>This is not going replace farming anymore than me growing a spinach plant in a pot at home.
Well, I've got 200 sq ft my wife and I are growing by hand. We have manual tools, compost, dirt, and muscles. And your spinach example is a pretty bad one. Why? Spinach grows better when its cold out and earlier in the season. If you plant a week or 2 later, it doesn't really grow and then when the heat hits, it bolts. Bolted spinach and lettuce tastes bitter and bad. It'd sure be nice to be able to grow spinach in ideal conditions... but I can't do that in the ground.
>It's actually a little disappointing to see just how out of touch the people in this thread are with farming. Growing food outside, in the ground is always going to be cheaper than building a building.
"always going to be cheaper" is a really long time. Sure you mean to put it that way?
I'm no farmer, but I grow quite a bit of my food. I guess amateur farmer is probably more accurate. Right now, the economic equation is on the side of "grow in dirt, on property". But 1 acre only gets you an acre of stuff at ideal yield. Add 10 more stories on that same plot of land, and you get 10 acre yield (ideal).
And, you're also not counting having a self sufficient city as an intangible. Something like that is the start of an arcology. That technology stack also seems rather important to grow for a spacefaring culture.
> I guess amateur farmer is probably more accurate.
Gardner is the usual term. And there is a huge chasm between gardening and farming, which is what I expect the parent is trying to get at.
Myself, I grow food on hundreds of acres. Yet I wouldn't know the first thing about growing spinach on a 200 sq ft plot. It's just a completely different skill set. To try and draw an analogy that fits HN, the difference is kind of like knowing how to use your Windows PC at home and knowing how to manage a huge data centre full of 1,000s of Linux systems at work.
It will be interesting to see what the future brings, but considering that we traditional farmers get a lot of things for for free (solar energy, rain, etc.), it will be difficult to beat that on cost. Depends on what you are growing, I suppose.
I'm curious - do you have any ballpark numbers on the impact that weather has on your profitability? Not just for growing conditions (cloudy/sunny, rain/drought) but also for extreme weather events if and when they occur?
Like I said, completely out of touch. You are not going to grow enough to sustain yourselves on 200 square feet, and what ever you do grow will require more resources than growing that same amount on an industrial agribusiness scale.
Sigh. Is that all you do; respond by insults and innuendo? How about some proof... if you have any.
> You are not going to grow enough to sustain yourselves on 200 square feet,
200 sq ft is enough to provide fish and vegetables for 8 people, indefinitely. This only works when using aquaponics with combined plants and tilapia. See more here:
> and what ever you do grow will require more resources than growing that same amount on an industrial agribusiness scale.
No. That wasn't your initial argument. Cost is your only argument, and one I have already conceded.
What is the cost of food security? What are the costs of having better tasting food than one can buy at the store? I've given other comparisons as well, none of which are about cost.
Or what about the next drought? It kills 80% of the crops. Those nice closed-loop hydroponics are immune to those effects.
Well, I've got 200 sq ft my wife and I are growing by hand. We have manual tools, compost, dirt, and muscles. And your spinach example is a pretty bad one. Why? Spinach grows better when its cold out and earlier in the season. If you plant a week or 2 later, it doesn't really grow and then when the heat hits, it bolts. Bolted spinach and lettuce tastes bitter and bad. It'd sure be nice to be able to grow spinach in ideal conditions... but I can't do that in the ground.
>It's actually a little disappointing to see just how out of touch the people in this thread are with farming. Growing food outside, in the ground is always going to be cheaper than building a building.
"always going to be cheaper" is a really long time. Sure you mean to put it that way?
I'm no farmer, but I grow quite a bit of my food. I guess amateur farmer is probably more accurate. Right now, the economic equation is on the side of "grow in dirt, on property". But 1 acre only gets you an acre of stuff at ideal yield. Add 10 more stories on that same plot of land, and you get 10 acre yield (ideal).
And, you're also not counting having a self sufficient city as an intangible. Something like that is the start of an arcology. That technology stack also seems rather important to grow for a spacefaring culture.