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A comment on MIT Media Lab Scientist Used Refugees to Tout Food Computers That Didn't Work. Parent comment

Re:MIT Media Lab Scientist Used Refugees to Tout Food Comput... by samvher on Friday October 25, 2019 @03:26AM (#21352690)
In the Netherlands our main way of growing food is in greenhouses. It causes a lot of light pollution and I actually found it a quite disturbing sight when I flew over one of the greenhouse areas by night once (there are columns of light in the sky). We export lots of tomatoes, bell peppers, etc. I guess if you have space and a sunny climate the value proposition isn't there, but if you have a cooler climate, a high population density (land is very expensive), and a high-tech agriculture sector it seems to work out differently.
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Re:MIT Media Lab Scientist Used Refugees to Tout Food Comput... by FoeNyx on Friday October 25, 2019 @06:27AM (#21353532)
> I actually found it a quite disturbing sight when I flew over one of the greenhouse areas by night once

There was a link 2 days ago about aerial photography of LED greenhouses in the Netherlands : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21327623

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Re:MIT Media Lab Scientist Used Refugees to Tout Food Comput... by dmurray on Friday October 25, 2019 @03:49AM (#21352769)
Wow - according to one source "The Netherlands is the world's second largest exporter of agricultural products, after the USA" [0]. Sure, it has good quality soil and high tech farming, but it's amazing that can make up for the sheer lack of space. It's smaller than all but 9 US states, and it's not rural either - it's more populous than all but 4.

[0] https://www.hollandtradeandinvest.com/key-sectors/agricultur...

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Re:MIT Media Lab Scientist Used Refugees to Tout Food Comput... by PeterisP on Friday October 25, 2019 @06:36AM (#21353572)
Agricultural products have very, very large differences in value density, and one that Netherlands is seriously exploiting.

Ten acres of corn has much less value than ten acres of roses, so growing flowers is a major export industry for Netherlands.

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Re:MIT Media Lab Scientist Used Refugees to Tout Food Comput... by dmurray on Friday October 25, 2019 @08:11AM (#21354164)
That's part of it, but looks like only about €9b of €90b total [0]. Meat, dairy and vegetables are all comparable; certainly the east of the country seems to be all cows. Cereals don't crack the top ten categories, though.

https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2018/03/dutch-agricultural-exp...

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Re:MIT Media Lab Scientist Used Refugees to Tout Food Comput... by iancmceachern on Friday October 25, 2019 @10:50AM (#21355539)
They are doing it differently than the MiT systems. The key is they are using greenhouses with electric lights as a supplement to natural light, adding up to 20% yield as a result. They are not relying on electric lights for 100% of the light the plants need to grow.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=49939807621308041...

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Re:MIT Media Lab Scientist Used Refugees to Tout Food Comput... by Zeebrommer on Friday October 25, 2019 @05:48AM (#21353339)
To get an impression of what it looks like from the ground: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=westland%20lichtver...

It's difficult to compare the real-life view with pictures (just like the aurora). And it isn't always as bad. But on cloudy, cold nights, it can have an apocalyptic feel to it.

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