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Comment by novembermike | Hacker News Reader

This ignores nuclear power. It also ignores the fact that you can put solar panels in places that you can't put farms such as the desert.

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You can put farms in the desert. Some of the most productive farmland is in deserts. Arizona and California are both noted for producing large quantities of high-quality cotton.

Incredible amount of lettuce is grown in Arizona as well!

and those productive farms also use copious amounts of water that isn't available otherwise. (IE: piped in from rivers far away causing no shortage of ancillary problems: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/magazine/the-water-wars-o... )

It comes with its own set of problems, but deserts are not dealbreakers for agriculture as the GP suggests.

Which also brings up a question if indoor farms recycle their water? At the very least, I might expect the transpiration rate to be lower, lowering water use.

nuclear, geothermal, loads of other power sources yeah.

I think vertical farming is fairly ridiculous in practice, but this article is fighting against a very obvious strawman.

The idea of growing something from grow lights powered by only nuclear power is intriguing to me as it is food that never got its energy from our sun. Instead, that power came from cast of atoms from merging neutron stars billions of years ago.

exactly... you can have a farm in the middle of the city and a solar farm in the middle of the desert...

We also have problems with environmentalists who oppose solar in the desert here in California. I don’t think they have been successful judging by the amount of solar installations I’ve seen here.

Is this a substantial number of environmentalists? I've never encountered the sentiment.

You can also have an airport in the middle of a city and an apartment complex in the middle of the desert - there's nothing that stops them technologically. The problem is that they don't make economical sense.

Vertical farm in a city fits in economical sense, as their market is there, while farmers have to haul their product to consumers.

I wonder does it actually do make economic sense? Like will the net from selling produce be larger than just renting the same floorspace for some other use? Be it residential, office, shops or manufacturing...

There are many empty spaces created because of factories moved to China or because people are ordering from amazon(and supermarkets have closed down) and even in covid times people need to eat, while rest of the business in city has been shut down.

It does not make much sense to grow wheat, but it makes sense to grow spices or other products that are transported from afar and which can be grown local indoors instead. Also, those vertical(and indoor) farms use LEDs, that consume much less energy - not to mention, that plants do not need that much light, than what is needed for humans to feel comfortable.

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