Japanese Farmer Builds High-Tech Indoor Veggie Factory | Hacker News Reader

Japanese Farmer Builds High-Tech Indoor Veggie Factory

gereports.com

81 pointsmundizzle42 comments

Is this, or could, LED gardens be more efficient per sqft than leaving crops directly in the sunlight? Since a lot of spectrum is unused for photosythesis [1][2], the conversion of {full spectrum -> electricity -> required spectrum} seems potentially more efficient.

Another interesting idea would be to create solar panels that only convert the lost spectrum into {electricty -> required spectrum} [3]

[1] http://bernardkatz.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/spectrum-o... [2] http://www2.estrellamountain.edu/faculty/farabee/biobk/pigme... [3] http://mitei.mit.edu/news/transparent-solar-cells

I wonder if they can use this tech in the space station or maybe a mission to Mars? Doesn't seem to need much water and we can probably use solar power to power the lights?

Another lettuce farm. Does anyone have a part number for the LED growing lamps that GE makes, do they have a 'standard' version available? There wasn't anything relevant on their products page at gelighting.com (http://www.gelighting.com/LightingWeb/na/solutions/led-lamps...)

Hand wavy arguments as to why this is a bad idea are ... well, just hand wavy.

Solar is ~20% efficient LED's are less than ~40% efficient so you would need more land area for solar farms than you save by growing indoors. On top of that you need to pay for all your capital costs. There are other issues, but if this was close to cost effective you would be seeing this in Iceland which gets little sunlight in the winter and has cheap energy costs. Instead they use suplimental lighting inside green houses to boost production.

I thought the vertical stacking makes more efficient use of the light than the single layer you find in a farm or green house. It means that even though the light is produced inefficiently the vertical stacking is intended to cancel out that inefficiency by using the light more efficiently. Moreover, the optimization of the plant's exposure to light through automated means adds to increased efficiency in the plant's use of the light.

If every grower did this, it would (or could) destroy Monsanto's business model. I love it.

well normally farms cannot grow up, skyscraper style. Also, situating the building properly should allow for some of it to also be used for power generation. Then lets go further, make it tall enough that the warm air rising from the bottom could be used to generate power.

right, that's the point of stacking and other structure-wise efficiency enhancement... I didn't go as far as the warm air rising =)

see this other structural pattern for maximizing use of available light (be it LED light or sun light)

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405297020355030...

The LED grow lights seem to be a real game-changer; the most modest estimates put the power savings at ~%50 (over HPS).

However in the article's example there is only negative power savings as the plants used to get fed for free from the sun, now they're consuming electricity from the grid.

Now that might be recoverable via reductions in waste and lower water consumption (see article) but it isn't automatically a net win, it might be a net loss overall. Need data.

Right; the savings (over conventional growing, not indoor w/HPS) would have to come from increasing yield due to the controlled environment.

'The LED lights are a key part of the farm’s magic. They allow Shimamura to control the night-and-day cycle and accelerate growth. “What we need to do is not just setting up more days and nights,” he says. “We want to achieve the best combination of photosynthesis during the day and breathing at night by controlling the lighting and the environment.”'

Also: 'He is also able to cut discarded produce from 50 percent to just 10 percent of the harvest, compared to a conventional farm. As a result, the farms productivity per square foot is up 100-fold, he says.

By controlling temperature, humidity and irrigation, the farm can also cut its water usage to just 1 percent of the amount needed by outdoor fields.'

These are serious productivity gains, but, as you say, they have to be balanced against electricity use.

Additional productivity gains might be made by operating the "indoor farm" within dense urban areas and thus closer to the consumer, thereby removing transportation costs associated with a typical farm.

Those are overblown. Modern mega-scale logistics are stunningly efficient. Food shipped by freight-ship and truck are supposedly more efficient with less polution than a local farmer driving hir* produce to market in a car.

* I hate that term. So clumsy-sounding.

how about "their", no need to bring gender into it.

He/She = They

His/Hers = Their.

Him/Her = Them.

Sure, anything at industrial scale is going to me more efficient than a mom and pop operation. But with a system like this you've got scale and proximity. Instead of having a network of trucks delivering lettuce from California thousands of miles cross country, you can have a small fleet of trucks delivering lettuce within a 2 hour radius. Less spoilage, far less gas, and far less planning and logistics.

This could be huge in cities with abandoned/run down industrial districts that have been hard hit by globalization.

The water consumption savings certainly could outweigh all other factors. Extended droughts, climate movements, and off-world colonization all would benefit.

A more immediate opportunity would be placing production close to the area of consumption. The developing and developed world will fail to address their problems with diabetes and obesity induced diseases as long as the population has limited access to fresh produce. Being rich in NYC or SF it is easy to take fresh produce for granted, in some major urban areas even if you are rich fresh produce is virtually non-existent.

Agreed. More data is needed to see clearly if on a larger scale this is economically feasible to do. From my little experience with hydroponics, water and land use are the two major wins. Electricity can be a deal breaker but that depends on a lot of factors (type of produce, electricity prices, closeness to city, production vs consumption quantities, etc).

From a personal point of view, I strongly support this type of growth for a couple of reasons: more food for less cost, cities gain food independence, natural land use and abuse gets curtailed dramatically. Now if we could only switch more people (me included) to a vegetarian diet.

Another huge advantage with indoor farming is the decreased need for pesticides. Decreased production and environmental costs + a healthier, organic product for consumers... what's not to love?

It uses fractional water resources, which from a substitution value in California at least, is a net 'savings'. Should we ever get to a point where power is massively abundant (fusion) the water use will be a factor as it is easier to transport electrons that desalinated water.

I an industrial setting, one could use a light pipe during the day augmented by LEDs on either side. In a near hermetic environment pests could be kept under control w/o chemicals.

Light pipes, like green houses, have an issue that the light source is blocked by the first plant it hits :-). The thing the article calls out that is different is that by using these thin GE grow LEDs they were able to have stacks and stacks of grow rows in a relatively small space.

That said, I would not be surprised to see some farmers in the central valley move to more green houses given their water rationing.

I remember seeing bleeding edge cannabis growers experimenting with LED lights several years ago. Now most growers I know use use supplemental LED lights in their operation.

I built some of those early prototype lights. It was nothing remotely close to cost effective at the time, but I was doing a lot of work with LEDs and thought it would be interesting to see how the power consumption and heat management problems would improve using LEDs. It was enough to convince me that LED grow lights were absolutely the way of the future.

Now that cannabis growing is legal here in Washington, though, it will be interesting to see whether outdoor growing can compete. The advantage of being able to precisely control your plant's growth cycle is pretty significant even compared to getting your power for free from the sun.

This is good news for farmers around Fukushima - no-one buys food from there for obvious reasons, which is why they started to grow indoor hydroponic farms, but not on a large scale yet [1]. This way the plants don't get into contact with irradiated soil, but I doubt that people will buy them.

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-10/fukushima-seeks-rev...

In countries/areas where land prices are very expensive, this might help.

In the US I don't see this helping with common food stock (wheat/corn/cotton/soybean/tobacco/...). I could see this used for presentation foods (foods we judge more from looks) since you can control everything so much more you will likely get more products that can demand a premium price.

or when aquifers run out of freshwater used to irrigate fields

It would be very interesting to see what the price of water would be if it was subject to a market. A tragedy of the commons which isn't immediately visible until gone. Paradoxically some cities in the future will be bone dry ( Las Vegas) which others will be under water (Miami.) Freshwater available in neither.

Another good point is reduction or elimination of e coli & other pathogens caused by livestock runoff & workers shitting in the fields.

workers shitting in the fields.

Outside of eating meat, B12 comes only from growing vegetables in proximity to mammal manure... it's not necessarily such a bad thing as you make out.

This reminds me of Garden Fresh Farms indoor farms: http://gardenfreshfarms.com/

In average, one acre of any crop brings about a thousand dollars per year in revenue. With this method it would increase by 100-fold.

That's a real agricultural industrialization.

Electricity is not free. This is a stupid waste of resources that might "work" through a vary large government subsidy.

Solar is not free above sunk cost? We've ran a whole house in AZ exclusively on solar the last 7 years, with a ~$40K investment. Would this consume so much electricity that the initial cost will not be recouped before the solar system degrades beyond use? What's the math you're inferring from?

There are other issues, but if this was close to cost effective you would be seeing this in Iceland which gets little sunlight in the winter and has cheap energy costs. Instead they use suplimental lighting inside green houses to boost production.

I thought the vertical stacking makes more efficient use of the light than the single layer you find in a farm or green house. I thought that means even though the light is produced inefficiently the vertical stacking cancels out that inefficiency. Moreover, the optimization of the plant's exposure to light through automated means adds to increased efficiency in the plant's use of the light.

Numbers matter.

45% of the light is in the photosynthetic active wavelength range in a normal farm vs ~20% solar panels w/ transmission conversion losses etc + 40% LED = ~8% of the incoming light is now useful for photosynthesis.

So, you need a huge increase in efficiency ~400+% just to break even.

PS: Not that their using solar power, but it's still worth considering.

What does the 45% of light that is in the photosynthetic range have to do with the with the efficiency of solar cells and LEDs? It would be more direct to compare % of natural light that is in photosynthetic range with % of LED light that is in that range. If you have a formula on which you're basing your assumptions then write it down so I can understand and examine your logic without any misunderstanding. Else, you're making hand wavy assumptions, with statements like "numbers matters" without clearly stated relationship between said numbers.

Ideally 100% of LED light is in the photosynthetic rage. It looks like there using white LED's which are less efficient AND not optimal for plants. Sill, assuming the 'best case' using current mass market tech.

  Sunlight > photosynthisis (45%)   = 45%.
  Sunlight > solar cell (22%) > conversion, storage, transmission (90%) 
  > LED (40%) > photosynthisis(100%) = 8%

reality is LED efficecy drops over time and LED light is not quite 100% ect but this is the optomistic best case numbers.

but what stops a structural technique for maximizing light usage by plants (like stacking or some more optimal structural pattern, such as the natural tree pattern [1] optimized by nature) from achieving 4X or more increase in efficiency of light usage?

1. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405297020355030...

You can do the same sort of 3D arrangements with plants and sunlight. However, building a 3d structure costs money so you need to compare it with all the other ways of boosting yeild to find out the best option.

Generally, a mix of irrigation, fertilizer, better breeds, and greenhouses are the best option for boosting yield. Mix in more marginal land as needed (Note: ~68.4% of Japan is covered in forests.)

Greenhouses for example let you have a longer growing season and pack plants more closely together when their young. Which can let you have an early harvest and then use that same land for another plant or a plant with a longer growing season. Closer to the tropics you can often get 2 or 3 harvests a year. However, they have significant capital and labor costs.

PS: Now, we can try and figure out how a Dystopian future can feed say X billion people but we are a long way from needing indoor hydroponics.

You are forgetting a "small" difference between Japan and Iceland: Japan is overpopulated and doesn't have enough land to grow its own food, thus relying on importations to feed itself. On the other hand Iceland is mostly empty.

As you can imagine the price of land is quite different...

68.4% of Japan is forests. (Just look at some aerial maps). The issue is japan is not flat not that it's overcrowded. Even still they have enough room for 1.2 million cows which is horribly inefficient use of farm land.

PS: They have had rice subsidies over 700% and it's still not cost effective to convert more forests to farmland. Growing food in doors works due to subsides but it's hardly necessary.

If every grower did this, it would destroy Monsanto's business model.

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