Indoor Farming. | TheaterFire

[-]

funklab@reddit

Just for fun I was investigating the same question. It’s totally possible. It’s just incredibly energy intensive.

By my calculations (which could be way off), you need about 1,000 kWh per day per person just for the grow lights to grow 2,000 calories worth of food. For context the average home uses 900kwh per MONTH.

So for every single person you need 30,000 kWh which at the average cost of electricity in the United States of $0.18 per kWh is $5,400 per month of electricity. Of course if you’re resorting to growing food in a bunker you probably don’t have ready access to grid power, so that’s about 3,000 gallons of diesel you need to source for your generator each month or about 600 solar panels that you need to maintain plus a battery with a minimum capacity of 1,000 kWh (ie a battery that costs several hundred thousand dollars).

So for a family of four you’re looking at approximately a 1MW solar farm for about $1,000,000 (about 5-10 acres of solar panels depending on how sunny your climate is) and maybe another $1-3m in battery capacity so you can keep your crops alive when it’s cloudy.

Definitely doable, but not terribly realistic unless you’re a billionaire and an electrician.

It’s probably easier to just farm those ten acres than try to maintain thousands of solar panels just to keep the lights on before you start the farming.

[-]

PVPicker@reddit

The calculations seem significantly off. Assuming that half the day is 'lit', that's 1,000kwh / 12 hours = 83 kw continuously for 12 hours. Sun emits around 1,000 watts of light per square meter. That's 83 square meters. Google says you need 15-50 square meters of planets per one person. However it seems potatoes and other plants are typically fine with around 8 hours a day of sunlight, also 50% of sunlight is IR which isn't needed for plants to grow and ambient bunker temperatures should be fine.

Going with 50 square meters * 8 hours a day * receiving 50% of 1000 watts per sq meter (500 watts) is 200 kwh a day. If you go with a more conservative 20 square meters that's only 80kwh and could likely be optimized even further with proper spectrum LEDs and not running the LEDs at 100% for the entire duration.

[-]

funklab@reddit

Significantly more than half the day is “lit” during the growing season, which is what you need to replicate for a fully artificially lit bunker grow. But solar panels only capture 15-20% of the sun’s energy. Because of the angle of the sun and clouds, a solar panel rated for 100 watts is lucky to get 500wh total in a 24 hour day. Then you’ve got the losses in either transmitting the electricity over long distance DC circuits (in the case of a several acre solar farm) or inverting it to AC for less loss in transmission. Then you lose more as you charge the batteries and discharge them. Plus you can’t have 400,000 square feet of solar panels on 400,000 square feet of land.

You know, you’re numbers do give me pause. I think I may have grossly miscalculated, but not in the direction you’re thinking. For a bunker grow to be viable via solar you have to take the worst case scenario (ie the darkest, cloudiest, shortest days in the winter) and with a combination of battery and direct current from the panels power your grow setup for at least 15 hours per day.

Let’s assume Lebanon Kansas (roughly the geographic center of the continental us). Around the winter solstice the day length is 9.5 hours. Let’s go ahead and assume the weather is sunny all day every day, never a cloud in the sky.

For every acre of crops you can grow intensively outside in the 14 hours of summer sun you get in Kansas, you need 14/9.5= about 1.5 acres of solar panels. But the solar panels are only 20% efficient at most so you actually need 7.5 acres. And then you have to account for the fact that you can’t put solar panels on every square inch of your property, have to have at least 20% of the land free to access the panels to repair them and to avoid any obstacles on the ground. So now we’re at 9.375 acres of solar panels per equivalent acre of farmland.

And that’s assuming absolute ideal conditions.

So, conservatively, for every acre of solar panels you put up you can simulate about 1/10th of the sunlight underground.

There’s no situation I can imagine where it’s going to be worth maintaining 10 acres of solar panels above ground to grow 1 acre of crops underground.

Why not just grow the crops above ground?

[-]

PVPicker@reddit

Again, you do not need more than 12 hours of grow lights per day. Suggestion is around 8-10. The spectrum you're hitting the plants with is catered for growth/etc. Plants need as much sunlight as possible as the vast majority of energy (such as IR/etc) isn't even used for their metabolism.

[-]

dunk07@reddit

Yeah I think you could feed someone 2k calories a day with 500wh a month

[-]

Eurogal2023@reddit

Mushrooms to the rescue! They looove damp and dark, you just have to learn how to keep your grow room really clean. They can be grown in used coffee grounds or damp hay, also probably in other stuff, I just know about those two versions. In some cities people grow mushrooms commercially by collecting the coffee grounds from Starbucks and so on.

[-]

Teitoriflox@reddit (OP)

How do i Reproduce Mushrooms and is it good to just eat mushrooms? I would need somekind of additional food source like Maggots or other insects

[-]

dunk07@reddit

Maggots tf

[-]

Eurogal2023@reddit

No need for maggots, mushrooms have protein and minerals, you can google "growing mushrooms in coffee grounds" or so and go on from there.

Probably someone here has more personal info on this, I have just collected them in the wild, but know people who have grown them in old straw bales, and got so many they hardly could keep up eating them all.

[-]

SparrowLikeBird@reddit

Yes! - there are soime wild container gardens that people do soilfree even.

[-]

TheWoman2@reddit

First you are going to need light. You are either going to need a way to provide natural light without compromising your bunker, or you are going to need artificial lights and a lot of power to run them.

Second you are going to need a lot of area. Even using hydroponics and grow lights and stacking the plants floor to ceiling it is going to take a lot of space to grow enough food to sustain a person

Third you are going to need water. Both hydroponic and conventional growing us a lot of water.

Fourth, you are going to have issues with humidity. Lots of plants = lots of humidity = mold issues everywhere. Proper ventilation can fix that, but proper ventilation may be tough in a bunker.

Fifth, you are going to need nutrients for the plants. Yes, you can compost your waste, but that is going to be smelly in your bunker, and it isn't going to be enough. You can stock up on fertilizer, but eventually that will run out.

Yes, it could be done, but storing food is far more practical unless we are talking really, really long term. Supplementing your stored food with a few fresh vegetables is far more reasonable.

[-]

Financial_Resort6631@reddit

I would do Aquaponics and run fiber optic cord for the natural sunlight. I would look into grey water gardening too. You are going to need a huge bunker to pull this off.

It might be better to learn permaculture techniques.

[-]

OnTheEdgeOfFreedom@reddit

This is the correct answer. With enough resources, sure it's possible. But I'd call it wildly impractical on any sane budget.

[-]

iwannaddr2afi@reddit

Agreed, also not something you'd be advised to stash and just start attempting to use the second the world ends lol you'd need expertise to design the system and some level of experience to use it even if it were designed for you.

[-]

Adol214@reddit

Netherlands.

1st country as per agriculture export in europe. 2nd worldwide.

Grow most in greenhouse and automatized system.

Actually a model the word will need to copy as ground agriculture will become impossible due to climate change.

Look at report on YouTube about the Netherlands vegetables production. Also "urban farming" utilize the ground space optimally and often grow indoor.

After, personally, i would only do this for small fresh stuff like aromatic grass or strawberry. Carbon hydrate are easy to store long term, but you need spice and vitamin.

[-]

AdditionalAd9794@reddit

You would need some sort of long term power supply and some way to feed your plants, I guess you could stock pile fertilizer or recycle your waste as humanure

[-]

No-Imagination-6981@reddit

Well, I immediately thought no because you need pollinators (bee's, etc), but you can grow leafy greens with out them.

However, lettuce doesn't contain too many calories, so that wont be helpful.

You can hand pollinate stuff, but god that's a task and a half, but if you are living in a sealed bunker what else you got to do?

[-]

Teitoriflox@reddit (OP)

Whatabout Potatoes and stuff like this?

[-]

No-Imagination-6981@reddit

Potatoes are another reason why I changed my original post ... I literally remove the flowers from my potatoes because they don't need to plinate.

However, you also need to consider "next year" and saving seeds, etc etc

Ultimately i think the answer is no.

[-]

melympia@reddit

Not with potatoes. Or sweet potatoes. Or sunchokes.

Grains are tricky, as they are wind-pollinated.

Then there is scrap gardening. For anything from the allium family, just cut off the green parts (yes, also from garlic - the greens taste like mild garlic) anf leave the rest to grow back. Carrots should theoretically regrow if you generously cut off the top part with no or very little green and pit them in water or on wet soil. For onions, eat the big ones and plant the small ones. Peas are infamous for self-pollinating, and I would be willing to take a chance on beans, too. Pumpkins and otjer gourds need to be pollinated, but you can do so by hand - the flowers are big and far between. Be mindful of the fact that male flowers are close to the root, while female flowers are distributed among the vines.

[-]

MistoftheMorning@reddit

Sure, you just need 4,000 sq.ft of grow light space per person, a small nuclear reactor or geothermal generator hookup that can put out about 200-400 kW of power, and a 99% efficient water/waste recycling system.

[-]

Ashley_Sophia@reddit

Check out shipping container gardens... 🤙

[-]

PurplePickle3@reddit

Yall ever heard of an AeroGarden…… it’s kinda their whole thing.

[-]

niluvani@reddit

There's more to it than just buying this overpriced contraption. It requires power, water, and nutrients. Some plants require hand pollination, and they still need bug care and maintenance.

[-]

PurplePickle3@reddit

I have 9 tomato plants that have been producing almost weekly for 400+ days. Never had to worry about a single bug. All the nutrients come from a bottle that they supply that hasn’t run out yet, and the roots are so well established that I don’t bother anymore. Literally all they need is water and enough power that runs off a power bank. I have kept it running with the power out. Additionally, you could just leave it by the window. Leaving all you need is water. And if you don’t have enough water for some plants you’re fucked either way.

Also, over priced is relative, but there are plenty of options for bigger, cheaper, setups if you’re willing to set the timers and not get reminders etc.

This missing and play and simple as shit. If that’s not your thing, don’t buy one.

Oh also, and you’d know this if you bothered looking at anything other than the price… the plants are close enough together that a simple fan will pollinate them perfectly.

[-]

niluvani@reddit

Don't forget its more than just water and sunlight. Your plants need food. They make powdered nutrients, but do you really have space for it?

[-]

HazAdaptOfficial@reddit

Short answer: Technically yes. You can use hydroponics or soil beds with grow lights to grow enough food. Self sustainable just depends on how much space, time, and funds you have available to get it started.

[-]

silasmoeckel@reddit

Micro greens are a good fit.

[-]

No_Day_9204@reddit

Micro greens require a stockpile of seeds. Growing your own seeds wouldn't keep up with a micro green design. Good option to have once and a while, but as a staple, you can't grow enough seeds.

[-]

No_Day_9204@reddit

Yes, totally. But supplemental light, from opening a hatch or a mirror system to get light into the bunker, helps on power. Kinda like the 5th element. But you have to worry about climate control as well. It can be managed in a passive way, but it's location based and equipment based.

If you run a heating cooling pump, you will be able to harvest water from the grow room atmosphere in your room as well. Saving water or reclaiming it.

But all of this is power dependent and light choice dependent. So led would be the way to go, but you would have to have a stockpile of them as they tent to only the last 5 to 10 years.

Bet everywhere I go, because my job demands me to move around a lot, I have an indoor garden.

My advice is to do it yourself and then work out the problems like like in that movie "The Martian" Mark watney that shit.

[-]

Own-Marionberry-7578@reddit

Having legally grown medical MJ indoors and on the sly, it's possible, but not sustainable at scale or for long periods of time. You would need a lot of resources. Instead you should research guerilla farming and hiding crops in wild places. Crops that wouldn't need constant maintenance. I have a relative that likes to plant yams and mushrooms in various places in the forest and just leave them be until needed.

[-]

PolarisFallen2@reddit

I could give a longer answer here, but for now will just say look into how different plants are pollinated.

Some foods don’t need pollination… potatoes and other root veggies like radishes, carrots, beets, parsnips, rutabaga. Also greens, like lettuces, spinach, herbs. Some things are wind pollinated and you can increase pollination in simple ways like shaking their trellis to get things moving… tomatoes. Some plants like squashes and cucumbers, there is a male and female flower that grows on the same plant and you can pollinate them yourself, though that’s a bit annoying to have to do. For some things, like tomatillos, you need multiple of the same type of plant to pollinate with each other, which again you could do by hand but that’s a bit tedious.

Other than pollination, you need light (can be achieved artificially through grow lights), water, and nutrients for the plant (fertilizer and/or compost). It’s possible. You can look into aquaponics or just regular gardening in dirt. Container gardening would also be a good one to look into - It’s important to know how much growing space is needed for different crops and whether they need trellising or any other special conditions.

[-]

Sea_Magazine_5321@reddit

The sun grows plants outside.

Do you have the energy to mimic the sun indoors?

Do you have the space to grow enough food?

[-]

MrHmuriy@reddit

It's probably possible, but most likely you'll need to have solar panels, wind turbines, and other sources outside the bunker that can provide a fairly large amount of electricity for lighting, watering, and heating such a greenhouse.

[-]

SunLillyFairy@reddit

Yes, but not self-sustainable as your only calories. Greens are quick and easy in hydroponics units. Edible herbs and such in pots is doable. Sprouting micro greens and wheat on trays would give you a fresh source for vitamins. But have the room, water, fertilizer and lights to grow starchy veggies enough to be self sustaining would be almost impossible, unless you had some huge military-type bunker with a floor dedicated to growing food. More probable is growing some fresh food to supplement stored food.

Side note… If you had to be in a bunker long enough to grow food.. what is left of the world to return to? This makes more sense to me if you’re pondering a scenario with some kind of weather pattern or air contamination or virus where you need to hunker down for a few months.

[-]

pineapplesf@reddit

I don't think pollination would be the hard part. Bugs exist everywhere and only a few plants require hand pollination.

Space... you'd need a lot, even with vertical farming. Power to run the right lamps would be difficult. Fans and heat as well. Wouldn't take a ton of fertilizer, especially with an aquaponic system, bur water and nutrient recycling would be hard.

[-]

kkinnison@reddit

not really self-sustainable. eventually what ever you are using for soil is going to lose nutrients you cannot get in a closed system. takes a lot of soil and biology science to sustain it, might not even to be able to do it on your own without help. There is a lot of investment right now on closed system indoor urban farming, and they even have success growing some food on the international space station

But the problem is, a lot of farming cost is lowered based on using natural resources. Rain, sunlight, climate, natural fertilizer (aka Manure) and existing soil. (Dont forget Cheap exploited Migrant labor) once you start removing the natural elements it becomes prohibitively expensive

[-]

SnooStories251@reddit

Aquaponic with Fish maybe? Tomato+maize + fish or some other combo.

Potatos, strawberriers, grapes. I would try multiple and see what survives with little to no maintainance.