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we haven't solved vertical farming yet. it's not energy efficient. i imagine its even harder/more expensive in Antarctica to keep the plants warm enough. cheap and clean energy production is where we should spend our money.


I'm not a farmer so I may be way off, but I thought the one thing we had done with vertical farming was beat natural energy efficiency?

Photosynthesis doesn't use sunlight all that well, PV + wavelength tuned LED can turn the same amount of sunlight into more biology.

But! Farmland is dirt cheap, so that's more of a solution in search of a problem than anything else.


You mean efficiency in terms of the plants absorbing the energy? Probably. But in most parts of the world it's still cheaper to just use more land.


Yes to the question.

Also, agreed to the final point.

Plus, the comparison shouldn't be "open farmland vs. PV+LED", it should be "for the resources cost of PV+LED, what can you build in the way of polytunnel or greenhouse?"

Which in turn reminds me of this YouTube Mars botany simulator, whose validity I can't help but doubt, but which is nevertheless moderately interesting: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKhDkilF5o6-Hfsnhn_HFxjJ0...


Energy efficiency vs outdoor farming with Sun is not applicable to any Mars colony.

You can be very inefficient if it is your only method of producing food.




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