Move farming indoor

Food
41

“I am under a fairly intense NDA. I grew tomatoes hydroponically for 15 years. I have award winning farmers in my family. We sell to Del Monte. I grew up on a farm and was married to a crop farmer.”

You can say whatever, no way for me to tell if you’re honest, but so far you have no idea what you’re talking about

“I would pretty much bet my farm that you have never grown anything in a hydroponic setting. While you wont need any herbicide, you will need a great deal of pesticides as bugs LOVE to bomb a grow house as they are safe from the elements and the plants are very close together so very easy to feed on.”

You just lost your farm. Insects can be controlled in a seal greenhouse with fresh air circulating in through a filtered intake fan. So plants grown outdoor arent close together? You claim to be on a farm but you have no clue what you’re talking about.

“You need motors for pushing water, draining water, cleaning tanks, harvesting… on and on. There is zero reduction of motor use. Most deadly farm accidents are caused by chemicals, not by equipment.”

What kind of chemicals are you using that is so deadly?

“You will need 6-10 times more employees than you would doing traditional farming as hydro creates a ton of waste. You cant “ignore the seasons” as “seasons” have a lot to do with light and how the plant uses light to grow. You want to take away the sun from a plant? Then add HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of dollars to your finished product costs. If a plant takes 24 weeks to mature, you cant get 4x more finished product!!”

What waste are you talking about?

“The bees are dying from BOTH pesticides and herbicides. You kill the flowers, you kill bee food.”

Traditional farming uses tons of herbicide and pesticide that is killing off the bees and insects. Now you’re just projecting.

“I have considered growing in subsaharan Africa, but until they can produce enough water out of the atmosphere, its still impossible to do. You realize turning “Once farmland into fields of wildflowers for insects” is going to make the land unlivable for people, right? Bugs will overrun the area”

Why get water from atmosphere when you can pump it from the ground? The land was unlivable because you’re farming on it to begin with. Having bugs overrun the area is the point. You want the insect population to come back. I barely hit bugs on my windshield driving west to east because they’re dying. You can let chicken free roam the area and let them feed on the bugs, thereby, making exceedingly moar nutrient dense meat and eggs.

You sound moar and moar like a monsanto shill after every post.

42

Easily.

1 Like
43

Its extremely highly difficult to grow commercially, thousands of acres if wheat/corn outdoor without the use of herbicide and pesticides if not impossible. Your crops will be overtaken by weeds and insects would eat and destroy your crops. Not to mention the mold snd fungal infection.

44

Regenerative farming solves a lot of your concerns.

1 Like
45

Good ideas in this method. I can see this working in small communities. Anything to stop monsanto from poisoning our water and food.

1 Like
46

Most of our freshwater ends up in the ocean due to poor water storage planning, which fails to account for growth and the need to sustain that growth. Here’s a secret: Alaska could hydrate the entire lower 48 states with just two snow melts. People often laugh at the idea of a water pipeline to the lower 48, but consider this: a barrel of bottled water costs more than a barrel of oil. If we can run an oil pipeline to the lower 48, we can certainly run a water pipeline. This pipeline could refill all your aquifers, except perhaps those used by companies like Coca-Cola, who could purchase the water for their bottled products to help fund the pipeline.

A water pipeline could run along a roadside or even down the coast underwater, and it could be done without excessive environmental studies. Don’t get me wrong, I live in Alaska and I think greenhouses are great—they’re quite amazing. But don’t tell me how to use my land. If you believe that regulating my land use is a public good, then you should follow the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution and provide just compensation for that taking. Just an FYI the largest agriculture commodity we have is lawns, grass! Maybe before we start moving the food inside we should start with teaching people. As often as we we talk about chemicals used in farms we should talk about chemicals used on lawns, we should talk about the root system of the lawn we should talk about the acreage of the lawns, we should talk about the native grasses and flowers to bring the bugs back and the bees is your suggest which honey bees have never been native to the United States they were brought in and mosquitoes are our largest pollinators to stop killing them.

1 Like
47

[Hydroponics]

49

I think it can be both. Our family is currently working on something like that so we get growing year round. In summer we have our grow beds and do back to eden gardening with no pesticides. Now we are building our indoor grow center using hydroponics and testing a new product that will be coming out soon because we want to grow all vegetable types.

1 Like
50

I am a retired commercial hydroponics grower and have a 60,000 sf indoor hydro set up. I come from a family farm that holds over 1,000 acres of vine and tree crops. That farm has now been passed to the 3rd generation. We also have a full indoor set up.

We grow in a Debets Schalke and I am growing at a far higher level. My contract was very clear about how my tomatoes are grown. A recirculated hydro system would cancel my contracts. Drain to waste is how my contract reads.

“Traditional farming” means the plants are in the ground, that’s where they grow. That’s where the water has to go, so yes, you do water via the ground when plants are growing in the ground. This would be basic science.

There is no “run off” on drain to waste in commercial grows. That would get you fined out of business by the EPA. All drain to waste is captured and dealt with. We have solutions for that. You have zero understanding of size and scale of commercial farming.

Oh my goodness, you think the only thing you need to know about are microbes? lol… What about Pumice, Perlite, Kelp, Gypsum, water polymers, mycorrhizae, basalt dust, diatomaceous earth, greendsand, bat guana and the lowly worm casing. Do you understand soft body bugs are a different problem than execos? (Oh yeah, thanks UC Davis for the incredible PLANT BIOLOGY education!!)

I have spent 45 years on farms, 20 years as a kid, and 25 years running our family farms out of California. My father was on the board of the CCPA and was an awarded by a Califorina peach packer for his contributions to farming. I hold several farming patents and was a field rep for the FDA.

When you grow in a Debets Schalke, only those who do not follow clean grow protocols will need to spray for anything. The greenhouse itself deals with bugs, molds & mildews.