arable land to feed the additional billions of people we will be sharing this planet with in the future? What exactly are they doing that's screwing with the food? They have figured out the environment that different plants grow BEST in, and then they reproduce that environment. These people are NOT Monsanto. They are not genetically engineering crops. They are simply providing the best environment for each specific crop to grow in. Did you even research this at all? It doesn't seem like it.

Plants need the proper nutrients, atmosphere, water, and light to grow. If you give that to them, they will grow strong and healthy. It doesn't matter if it's on a field or in a warehouse, the only difference is the way some ignorant people will respond to it.

Originally posted by stirling
I think the cost of diesel fuel would surprise you when it comes to farming.

That's part of the problem, the price of diesel fuel changes a lot from country to country, as does the price of electricity.

But I do not know a thing about farming, so I do not know if the prices are comparable or not for a specific area.

Originally posted by snarfbot
and the plants turn a fraction of the light from the leds into food, and the rest is absorbed and retransmitted as good old waste heat.

so when you get right down to it, farming is the most efficient means of harnessing solar energy, storing it as food. thats why theres so much research being invested into renewable fuels lately, its also just another way of collecting solar energy, converting it into a form that we can store and use easily, biofuels ethanol etc.

No, that's the point. With LEDs, there is almost no wasted energy being released as heat. They only produce the wavelength of light that the plants need. They don't produce a bunch of waste light.

Farming may be more efficient than indoor grows, but that is not the point. I don't know if people are being willfully ignorant or what. You can't farm everywhere on the planet, and you can't farm everything anywhere on the planet. Hence indoor growing.

Even if you could grow everything, anywhere on the planet, in the future as the population increases we are going to start to run out of land. Unless of course you want every square inch of the planet covered in farms and apartment complexes.

If you are in the middle of a huge desert, or in the middle of a frozen wasteland, what are you going to do? You are going to have an indoor garden. And when it comes to indoor gardens, these people from the OP's article seem to have the best one around. They tailor the environment to each specific crop, and use automation and computer control to make sure everything is as close to perfect as you can get.

They use less water than traditional indoor growing, MUCH MUCH less water than normal outdoor farming. You can grow absolutely anything. You are not limited by your available light, by your temperature, or anything in your environment. YOU make the environment for whatever you want to grow, and you get impressive yields of safe, nutritious food.

I swear some people can turn anything into a big negative.

Originally posted by CarlitosAmsel
There is more to food crops then light, water and crumbs of molecules.

Like what? If you are going to try and school everyone here about how growing indoors is evil, then back it up. What's missing? What's bad about this? How and why does this not stack up to food grown outdoors with the sun as it's light source?

There's something that I think is missing in all this.

This idea of "vertical farming" is presented almost as a production line, with a large building able to support the needs of thousands of people, but how much do people really eat?

How many kilos of vegetables and fruit does a small town consume during a year? What's the area needed to fulfil there vegetable needs?

Does anyone have any data about this?

(I know I can search it, but asking is faster, and if anyone has any real knowledge about it I would trust that more than Google. )

Originally posted by CarlitosAmsel
reply to post by GhostR1der

 

Well, as I understand it, this article is less about the LEDs and more about the plants you can grow with them.
And it is just not true that the nutritional value of food crops depend on the nutrition you give them. I live a stones trow away from the dutch border and I can tell you that the Vegetables coming from Holland taste like water and cells and no more, but I asure you, they have been grown with the proper nutrition. Same in spain. Take a red pepper from spain and let it out of the fridge, it will turn to red water within 24 hours...- There is more to food crops then light, water and crumbs of molecules.

We are talking about artificial mass production here, and when you talk about giving love, you dont know what you are talking about...- How do you square "giving love" with artificial mass production of food crops???

Farmers and cooks that don't give a crap becomes evident in the food. By giving love I include actually caring for the plants and not just treating them like battery hens.

The veges you are buying could possibly be grown using no soil medium, which usually results in a pretty bland vegetable, they'll have the minimum nutrients required for maximum growth - beancounters at work. Soil based crops will usually taste better. Sunlight mass production and LED is practically the same process other than the lack of pesticides and stress using LEDs. Or it could be a monsantoesque volume ($) over ripening time style arrangement. We sometimes get the same stuff here, watery crap. Usually off season. Could be stored produce?

That being said, I have had mint basil growing in soil, indoors, on a small trial LED setup and it tastes fantastic! Thriving too. Tomatoes will be planted soon, I may end up doing a thread on the results and in summer I could compare to sunlight if enough people are interested... see how we go.

Originally posted by ArMaP

Originally posted by GhostR1der
With tomatos at $15/kg here, it's worth investing in LEDs for winter.

I don't know how that translates into Euros, but I can buy (on a large supermarket) tomatoes as low as 0.58 Euros/kg, so I guess we don't need these methods here in Portugal.

You have it lucky! Italy pumps tomatoes out like no tomorrow, plus they don't have to be flown to other side of the world .
In New Zealand we'll pay approx $5-8EUD/kg off season. Ouch. Considering that many meals we make use tomatoes, having my own crop is going to pay for itself within two months of winter, under leds.

reply to post by James1982


Well, in case you forgot, I can tell you, what the natural way is. Tomatoes with their roots in fertile ground and their leaves in the sunlight, like in my garden behind the house, that gives enough tomatoes for myself and my neighbours, for no money at all. But oh, they dont grow in the wintermonths? What do you need tomatos in the winter months for? Thats why you need LEDs and artificial food.

Growing in soil under sunlight seems quite natural to me. And such plants even get love and daily attention. Every American city has its back yards, its balconies, its suburbs with yards, one of which could provide half the street with vegies. Organize your neighbours to grow own food in soil and sunlight and nobody needs LEDs and artificial tomatoes, for that is what they are...

Originally posted by GhostR1der
You have it lucky! Italy pumps tomatoes out like no tomorrow, plus they don't have to be flown to other side of the world

.

Portugal also has a large production of tomatoes, too bad I don't like tomatoes.