However, LEDs don’t produce enough useable light for plants to grow as well as they could. Power-efficient lighting, like LED lights, has become much cheaper in recent years. This reduction can be achieved by more efficiently recreating the resources the plants need or using more efficient systems to produce the power itself.
To make indoor agriculture a more widespread reality, the cost of energy resources needs to be substantially reduced. “Right now, we’re able to produce around ten grams of crop per kilowatt hour of electricity,” says Giacomelli. Giacomelli, around 70 percent of the operational cost of an indoor farm comes from the cost of electrical energy. For closed spaces, a farmer needs to regulate the surrounding temperature and the amount of light his plants receive. Without access to direct sunlight, the generation of electricity quickly becomes an issue. To provide sustainable sources of food and oxygen for astronauts, researchers are working with NASA to create lunar greenhouses that could be deployed in flight or even on other planets.īut the total control that indoor agriculture offers also creates problems for indoor growers. If we’re ever going to turn science fiction into science fact, we will have to take much of Earth’s habitat into space with us. “In areas where the cost of transporting food outweighs the cost of local production, you see plant factories and indoor urban farms gaining popularity,” says Gene Giacomelli, a Professor of Agriculture and Biosystems Engineering at the University of Arizona. Indoor agriculture, or vertical farming, is expanding as urban farming becomes necessary in densely populated areas. This indoor setting allows the growers to take advantage of direct sunlight and gain total control over their agricultural environment. As a result, many growers in the Rocky Mountain State are moving to greenhouses. However, in legal states like Colorado, Massachusetts, and Washington, growers are required by law to grow their plants indoors. Now as states reconsider their regulations on growing cannabis, today’s growers can begin to move outdoors and into more traditional farm settings. Until recently, much of the cultivation of cannabis took place behind closed doors because it was illegal.
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