You have a point about quality, but I don't think that there is anywhere in the US where the CO2 emissions from growing warm weather crops under artificial lighting are lower than those of importing said crops from places where they can grow outdoors.

Growing under artificial lighting can produce crops that don't need to endure prolonged storage and shipment. Some people will pay a flavor-and-quality premium for things like fresh tomatoes, salad greens, and herbs that can be grown this way near the point of consumption. But the bombast about remaking the "global food system" this way is ridiculous. The vast majority of crops, measured either by dollar value or by calories eaten by humans, are not going to be grown this way. For most crops it would greatly increase the cost and the fossil fuel consumption if they were grown under artificial lighting, and there wouldn't even be a corresponding quality improvement to motivate buyers.

The article even says as much:

In fact, all things considered, says Mark Bomford, director of the Yale Sustainable Food Project, “it’s generally a lower-impact proposition to move food around the planet than to move the climate.”

That depends on what you do with the excess heat from the grow lights. For example, if you were growing vegetables in the basement of your house, the heat from the lights would rise to heat the living space. You'd wind up using more or less the same amount of CO2 as required on heating alone, but you also end up with food to eat.

Onions, leeks and tubers can be harvested all winter. Gourds stay fresh for a long time even without refrigeration. Of course there is such a thing as planting season but it is perfectly feasible to be an avid gardener in a cold climate. No one is asking you to grow oranges but there are heirloom tomatoes and many other summer crops that can thrive in Minnesota. Having the soil be almost unusable all winter is good for the soil. It’s some of the best dirt in the world. If New Yorkers who don’t own a single inch of outdoor property can grow tomatoes then so can anyone anywhere in the midwest.

Sure, like you can just go out there with a pick-axe and try and get your potatoes because the ground is frozen solid.

Aside from being a shallow dismissal this comment demonstrates an unmistakable unfamiliarity with the subject. How one can have such a strong opinion on something they know so little about is beyond me. Frozen dirt is brittle and easy to dislodge, it is only difficult if you need to dig a post hole or something of limited width.

You clearly have not experienced an actual winter, just some weak-sauce facsimile, the sort you might get in northern Virginia.

If I wanted to get potatoes right now from the back yard dirt I'd have to remove about two feet of hard-packed ice and snow, then chisel into dirt that may as well be concrete. At least solid ice and concrete respect a pick. Wet, frozen dirt just shrugs it off.

Let me remind you that this year in places like Minnesota it was -60°F outside. Good luck getting anything out of the ground in those conditions. Even a backhoe is going to have trouble. I'd suggest using dynamite, but at those temperatures even dynamite won't work without being heated up first.

Please don't cross into snark or personal swipes. Your comment would be just fine without the bits at the beginning and end.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Fair enough. I'd edit it if I could.

I've opened it for editing so you can change it now.

You got it.