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Re:The vertical farming bubble is finally popping by uoaei on Monday February 27, 2023 @01:35PM (#34960160)
Are there examples of vertical farming facilities that are designed to use the natural sunlight when it is available? I'm imagining basically walls of well-placed mirrors. That would take care of quite a bit of the lighting costs, at least.
Re:The vertical farming bubble is finally popping by temp12192021 on Monday February 27, 2023 @01:40PM (#34960229)
> I'm imagining basically walls of well-placed mirrors. That would take care of quite a bit of the lighting costs, at least.

... or windows. We could call the building housing these green things "greenhouses."

Re:The vertical farming bubble is finally popping by Ekaros on Monday February 27, 2023 @01:51PM (#34960380)
If you are going to use land for mirrors. Couldn't you build well horizontally? And it would probably be quite a bit cheaper option.
Re:The vertical farming bubble is finally popping by mjhay on Monday February 27, 2023 @01:53PM (#34960401)
You need a lot of area for that - incident sunlight is proportional to land area. To get the same amount of sunlight, you'd need to cover around the same square footage of land as there is area in the vertical farm with mirrors, and then cleverly redirect that back into the vertical farm - kind of like a solar power tower.

What would be even cleverer is to just plant the crops where the sun falls in the first place, and just do one layer of crops directly in the soil already present in that location. This would obviate the need for the multi-story tower, mirrors, soil transportation, etc. A "non-vertical farm," if you will. I think it could be a real money spinner!

Re:The vertical farming bubble is finally popping by bombcar on Monday February 27, 2023 @01:58PM (#34960447)
This is the thing - even if your vertical wall gets sunlight, it's just "stealing" it from whatever is now in its shadow.
Re:The vertical farming bubble is finally popping by ianburrell on Monday February 27, 2023 @04:06PM (#34961857)
Instead of mirrors, I wonder if it would make sense to have greenhouses with artificial lights for winter and night. The original vertical farming idea was farms in buildings in the city. It has changed to focus on premium greens year round.

To solve the year round garden problem, it would be better to grow them in enhanced greenhouses. Then could use sunlight when available and LEDs the rest of the time for decrease in costs and increase in efficiency. There would be no improvement in land usage but even big cities have empty land nearby. I sort of think current vertical farming pivoted when original idea didn't work, but there is better way to do the pivot.

Re:The vertical farming bubble is finally popping by dredmorbius on Monday February 27, 2023 @08:42PM (#34964637)
Usually the principle concern is temperature rather than sunlight, and the solution is greenhouses or similar structures.

These typically increase the growing season and permit crops to be started (e.g., seeding rooms or houses) or harvested before or after what would otherwise be a killing frost. With apparent increases in weather variability these might have increased applicability.

Low-Tech Magazine's Agriculture section includes numerous traditional such technologies.

<https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/agriculture/>