Boondoggles. Economy of scale nor use of excess space can't surmount physics.

You know I grow in the house under lights. Well I just had a 20% raise in my electric bill. Try that in a mega plex urban farm. Hydro greenhouse lettuce is not new. But like pnbrown's post, heat and light Wow! and those buildings will not be empty/cheap forever. That said a hydroponic greenhouse on a roof should be ideal. and a cluster of them in an urban area should be labor efficient. Led's I think not, we have a growing under lights forum and I see none of the regulars justify them at this time

Curt

The only crop with good economics in this system is marijuana.

The planning community has pretty much discussed this and moved on. There are a few dreamers but not many. The EROEI is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off, and the assumptions used to make this work are dependent upon cheap energy continuing. Cheap energy is going away, which will make the EROEI worse.

One day in the not too distant future, stories about skyscrapers being the next farms will die a much-deserved death. Not soon enough, but soon.

Dan

It matters if the produce grown in urban greenhouses can be sold as "Certified USDA Organic," or not. I was not aware that hydroponic gardening methods are compatible with the organic regulations.

Whoa. I'm on the other side of the fence. I have run the numbers, calculated the costs, figured the systems. This idea is completely and totally sustainable. One has to think a bit outside the box though.

For instance - plants do not have a clock that differentiates AM from PM. So turn the lights on at night, when the temps are the coldest and let them provide much of the heat needed, especially if the walls are well insulated. Grow in sections, with each section blocked off with Mylar. Run 2/3 of the lights at night, the other 1/3 during the day. Raise three crops per year, if one is growing toms.

Take a space that is 5 feet wide and 100 feet long. It will take 25 400-watt MH lights to cover it in winter. (In summer, spring and fall, one can use Solar Tubes to provide light.) That area is large enough to grow 200 tomato plants per period. That's 600 plants per year. At 20 pounds of fruit per plant (not easy, not impossible), that's 12,000 pounds of toms. Running the lights for 14 hours a day, 120 days, will cost ~$2,000, the lights cost ~$4,000.

It's not only doable but will be realistic, especially in climates where the sun doesn't hide for weeks at a time.

JMHO,

Mike

Fruitnut- It's been happening in No CA for 30 years! LOLOL

jgp LEDs are not the way to go for veggies at this time. They have come a long way but not far enough IMO. HO fluorescents and HIDs are the only type of lights I would use.
curt_grow I think you'll be surprised at the breaks given to facilities like these from utility companies.
ericwi Personally I don't think there's a large enough market for organically grown veggies and if the economy doesn't recover I don't think people are going to care as long as they have food to eat.

Word, have you grown plants with only solar tubes as a light source? The loss of solar incidence is large.

There is simply no way to beat the efficiency of growing in a field at the correct time of year. There is no way to beat the inadequacy of low sun angle in late fall, winter, and early spring. The solution to the winter problem is for people to eat storage crops. It is what those crops were invented for, doncha think?

Sounds like nuts to me. But that's because I hear so much about how we're running out of fossil fuels and need to switch to solar. Plants ARE solar powered already, and now we want to switch them to being fossil-fuel powered?

"Finding empty space won't be a problem. America is littered with thousands of abandoned big box stores, a trend fueled by the sputtering economy."

My town has some of those! A very convenient, centrally-located shopping center that used to have a Target, JC Penny, and Best Buy is all shut down. And then the opened up new locations of all those stores several miles down the highway farther away from where everybody lives. What's up with that?

But I think the best way to turn that land into food production would be with wrecking balls and bulldozers and jackhammers, not LED lights inside the stores. Besides, just look at all the parking lot space that would be wasted if you were growing everything indoors! The parking lot takes up more area than the stores.

But I guess I'm just old-fashioned.

They are going to eliminate fertilizer costs? How do you grow hydroponically without fertilizer?

We've got enough wind here to run those grow lights with wind generators. However, wind generators are outrageously expensive. You'd have to sell a lot of lettuce to pay for them.

I see that they are getting about $15 a pound for lettuce. Prices like that would help pay for it, but not many people can pay that sort of money for lettuce. For $15 a pound, I'd have to do without.

neo,

OH State is looking into the use of parking lots, such as the type you describe:

WOOSTER, Ohio - An old asphalt parking lot might not seem like a good place for a garden.

But in urban areas it can be. It tends to be cheap open land. And an Ohio State University expert on intensive small-scale horticulture has started a three-year study on what works best there.

Joe Kovach, who specializes in maximizing fruit and vegetable production in limited spaces, is comparing three ways to do it in empty, abandoned parking lots: in giant-sized pots and in raised beds on top of the blacktop, and in trenches cut right through it.

"There are a lot of vacant parking lots in places like Cleveland and Youngstown," said Kovach, who works at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC) in Wooster and holds a joint appointment with Ohio State University Extension. "We're hoping to learn if the trenches work, if the pots are worth it and of all three techniques, which is the best?"

His work could boost the use of abandoned urban land. It could help people who live in urban food deserts � areas having little or no access to affordable, nutritious foods � grow more of their own tomatoes, spinach and other fresh produce. And it could help them do it more easily.

Turning blacktop green isn't new. It's part of the growing wave of urban farming. But Kovach wants to see if there's a better way to do it.

Commonly, parking-lot gardeners use raised beds. The bottomless wood or plastic boxes - typically something like 4 feet wide, 8 feet long and 10 inches deep - rest on a layer of wood chips. The wood chips cover the asphalt. The beds hold the soil mix and plants.

Some growers tear out the asphalt instead. They "depave" the entire parking lot. It�s doable but hard work. (There's even a group dedicated to it: http://www.depave.org/.) Then they plant in the ground.

Kovach wants to see if depaving only the trenches is a simpler but still-productive option; if waist-high pots are easier to tend than ankle- or knee-high raised beds; and what sort of freezing, drying or overheating problems might come up in any of the systems. Asphalt holds in heat, after all, which may be a boon in March but a bane in August. He'll look at yields, pests and high tunnels (unheated, plastic-covered greenhouses) as well.

"I don�t think anyone else is doing this bonkers research, quite frankly," he said with a laugh on a late fall day at his test site. "(Starting it) seemed like a good idea at the time."

Dorm Closes, Idea Grows

Kovach recently completed a six-year study of fruit and vegetable polyculture: "ecologically designed" mixed-crop plots that maximize biological diversity, minimize pest problems and earn the equivalent of nearly $100,000 an acre a year. Dozens of big, healthy apple trees, peach trees, raspberry plants and blueberry bushes were grown for it. And then they weren't needed anymore. But Kovach just didn't want to trash them.

He had an idea.

He'd use some of them to establish a polyculture demonstration site. In the past few years, he's been hard-pressed keeping up with people�s interest in the project. A place for tours would help.

He'd put it in a busy location - on U.S. 250 just south of Wooster - on the lawn of an obsolete, recently closed dormitory at the Agricultural Technical Institute (ATI). ATI, too, is a part of Ohio State. It's next to OARDC.

And he�d start a new study in the dorm's adjacent parking lot. There he'd put the rest of his plants and the parking lot, too, to new use.

"We're trying to come up with different ways to use asphalt like this," Kovach said as he walked the site on a cold, gray day in November. "Instead of saying, �It's wasted land, let's rip it all up, we're saying, Let's figure a way we can use it."

He started the project in October. The trenches were cut (done in a day with a rented pavement cutter). The pots were bought (black, plastic and the size of a small hot tub). The soil-mix materials were gathered. Then the fruit trees and plants were transplanted. Further, final planting of other crops will take place this coming spring. An irrigation system and six high tunnels will go in then, too.

Pots vs. Beds vs. Trenches

The study features three replicated plantings under each of the three systems.

The first system will grow apples, peaches, blueberries and blackberries in the giant pots; deep-rooted vegetables, such as tomatoes, in normal-sized buckets with drain holes; and shallow-rooted crops, such as green beans and strawberries, in wide gutters hung on cattle panels (stiff, welded-wire fencing). This is the system that's highest off the ground and so may be easiest to care for: less stooping. Will all the containers be worth it?

In the second system, all the fruits and vegetables, including the fruit trees, will grow in 3-by-30-foot trenches cut out of the asphalt. A low raised bed will surround each trench. The bed will raise the trench�s sides; make it deeper to plant in; and also make it easier to reach, at least compared to planting in the ground. Is taking out only part of a parking lot, instead of all of it, a viable option?

The third system will grow all the crops in tall raised beds - about 30 inches high, or up past your knees - set on, not into, the asphalt. They'll be higher than the trench beds but lower than the pots. The bottom 15 inches in each bed will be wood chips for drainage and height.

The polyculture demonstration site, meanwhile, located on the grassy lawn, will serve a second purpose: as a study control for the systems on the asphalt.

All three systems will use the same soil mix: wood chips, compost, sand and topsoil in a 4:2:1:1 ratio, respectively.

Parts of all three systems, too, will grow beneath the high tunnels. Will the asphalt capture and retain enough heat to make a difference inside them? Can this be used to advantage in spring?

The site in December is covered by snow but is fresh in Kovach's mind.

"For now I'm getting a bad feeling about the survival of the (transplanted) trees and bushes in this treatment (the tall beds), and I don't know if it's because of the normal panic when starting a big project or something more. Hopefully, I'll have clarity by March," he said.

"There are still a lot of issues to be addressed. But if this research is successful, land that was paved and considered unusable for food can become productive again."

Mike

To clear up a few thoughts I have. I think TerraSphere of Canada is valid, I see them with a good lettuce system under florescent lighting . The rest of the story has the smell of hype. That said the more that can be grown in city's the better. BTW I would like one dollar per once for my indoor under lights organic Buttercrunch. Any takers ;)

Curt

Organwood you can reduce or eliminate fertilizer costs, using an Aquaponics setup. Aquaponics setup in a large urban warehouse, is economical and sustainable if done right. Also to add in to LEDs the technology is there for them to go prime time, the price just needs to drop a little more.

pn,

I haven't used Solar Tubes yet but if they added any beneficial light, that would be a plus.

If I may - you are seeing the trees but missing the forest. Think of the millions of dollars restaurants and stores in a metro area of a million people spend on produce from late fall to early summer. True, nothing will replace sunlight but think of a 50,000 sq. ft. building. One could literally grow 15, 25, 45 acres of veggies in that space. Total climate control so the plants will likely do much better. Plus growing them hydroponically, instead of 8,000 plants per acre, one could plant twice that.

I really believe this will be the green industry of the future!

Mike

And now time for the 180 degree turn. How about hydroponics in the open ocean. all the sun you need no land tax. Available water for desalting plant on hand, nutrients on hand, shipping available. The farm could be mobile to follow the seasons. Pest control should be minimal. Not many corn bores in the south Pacific. What say you?

Curt

Really, has anyone trotted out an EROEI calculation in these articles? Why not? The reason is that we need many more efficiency gains to make it pay.

Now, I admit that the MMJ industry in my fair town is keeping the warehouses open, but as CurtGrow says, no one is paying for buttercrunch (not even mine that are getting cold right now).

By all means, start. Work out the bugs (so to speak) and wait for more efficiencies [LEDs with proper spectrum for plants??].

Dan

This kind of thing works on high-end products like lettuce/salad-greens, fresh herbs, and in some places...tomatoes.

Outside of that you're hard pressed to make it work in an urban area unless someone starts donating land/buildings and/or subsidizing electricity.

Even if subsidy exists it'd still be hard to get a manager of such an operation to produce anything, but the high-value crops.

Dan,

What about developing plants that will work under lower-light conditions. Dr. Baggett of OSU has developed several varieties suited for the Pacific Northwest where temps and sunlight are from from ideal. Varieties are also adapted to grow in Florida and other very hot areas.

If I didn't think I could make money growing tomatoes indoors in Cincinnati in winter, I would not be spending my time, talent and treasury doing it.

Happy New Year!

Mike

Like I said, the MMJ industry is keeping lots of warehouses afloat - the dollar/sf is very high. Low-light cool seasons, not so much. Tomatoes are relatively high dollar/sf but doable today only because of economically cheap and subsidized fossil energy. That will not last forever and efficiency gains are needed. A good dose of systems thinking and basic physics is needed by the reporters who copy down what the couple of people who push this idea tell them. Maybe a talk with some utility providers to explain to them exactly how much energy it would take for artificial lighting and envelope conditioning.

AS I stated upthread, the planning profession has been over this already, as the topic comes up about once a year. Dickson Despommier is the main name behind the recurring stories.

Dan

Happy new year to all!

Dan,

>> Maybe a talk with some utility providers to explain to them exactly how much energy it would take for artificial lighting and envelope conditioning. As compared to the ones who manufacture and transport tractors, plows, soil conditioners; the diesel fuel providers for the tractors and harvesters; the people who need to build and outfit tractor/trailers or RR boxcars to deliver the produce hundreds or thousands of miles to a local market? If, and a big IF, I can grow toms as good as the people at Eurofresh or the farms in California, deliver them to my local produce store at $1/lb. less than it is paying now, and still make money, who is losing and what are they losing?

I guess one can look at it in the very long term but to what reward? That 5, 10, 20 years from now the costs of energy will be much higher so we should not focus on delivering produce to market now at a lower cost because it may not be sustainable in the future?

I'm doing my hydro tomato grow, using 2 600-watt MH bulbs in the basement instead of upstairs, even though the latter would have been easier. Why, because heat rises and that one or two degrees of heat provided to my living room will save a few BTUs on my heating bill.

No different from using my freezer to make ice so I can blanch beans, carrots and corn. Yeah, I still have to use natural gas to boil the water to stick the produce in.

Maybe someone, sometime, will come along with a way to make an omelet without breaking an egg but until them, I'll play within the defined boundaries and continue to look for a better way!

Mike

Recent large studies have shown that current food has ~18% of its costs in transport (albeit with heavily subsidized fossil fuel and other ag subsidies). So replace transport with artificial sunlight and suddenly the cost of food has shot up.

And of course I have already stated several times that we need efficiency gains for vertical farming to work, not that it will never work.

Thanks!

Dan

I think that the "empty big box store" part of idea is terrible for a number of reasons.

One would be infrastructure problems in old or even newer dissimilar buildings. A fast-food restuarant or even a large retail store doesn't buy and raze the lot next door to put up a newer building just because they need more space - there are functional flaws in the older building design even though it was purpose built for that business at one time. It would be prohibitively expensive to repurpose these buildings (or it would have been done $$$.)
Another reason would be zoning laws and concerns. For example - if I owned a furniture retail store next to a large grocery store that shut down I doubt that I would be much more upset over a livestock auction moving in next door than over a lettuce factory because I would want the traffic from a compatible business or barring that traffic at all.

It would have been great if the article was about q business succeding because of their beliefs against long odds because local consumers wanted their product (this can be done). What I read the article as was that a government supported group in Vancouver *CANADA* (because IMO the writer wants to confuse Vancouver BC with Vancouver WA) has a "system" that they think has potential and then all of a sudden the article shifted with no transition to the *US* where it appears that not a leaf of lettuce has been grown. The phrases "might yield", "should finish" and "plans to grow" should send "investors" running,

Well meaning people and government at different levels can do a lot of damage to progress by favoring one idea (or person) over another. Many should step aside and let things take their course. There seems to have been quite a bit of *REAL* success in CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and farmer's markets recently.

cheapheap you're a heap! The building really doesn't matter as long as the temps can be held and the lights can be hung... and of course has water (gas preferably for heat) and electricity. Zoning only matters if it's not commercial. JMO

Produce grown this way may still hold the appeal of organics in terms of taste and nutrition, but are these people taking into account that many consumers buy local because it's better for the environment? How is massive energy usage instead of free sunlight better for the environment than locally grown crops produced on a traditional farm? Consumers buying for environmental reasons aren't going to pay a premium for crops produced this way.

And handling greenhouses remotely through iPhone applications?? Has this guy ever actually GROWN anything? Even with the best controls, nature has a way of throwing wrenches into things, whether it's insect infestations or disease--how is he going to control for that?

This whole idea sounds suspiciously like Food, Inc... using government subsidies to prop up inefficient food production methods... just trading the fossil fuel to ship crops for the fossil fuel to light them, AND charging higher prices to the consumer because it's "local".

On the other hand, building a greenhouse on top of an urban rooftop might be brilliant--if it's well-insulated from chilling winds, and captures heat loss from the floors below to keep it warm during winter. It actually sounds like an interesting non-profit project for urban low-income housing units...