Across the country, more indoor farms are launching or expanding even as others founder. This summer marked the groundbreaking of a huge vertical farming operation in Virginia by the California-based company Plenty Unlimited.
Because these factory farms optimize for growth over everything else. Nutrient profiles have been getting progressively worse since the start of industrial farming, maximizing weight, volume and calories over everything else. This is just the next step in making it worse.
Plants grown in “natural conditions” have much more rich nutrient and beneficial compound profiles, as the soils they grow in are richer and some amount of environmental stresses like temperature fluctuations, too much light, pest pressure etc will make them healthier for us. This is because the most of the compounds/products plants produce to protect themselves from these stresses are beneficial for our health.
Also they take up microorganisms in healthy soil, that will improve your microbiome when you eat them, significantly improving your health. E.g. because they ferment dietary fibre into the short chain fatty acids that feed your digestive system or have a moderting effect on your immune system or produce most of your serotonin or help you in digestion etc… Contrary to popular belief they don’t all get destroyed by stomach acid and they don’t just live ON the plant but IN the plant also.
That’s why organic pesticide free food from a permaculture food forest is so much healthier than anything produced through sterile industrial farming. If you produce plants in a completely stress free environment without microorganism rich healthy soil, you won’t get any of these benefits.
Kind of funny that that is such an unpopular opinion is a community like this. Really shows you how miseducated people are about nutrition. Nutrition isn’t just fulfilling your macro and micronutrient targets. It is much more complicated than this reductive view of nutrition. That’s one of the main reasons why autoimmune disorders are exploding and will only get worse the more prevalent “food” like this becomes.
You don’t need pesticides to grow them in a vertical farm, and when they aren’t getting attacked by insects and disease you don’t need to focus on pest and disease resistance for the varieties you grow. Pesticides, like you would agree, are not good for people’s health.
You can use your water in a closed loop meaning your use of fertiliser is exponentially more efficient and doesn’t end up in the environment, which we know effects the health of people and particularly the health of waterways and the ocean.
By growing the food locally there is less need for refrigeration and transport, significantly reducing the CO2 produced, and fresher food is more nutritious.
By using space more efficiently we don’t need to continue bulldozing rainforests to grow lettuce, which we also know is bad for human health and the planet. In fact, we’d potentially be able to begin rewilding farmland which would be extremely good for the planet.
And if it’s established to be important, there’s no reason a carefully fostered microbiome can’t be established inside vertical farms.
I agree that growing food in an organic food forest way produces likely the best food. But it’s simply not pragmatic if your goal is feeding billions of people while minimising environmental impact. Vertical farming can accomplish many of the same things while also dramatically reducing our impact on the environment.
I think that highly depends on the soil and environmental conditions they are given. It’s kind of a blanket generalization to just assume they must be worse, as if farmers didn’t account for farming, no?
Doubtful. Industrial agriculture is applying the same nutrients, but to the dirt. A large portion doesn’t make it to the roots, and instead gets swept up and runs off into the water system.
Versus hydroponics, where the nutrients are added directly to the water which is applied directly to the roots and cycles back through the system repeatedly.
If the soil grows plants can be grown without fertilizer, you might have a point. But we have historically low topsoil, and most of it is less good quality. To continue with traditional/industrial agriculture, we need to start implementing regenerative practices, and that would take decades of active management across the entire sector to make a big enough impact.
also the nutrient profile of these plants is probably even worse than regular industrial farming
Why?
Because these factory farms optimize for growth over everything else. Nutrient profiles have been getting progressively worse since the start of industrial farming, maximizing weight, volume and calories over everything else. This is just the next step in making it worse.
Plants grown in “natural conditions” have much more rich nutrient and beneficial compound profiles, as the soils they grow in are richer and some amount of environmental stresses like temperature fluctuations, too much light, pest pressure etc will make them healthier for us. This is because the most of the compounds/products plants produce to protect themselves from these stresses are beneficial for our health.
Also they take up microorganisms in healthy soil, that will improve your microbiome when you eat them, significantly improving your health. E.g. because they ferment dietary fibre into the short chain fatty acids that feed your digestive system or have a moderting effect on your immune system or produce most of your serotonin or help you in digestion etc… Contrary to popular belief they don’t all get destroyed by stomach acid and they don’t just live ON the plant but IN the plant also.
That’s why organic pesticide free food from a permaculture food forest is so much healthier than anything produced through sterile industrial farming. If you produce plants in a completely stress free environment without microorganism rich healthy soil, you won’t get any of these benefits.
Kind of funny that that is such an unpopular opinion is a community like this. Really shows you how miseducated people are about nutrition. Nutrition isn’t just fulfilling your macro and micronutrient targets. It is much more complicated than this reductive view of nutrition. That’s one of the main reasons why autoimmune disorders are exploding and will only get worse the more prevalent “food” like this becomes.
You don’t need pesticides to grow them in a vertical farm, and when they aren’t getting attacked by insects and disease you don’t need to focus on pest and disease resistance for the varieties you grow. Pesticides, like you would agree, are not good for people’s health.
You can use your water in a closed loop meaning your use of fertiliser is exponentially more efficient and doesn’t end up in the environment, which we know effects the health of people and particularly the health of waterways and the ocean.
By growing the food locally there is less need for refrigeration and transport, significantly reducing the CO2 produced, and fresher food is more nutritious.
By using space more efficiently we don’t need to continue bulldozing rainforests to grow lettuce, which we also know is bad for human health and the planet. In fact, we’d potentially be able to begin rewilding farmland which would be extremely good for the planet.
And if it’s established to be important, there’s no reason a carefully fostered microbiome can’t be established inside vertical farms.
I agree that growing food in an organic food forest way produces likely the best food. But it’s simply not pragmatic if your goal is feeding billions of people while minimising environmental impact. Vertical farming can accomplish many of the same things while also dramatically reducing our impact on the environment.
It’s not correct. Aquaponics at least is amazingly efficient in that respect.
I think that highly depends on the soil and environmental conditions they are given. It’s kind of a blanket generalization to just assume they must be worse, as if farmers didn’t account for farming, no?
Doubtful. Industrial agriculture is applying the same nutrients, but to the dirt. A large portion doesn’t make it to the roots, and instead gets swept up and runs off into the water system.
Versus hydroponics, where the nutrients are added directly to the water which is applied directly to the roots and cycles back through the system repeatedly.
If the soil grows plants can be grown without fertilizer, you might have a point. But we have historically low topsoil, and most of it is less good quality. To continue with traditional/industrial agriculture, we need to start implementing regenerative practices, and that would take decades of active management across the entire sector to make a big enough impact.