Only if you want to use incredible amounts of electricity and occupy a lot of building space. Ignoring those things it may be more efficient but not when you look at the whole picture.
Comment on Breakthrough: "Electronic soil" boosts crop growth by over 50%
rdyoung@lemmy.world 1 year agoHydroponic is way more efficient than growing in dirt. You can stack it as high as you want and grow way more per acre. On top of that you have the reduced amount of fertilizer and the increase in growth rate.
There is a reason why the best weed is grown via hydroponics.
LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 1 year ago
rdyoung@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It doesn’t actually take that much juice these days. On top of being able to use solar and wind generated power we also have leds that barely use any electricity to run.
Aside from the initial investment for the setup, the ongoing energy and resources needed for hydro and aero are most definitely going to be less than dirt farming especially when you factor in being able to grow year round. And don’t forget the reduced amount of fertilizer and water usage. The water isn’t lost to the ground with only a small amount of it being used by the plants.
Basically this it like ev versus ice. When you don’t factor in everything, one looks better than the other but with all things considered, ev is way better than ice.
echo64@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Efficiency doesn’t matter when we have huge amounts of low-cost arible soil. We don’t need to make the most of every square meter when it’s cheaper and easier to just put seeds in soil. This is the problem.
Hydroponics are cool technology that is in every way “better” but useless.
rdyoung@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Again, false. Getting the equivalent of 5+ acres out of the physical space of 1 and leaving the plants to do their thing is better in every way imaginable.
refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
The best weed is grown in no-till soil, hence why living soil weed sells for more money.
rdyoung@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Spoken like someone who has no idea what they are talking about. Aeroponics were what you wanted, especially 20+ years ago.
kozy138@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Hydroponics, when combined with indoor, vertical farming, is the reason that the Netherlands are one of Europe largest exporters of food. Even though they’re one of the countries with the least amount of farmland.
bassomitron@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It depends on what you mean by efficient. Cost efficiency wise, normal land farming beats out hydroponics by a mile. And really, cost efficiency is virtually the only thing that matters when it comes to farming on a massive scale.
rdyoung@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This is so false it’s not even funny. Hydro is way more efficient and aero even more so.
The highlights because I don’t have time for a lecture.
With farming indoors you can control the day/night cycle which not only increases the growth rate it also let’s you manipulate fruiting and flowering.
Hydro and aero use a fraction of the water dirt farming does. More water is being taken up by the plants and none of it is being lost to the environment. On top of that evaporation is controlled so less is lost that way.
As mentioned above the growth rate is increased not only by the light cycle but also by being able to more strictly control and fine tune the amount of fertilizer and you use way less of it. Just like the water, fertilizer isn’t lost to the environment.
Seems like some of you need to learn more about this stuff. There is a growing number of vertical farms popping up all over the world. Hopefully one day soon we will be buying lettuce, carrots, etc that were grown if not in the same building but on the same block.
bassomitron@lemmy.world 1 year ago
If that was the case, why isn’t every industrial farm doing it?
rebelsimile@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
The Venn diagram of farmers and early adopters is harry potter’s glasses
Meowoem@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
That depends on yield per year and for certain crops it’s incredibly high compared to arable, especially with clever engineering that uses waste heat productively.
We’re certainly going to see an increase in city farms for various things over the coming decades, automation just makes it too easy and there are so many good options to explore
echo64@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Or you could just skip all that and plant seeds in soil, with a larger farm outside of the city
Meowoem@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Modern agriculture is hugely damaging to the ecosystem, provides a very low quality produce, is very inefficient, and there’s plenty of better things for the land to be used for.
I get that a lot of people want to live in an idealised version of the past but the past is someone’s future, things change and grow and evolve which is a great thing. People are going to grow daily produce locally because it’s more efficient and better than daily transporting food long distances - getting traffic off the road should be a key part of our future plans, localising production is a great idea. Growing lettuce six hours drive away is silly when it loses most it’s quality in six hours even when chilled, why run a truck every day when for less power than just the transport you could grow them locally, especially if you’re getting better produce without any damage to the environment.
Year round, pest free, high quality fresh produce locally is going to be a standard thing in every city and grumbling about how life used to be different isn’t going to change that.