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High-tech farmers sow seeds of revolution in Dubai desert:
An ultra-modern vertical farm in the middle of the desert stands as a testament to Dubai's determination to spark a "green revolution" to overcome its dependence on food imports.
Al-Badia market garden farm produces an array of vegetable crops in multi-storey format, carefully controlling light and irrigation as well as recycling 90 percent of the water it uses.
"It's a green revolution in the middle of the desert," the farm's director Basel Jammal [says].
[...] That was not an issue decades ago when the area was sparsely inhabited by Bedouins.
But the wealth generated by oil discoveries since the 1970s sent expatriates flocking to the UAE.
Dubai now has more than 3.3 million inhabitants of 200 nationalities, relies largely on expensive desalinated water, and its food needs have grown and diversified.
Will hydroponics be cheaper than importing food?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2020, @02:45AM (15 children)
Is the vertical (multi-story) aspect even important? Maybe ALL farmland should eventually be converted into wide, flat greenhouses that recycle/capture water.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 20 2020, @03:07AM (11 children)
Vertical is important to some greenhouse operations.
https://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a-vertical-aquaponic-veggie-fish-farm-for-/ [instructables.com]
Water for irrigation comes from a fish tank, filters through the gravel/soil in the growing beds, then returns to the fish tank, carrying nutrients for the fish. So, you get a crop of fish, and a crop of veggies, recovering 90% + of your water in an endless loop. Carefully select your garden crops and your fish, I guess you never need buy fish food.
There have been other articles over the years, using vertical growing schemes, that yield unbelievable amounts of food. "Flat farming" can never rival the more dramatic vertical schemes for yield per acre.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 20 2020, @03:17AM (9 children)
(Heh. Couldn't you use an even more favourable metric for comparison? Like, yield per needle-tip?)
Say... how about the yield per kWh you need to put in per unit of <food_type>? Where that energy is gonna come from?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 20 2020, @03:47AM (4 children)
Solar power provides the necessary electricity pretty cheaply. If you dive deep into the consumption of resources, solar isn't a perfect answer, but it does cut the $$ expenditure a lot. Even on a larger commercial scale, you're not using a lot of energy to pump a little water up three, or six, or even twelve feet. You only need keep the roots of your plants wet, you don't need a pressurized flow inside the pipes.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 20 2020, @05:27AM (3 children)
And you can obtain it in vertical farms, right? Negligible footprint.
Even on a larger commercial scale, you're not using a lot of energy to pump a little water up three, or six, or even twelve feet.
At ground floor, maybe. I don't see Dubai having water reservoirs at high altitude to have that water pushed up freely by a waterhead.
---
Let me repeat the question in one of my other comment: what the going price for hydroponic wheat at commodity markets?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2020, @05:51AM
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-are-the-sources-of-drinking-water-in-dubai.html [worldatlas.com]
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday August 20 2020, @01:06PM (1 child)
> And you can obtain it in vertical farms, right? Negligible footprint.
The GP was talking about yield per acre. If you have a tower, then that casts a shadow over land nearby, so you can't put another tower there, or solar panels, or whatever (not forgetting plants need light to grow). The averaged yield per acre is probably rather lower than flat fields. Once UAE runs out of desert, it makes sense to start going flat.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday August 21 2020, @02:45AM
My point: there isn't a single metric to say "hydroponics is a better solution no matter the conditions".
And I said that yield-per-acre is a bad metric to compare the traditional agriculture vs hydroponic, because of course hydroponics is going to win (for crops that can be grown in hydroponics), that's a no-brainer platitude that tells nothing.
Another metric that has to do with affordability: energy expenditure per unit of food.
Which of course it's going to favor traditional agriculture: most of the plant energy come from the free exposure to the sunlight.
Which of the two is better? Depends on the conditions that you have and the crop you need to grow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2020, @04:05AM (3 children)
http://www.kylesconverter.com/area-density/bushels-per-acre-to-tonnes-per-hectare [kylesconverter.com]
Use whatever metric you like, but pick one in common use among farmers, please.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 20 2020, @05:18AM (2 children)
Total cost per unit of food type.
Like, what's the current price for is a ton of hydroponic wheat?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2020, @05:39AM (1 child)
1. What is the popularity of wheat in Dubai?
2. If wheat is liked well enough that Dubai grows it, we'll soon learn the price.
3. current wheat prices - https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/wheat-price?op=1 [businessinsider.com]
The real point is not the price of wheat, or any other commodity. The point seems to be independence from outside influences.
Another point might be that Dubai anticipates the world being less dependent on oil in the future. If the world needs less oil, or even no oil, prices fall, and Dubai eventually runs out of currency to trade for food. Dubai needs to transition to feeding itself, preferably before the oil market slumps, or even collapses.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 20 2020, @06:24AM
Impossible for UAE without exports of oil (particular case of the more "energy exports"), the local conditions can't feed that many of them.
They do have sunlight and vast empty spaces, tho', so maybe they can start building something around solar/hydrogen economy before their offer on international markets become obsolete.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2020, @04:15AM
One of the pioneers of this was New Alchemy Institute, on Cape Cod in MA. Some friends and I visited in the mid-1970s, very inspiring to see things growing everywhere, plants & fish, in different system designs,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Alchemy_Institute [wikipedia.org]
https://newalchemists.net/ [newalchemists.net]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday August 20 2020, @03:10AM (1 child)
Biodiversity is a bitch and weather has some nasty surprises from time to time.
Your control over nature is still puny, human.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by coolgopher on Thursday August 20 2020, @03:59AM
What cannot be controlled must be destroyed.
And we're right onto that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2020, @07:06PM
That would be idiotic. We can exploit the water cycle and make these deserts into lush forests, bringing greater precipitation, refilling aquifers, and absorbing CO2. We don't, because politicians and executives prefer flashy short-term BS like the stuff you're proposing.