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The Fallacy of High-Tech
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The Fallacy of High-Tech
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Many high-productivity farms maximize output by maintaining stable environments using climatecontrol systems and artificial lighting. Some modern farms incorporate virtual plant monitoring, using data gathered from environmental conditions and plant health to provide constant feedback to optimise plant growth. Additionally, cloud computing and artificial intelligence are incorporated to learn and predict outcomes, such as when to water or harvest crops. These processes can increase yields by up to 20 times conventional methods, while also using only 60% of the water.6
What is seldom discussed with these innovations is the amount of energy needed to run these systems 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
This concept of a black-box farm, aims to seal itself away from the natural environment, opting instead for artificial landscapes free from deviation. The constant monitoring may increase productivity, but there comes a point where the energy requirements outweigh the increase in yield. For example, the high-productivity, vertical greenhouses in Singapore require 7.5 kWh to grow a kilogram of lettuce, compared to the 1.8 kWh for conventional soil cultivation, an increase of more than four times.7 These increased energy demands, which if scaled to meet Singapore’s 30 by 30 target, may solve food security but bring about national energy issues.
The energy-hungry black box farm is an unsustainable model for long term urban agriculture, regardless of the energy source. An alternative must be considered which can marry high-productivity strategies with passive farming methods. The sun produces constantly produces vast amounts of light, more than most conventional artificial lighting systems, and does it at no cost. When sunlight is replaced by LEDs, it requires extensive infrastructure and cost to implement and maintain.
Instead of using fitting smart technologies into “dumb buildings”, a new paradigm should be considered where technology is utilised upstream, to develop intelligently designed buildings with passive systems.
