controlled-enviroment agriculture is really only economical for fast turnaround crops like salad greens. even taking transportation cost into consideration i’d be shocked if indoor farming was more sustainable than good outdoor practices (not talking big monocrop fields here). using PV to run lighting is so much more inefficient than just using the sun it’s laughable, and there’s a ton of extra infrastructure you need to put in place for indoor growing.
controlled-enviroment agriculture is really only economical for fast turnaround crops like salad greens. even taking transportation cost into consideration i’d be shocked if indoor farming was more sustainable than good outdoor practices (not talking big monocrop fields here). using PV to run lighting is so much more inefficient than just using the sun it’s laughable, and there’s a ton of extra infrastructure you need to put in place for indoor growing.
the thing is it’s a lot more resilient to random heat waves and cold snaps, which will become increasingly difficult to predict
indoor farming isn’t going to feed human civilization but I think it will be necessary to have at least some form of stable food output