I wonder how much more energy it uses, and what the efficiency of land is versus a fruit wall model.

This is pure vibes and I am begging to be corrected, but these vertical farms seem like a techbro grift. They look like they’re super high maintenance and resource intensive and hard to scale. Like how much energy does all that artifical lighting use, the watering solution, the pollination solution. Claims like this just makes my grift-o-meter beep: “pollination of plants has also been engineered to be more efficient than bees.”. And 0 explanation how, why or in what way, it’s just “more efficient than bees” .

“Vertical farms grow crops indoors in stacked layers and provide consistent yield and crop quality but they use a tremendous amount of costly energy for light and air flow,” said Paul Gauthier, Professor of Protected Cropping at the University of Queensland, Australia. “If we create a more dynamic environment that turns lights and sensors on and off during the day in line with the cycles of photosynthesis rather than leaving them on all the time, we could tap into cheaper energy at off peak times and still maximize the advantages of vertical farming.

Why does it need so much artifical stuff are we really that desperate for arable land? If we are I’ve got a way cooler solution and it’s the comms name. And if we aren’t, there are enough other reasons.

“If we are to increase food production by as much as 70% by 2050, we need to look at things differently.

Huh? Why do we need to do that? Just seems like Futurology to me…