Vertical farming is my favorite solarpunk invention.
— Noah Smith 🐇 (@Noahpinion) August 3, 2020
Imagine humanity using less and less of the land, allowing it to revert to nature as we stack our farms to the sky. All powered by solar energy, of course. https://t.co/ZZEIQ0oYFJ
The link is to a study of really intensive wheat farming under lights. It got very high productivity. From the study summary:
Here we show that wheat grown on a single hectare of land in a 10-layer indoor vertical facility could produce from 700 ± 40 t/ha (measured) to a maximum of 1,940 ± 230 t/ha (estimated) of grain annually under optimized temperature, intensive artificial light, high CO2 levels, and a maximum attainable harvest index. Such yields would be 220 to 600 times the current world average annual wheat yield of 3.2 t/ha.
The writers admit it's not economically feasible now or in "near future". Since they're talking 20+ hours of lighting and boosting CO2 levels and temperature-controlled (i.e., air conditioning) IMHO it's not likely to be feasible until we get electricity from fusion. I'd assume inventing the equipment to plant and harvest the wheat would be relatively easy, but their 10-layer farm assumes 1 meter separation between layers and super dwarf wheat, so rather cramped quarters.
The study turns out to be a computer modelling exercise, based on extrapolating from one real-life experiment in growing wheat and estimating theoretical maximums.
