Europe's Biggest Vertical Farm Will Be Powered by Wind and Planted by Robots

Re:Europe's Biggest Vertical Farm Will Be Powered by Wind an... by achow on Monday December 14, 2020 @05:09AM (#25415303)

Earth: 29% Land, 71% Ocean

Land: 71% Habitable, 29% Not

Agricultural: 2.3% of all habitable land

Livestock: 8% of all habitable land

Looking at the stats, your question is very valid. We can drastically increase food production by marginally decreasing land dedicated for livestock and/or utilizing unused habitable land.

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/11/Global-land-use-g...

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Re:Europe's Biggest Vertical Farm Will Be Powered by Wind an... by fnord123 on Monday December 14, 2020 @06:10AM (#25415715)

Those stats also do not indicate how much the agricultural land is being used to grow animal feed. In fact if a crop is grown but inadequate quality for selling for humans, it is sold at a massive discount as animal feed. Reducing the variability in crop yields, as vertical farming should do, should make the 2.3% more efficient.

We need to be careful about how we reduce livestocks globally. Naively interfering in the market such that the price of meat goes up could be disastrous as Brazilian farmers could accelerate the slashing of rain forests to make way for more profitable livestock farming.

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Re:Europe's Biggest Vertical Farm Will Be Powered by Wind an... by kitd on Monday December 14, 2020 @09:48AM (#25418146)

Those stats also do not indicate how much the agricultural land is being used to grow animal feed.

I don't have links, sorry, but IIRC it's about 33% used for animal feed.

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Re:Europe's Biggest Vertical Farm Will Be Powered by Wind an... by kitd on Monday December 14, 2020 @12:13PM (#25420035)

Replying to myself, in 2014 it was:

  1. Feeding people - 55%
  2. Feeding animals - 36%
  3. Biofuels - 9%

https://www.vox.com/2014/8/21/6053187/cropland-map-food-fuel...

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Re:Europe's Biggest Vertical Farm Will Be Powered by Wind an... by pjc50 on Monday December 14, 2020 @07:03AM (#25416283)

Much of the livestock land is steep or rocky. The same obstacles to drawing a plough across it present to building buildings on it. Unless you're prepared to invest a lot of energy flattening it.

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Re:Europe's Biggest Vertical Farm Will Be Powered by Wind an... by tokai on Monday December 14, 2020 @01:06PM (#25420905)

In Denmark 62% of all land is used for agriculture. That's not only the habitable but all of Denmark's area. Any area that is able to produce is already in use.

https://lbst.dk/fileadmin/user_upload/NaturErhverv/Filer/Lan...

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