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Why can't a farm capture natural sunlight and redistribute it?

Even a low-tech method like mirrors ought to do it. As long as all the wavelengths that the plants need are reflected by the mirror. Why not?



To collect as much sunlight as the regular farm, you'll have to spread mirrors over the same area. So why not save all that money and plant the crops directly on the ground? If you want them indoors, to save water and chemicals, use greenhouses; you can use cheap plastic sheeting instead of expensive mirrors.


The sunlight of a regular farm is largely wasted. The plants are spread apart because of their moisture and soil needs and most of ths sunlight hits dirt.

Now, there may be bacteria in the regolith which we don't know about, and we'll find out why they are neededin certain proportions... but even so, we can be collecting dirt from all over the place for the next crop...

It seems that sunlight hitting plants that are "closer together" and stacked vertically will be far more efficient. Besides, some plants don't even need the full sunlight to grow!


Actually on most farms there's probably not a bit of dirt to be seen under the crop being raised, at least not for bulk crops like corn and soybeans and once the growing season is well under way. Any dirt not covered in the desired crop isn't bare and absorbing sunlight, it's space that's probably growing weeds or other undesirable plants (e.g. soybeans during a corn year for places that rotate their crops).




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