• unoriginalsin@lemmy.world
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    Afaraf
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    10 months ago

    The problem is a constant fight against gravity. You’ve still got to pump the water effectively to the top of the building every day. And there’s still the issue of getting sunlight to the plants.

    The question really becomes whether it’s more economical to just use traditional irrigation techniques upstream and ship the produce in vs converting a skyscraper into a very inefficient farm space.

    • FaceDeer@kbin.social
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      10 months ago

      Vertical farming usually uses LED lighting, not direct sunlight. And I think the idea is that once the water is present on a given level it gets recirculated and reprocessed there, so it wouldn’t need much additional pumping.

      • unoriginalsin@lemmy.world
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        Afaraf
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        10 months ago

        Vertical farming usually uses LED lighting, not direct sunlight.

        That’s one method of bringing"sunlight" to plants. Another would be to grow them outside.

        And I think the idea is that once the water is present on a given level it gets recirculated and reprocessed there, so it wouldn’t need much additional pumping.

        Even if all you do is pump all the water from the floor of each level to the ceiling of the respective level, you’ve done the exact same amount of work as pumping all the water for the top floor back to the roof in the first place. Only you’ve done it with a hundred pumps and a hundred times the points of failure and repair rate as a single pump for the entire building.

        You’d be so much farther ahead to just install a reservoir on the roof that gets filled by a single pump and let gravity feed the lower floors. Much the way we already do for flat farming.

        And then you’ve got to make up for the inefficiencies lost in planting and harvesting. Vertical farming brings nothing to the table except a smaller footprint in a world where that’s not a real advantage.

        A far better use of empty office buildings would be to convert much of the space into full-time living space.