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Mod
Seems to me that what can't easily be grown indoors are cereals and fruit trees, also hay. Root crops as you mention which include fodder crops and sugarbeet.
The danger of having acres filled with nothing but root crops is that pests multiply fast, from carrot fly to beet eelworm, so rotation would be key if only certain crops were grown outdoors. Root crops also are hungry for nutrients which is another reason for rotation.
Mod
The reason we are seeing them on the news is that coronavirus is making it hard for migrant fruit pickers to move around.
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https://vitals.lifehacker.com/are-the...
Gizmodo kindly explains that this isn't harmful, and what food wholesalers do to reduce occurrences. Also that you should keep strawberries and other fruit in the fridge.
Yum.
Mod
https://theconversation.com/cubas-cle...
Mod
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK6Nr...
Mod
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzZzZ...
A few years later on, the same gentleman, not a Ted talk but in front of what appear to be chefs in Copenhagen. Contains some strong language.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCMEu...
The message is the same in each: the area was a food desert with liquor stores and drive-throughs but no supermarkets and no organic food. So, he dug up the grass in front of his home and planted vegetables and fruit. This started a movement. Change your food, change your life.
Mod
The new facility is in Denmark, in an area called Taastrup outside of Copenhagen. At 7,000 square meters (just over 73,000 square feet), it will be the biggest vertical farm in Europe. Crops will grow in stacks 14 layers high and will use more than 20,000 LED lights.
The farm’s technology comes from a Taiwanese vertical farming company called YesHealth Group, which partnered with Danish food tech company Nordic Harvest for this project.
Beyond the abundance of layers and lights, it takes automation to the next level; little robots on wheels will be tasked with delivering seeds to the various rows of stacked growing shelves. Sensors combined with smart software will monitor and process more than 5,000 different data points; a key one, for example, is the intensity of the LED light as it relates to the stage of growth the plant is in.
Amid all this, greens will reportedly be grown using just one liter of water per kilogram of produce, which is a whopping 250 times less than what’s used in traditional agriculture. Rather than needing to be watered, the plants actually sit in grow trays with their roots extending into shallow troughs of nutrient-rich water. And all that light from the LEDs? It’ll come from electricity generated by wind; almost half of Denmark’s total power is sourced from wind, and the farm’s creators felt that using this sustainable source of energy was the optimal choice."
https://singularityhub.com/2020/12/11...
Mod
The investigation found that the illegal pesticides were being used to better the quality and quantity of the harvests and increase the monetary value of the production.
The so-called organic the nuts were being sold for up to 80% over the retail price of non-organic pistachios.
The nuts from the main Spanish distributor were also being sold in France under false organic certifications."
https://www.rte.ie/news/europe/2020/1...
Mod
AI controlled vertical farm. We are shown salads and herbs, not roots, but these are fresh veg and some people don't get those today.
Here is the article.
https://techxplore.com/news/2020-12-a...
"These upright farms take up only 2 acres yet produce 720 acres worth of fruit and vegetables. Lighting, temperature and watering are controlled by AI-controlled robots. Sunlight is emulated by LED panels, so food is grown in optimal conditions 24/7. And water is recycled and evaporated water recaptured so there is virtually no waste.
The operation is so efficient it uses 99 percent less land and 95 percent less water than normal farming operations.
"Imagine a 1,500-acre farm," Storey says. "Now, imagine that fitting inside your favorite grocery store, growing up to 350 times more. That's efficient.""
Mod
Intensively farming some areas while making more areas nature preserves, is the suggestion. A third method of lightly farming or mixing natural systems - like meadow grazing or keeping carp (or ducks, not mentioned) in rice paddies, would add benefits.
More information: Concentrating vs. spreading our footprint: how to meet humanity's needs at least cost to nature, Journal of Zoology (2021). DOI: 10.1111/jzo.1292
Journal information: Journal of Zoology
Provided by University of Cambridge
https://phys.org/news/2019-12-grown-n...
Vertical farming is probably going to survive no matter what happens. Where it is economically feasible it will be done, where it isn't economically feasible it won't work.
It could be a future indicator of how farming industry is shifting from wildly uncontrolled massive areas of unprotected fields to a more controlled, protected situation which mimics a factory. Vertical food factories could be continually updated to incorporate new technology and eventually move to providing the raw materials on site needed to produce new food products, such as substitutions for meat.
It also looks like it represents a decentralization of the farm industry, where localized operations produce food where it normally can't be grown for immediate consumption in the area it is grown. It can be used to return land back to its natural state by using volume instead of surface area.
With a vertical food factory in the middle of former large open field farms the reintroduction of natural growth would probably be beneficial to the area around it. For the foreseeable future reproducing plant life itself is probably the most efficient way to convert energy to food, even if one method uses more energy than another method.
Vertical farms seem to use less water and are less susceptible to water damage from storms, which might be more important than how energy is supplied to the farming operation. It works where there is too much precipitation or not enough. It is also able to produce food year round, even in winter weather conditions.
If a way could be could developed to utilize water from municipal sewage, that could be a constant source of water in municipal locations. Storm run off in cities could be another source of water that goes untapped now.
Not knowing what the total list of agricultural products, a list of stuff that won't grow in a vertical farm seems to be smaller than what can be grown in one.
What can't:
Squash
Melons
Pumpkins
Cucumbers
Fruit trees
Root vegetables
https://signatureelectric.ca/blog/ver...
It seems to be plants that need a lot of plant surface area to produce edible products. Perhaps hybrid vertical farms could use the towers to grow what can be grown and use the fields for what can't be grown. Then we would be back to the big open land farms, but maybe less of them.