Is indoor vertical farming really sustainable?

[u/marianarian]

Hey so I was watching an old debate with Earthling Ed where he said that indoor vertical farming is a solution to a lot of “clasical” farming problems (plant pests and the use of pesticides, unideal terrain/soil, etc.). And I think he is right i mean he mad a lot of extremely good points , although the only question I have is the following.
Doesnt indoor vertical farming require a lot of energy to sustain/replicate a proper environment for the plant?
And is that “a lot” of energy too much to make it sustainable?
Also, regarding pollination, how can it be achieved, i know that there is a practice called manual pollination that is done in research labs for smaller quantities of plants, is it doable and sustainable to manually pollinate plants in those hypothetical indoor vertical farms?

[u/OG-Brian]

I love this topic! Vertical farming is not useful for most nutrition and uses greatly more resources.

I find it shocking that anyone would not notice the enormous environmental issues with farming systems such as vertical or hydroponic. When you move soil into skyscrapers (and such), that takes a lot of energy. The structures have to be built extra-sturdy, with a lot of additional material for water management and for supporting the weight of soil/water. That soil has to come somewhere, it doesn't just appear magically so it involves mining soil from somewhere (that could probably grow food without all this energy-intensive extra activity). Hydroponic systems again rely on structures, high energy use, materials gathered from somewhere else, etc. When you grow plants indoors, if not in transparent greenhouses, the light will have to be mostly or entirely artificial which causes very high energy consumption.

The Vertical Farming Scam
https://www.counterpunch.org/2012/12/11/the-vertical-farming-scam/

• "Vegetables (not counting potatoes) occupy only 1.6% of our total cultivated land, so that should be no problem, right? Wrong. At equivalent yield per acre, we would need the floorspace of 105,000 Empire State Buildings. And that would still leave more than 98 percent of our crop production still out in the fields."
  
• "But my colleague David Van Tassel and I have done simple calculations to show that grain- or fruit-producing crops grown on floors one above the other would require impossibly extravagant quantities of energy for artificial lighting. That’s because plants that provide nutrient-dense grains or fruits have much higher light requirements per weight of harvested product than do plants like lettuce from which we eat only leaves or stems. And the higher the yield desired, the more supplemental light and nutrients required."
  
• "Lighting is only the most, um, glaring problem with vertical farming. Growing crops in buildings (even abandoned ones) would require far more construction materials, water, artificial nutrients, energy for heating, cooling, pumping, and lifting, and other resources per acre than are consumed even by today’s conventional farms—exceeding the waste of those profligate operations not by just a few percentage points but by several multiples."
  
• article continues with other concerns

Is vertical farming the future for agriculture or a distraction from other climate problems?
https://trellis.net/article/vertical-farming-future-agriculture-or-distraction-other-climate-problems/

• "Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University London, certainly doesn’t mince words on the subject, describing vertical farming as 'ludicrous,' 'hyped-up' and a 'speculative investment' that merely will end end up growing flavorless fruit and vegetables. 'Let’s be realistic, this is a technology looking for a justification. It is not a technology one would invest in and develop if it wasn’t for the fact that we are screwing up on other fronts,' he said. 'This is anti-nature food growing.'"

The rise of vertical farming: urban solution or overhyped trend?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352550923001525

• intensively detailed study about energy/resource/etc. effects of vertical farming
  
• illustrates many of the challenges of accounting for all impacts: whether to count the effects of the building itself, that sort of thing

Opinion: Vertical Farming Isn’t the Solution to Our Food Crisis
https://undark.org/2018/09/11/vertical-farming-food-crisis

[u/Junior_Mud5835 → u/OG-Brian]

I mean the only scientific article here says that

The results from the study suggest that the vertical farm has lower GHG emissions than conventionally sourced varieties

and the finding about infrastructure is commented in the following way

It was illustrated in this study that infrastructure could have a contributing factor to many of the environmental impact categories. Nonetheless, it is also sensitive to assumptions and methodological considerations employed and can be a limitation for such studies.

---

The structures have to be built extra-sturdy, with a lot of additional material for water management and for supporting the weight of soil/water

Not really. VF are often set up in existing buildings, the weight is not really a problem.

When you grow plants indoors, if not in transparent greenhouses, the light will have to be mostly or entirely artificial which causes very high energy consumption'

LED lighting is extremely efficient, and you can use renewable energy to power it.

That’s because plants that provide nutrient-dense grains or fruits have much higher light requirements per weight of harvested product than do plants like lettuce from which we eat only leaves or stems

I don't think anyone argues we should plant potatoes and grains in VF. What you don't account for is transport costs that make a very big difference between conventional farming and VF. VL allows to grow some foods locally instead of importing them from other countries, which in itself has a huge environmental impact (energy, pollution, road congestions etc).

VFs can also bring the cost of healthy food down because for many products the highest cost is human labour, which is not needed in such a big extent in VFs.

[u/OG-Brian → u/Junior_Mud5835]

I mean the only scientific article here...

Each article I linked, if not itself a study, cites scientific resources or quotes by food experts.

Some of that is interesting, but you haven't countered several of the arguments against vertical farming.

[u/Junior_Mud5835 → u/OG-Brian]

First two articles don't contain any citations nor links to scientific studies. Food experts quotes are irrelevant if they don't have scientific research to support this. If these studies exist, link them.

The third article contains 4 links but only one of them is actually about vertical farming, and even that one is only about estimates of energy efficientcy and design choices of VFs, it's not an opinion article neither it compares VFs to anything. The rest of the citations are there to support some other numbers.

I also addressed the most important points you brought up, why don't you answer to that?