Probably no soybeans going there this year . . .

High gas here now, up by 35 cents.

(May 14, 2018 at 7:09 am)Khemikal Wrote: The primary reason to hire migrant labor..in ag... is skill, not cost.  Migrant haters need to learn a fuckin trade, lol.  


Personally...I used to commute two hours a day to farm.  Factoring in the length of the days and cost of travel I think I was making something like $8 bucks an hour, lol....-but- I love it and we were building the sort of operation you're all going to be familiar with, in cities, in coming years.  All those big box retailers that are getting pushed out leave an amazing piece of land behind them for integrated hydro.  It's right in the middle of the market with massive frontage and parking, and the infrastructure is already set up.

In chicago, for example..theres a millionaire waiting to happen with RAS trout/tilapia, prawn and marine shrimp in a combo dwc/vert facility.  In a one acre parking lot, you can grow a simulated 8 acres of strawberries - 100k lbs, and @ 2.5/7tons of fresh.. as in never frozen, seafood.  It;s the establishment cost, not the productivity..that;s the issue.  Quarter mil for the hydro if it;s facility based, another 150k ish for the ras*.  That;s just to set it up (and if you did it yourself instead of hiring some asshole like me to do it), operating cost would be near 200k yearly.  Could tilt it towards the RAS and produce many times as much seafood if you run yuppie chow in a biofloc system.  The average (successful) integrated system goes black in 2 to 3 years despite upfront costs approaching 1mil in the first year.  

The only real limitation in the urban setting is phosporus disharge regulation into muncipal water - and it;s usually not an issue (not an issue at all with trout and strawberries).  The city rarely cares about it;s residents and favors high taxpayers.  That and the purchasing agreements @ the fuckin kroger.....;(

*People have done it a hell of alot cheaper..buyt it;s usually one or some combo of sweetheart deals, redneck macguyver setups, and subpar control systems.  Guys who, for example, trickle water through a 55gal drum filled with netting rather than pay 8kUSD per 20m3/water for bioreactive mechanical filtration.

Excellent points.  There are lots of defunct regional shopping malls that could be converted into assorted mini-farms as you describe.  The main drawback might be the high water use and disposal issues.  It'll be a good project for a billionaire to look at.

Well, that and ensuring the soil underneath the dead malls in question is actually arable.

(May 14, 2018 at 7:21 pm)Rev. Rye Wrote: Well, that and ensuring the soil underneath the dead malls in question is actually arable.

Do you need dirt to raise chickens and fish?  And dirt for vegetables can be brought into the buildings.

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(May 15, 2018 at 1:39 am)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote:

(May 14, 2018 at 7:21 pm)Rev. Rye Wrote: Well, that and ensuring the soil underneath the dead malls in question is actually arable.

Do you need dirt to raise chickens and fish?  And dirt for vegetables can be brought into the buildings.

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Things don't grow well inside, and it can get really, really expensive, very quickly.

Deep water culture under artificial light is many, many times more productive than sun and soil. The lights are the only expensive part. The heat too, I suppose, if you're not rotating warm and cold water species and cultivars. Not prohibitively so, all modern commercial operations already run at a profit under artificial heat and light. To get an idea of the difference, indoor production uses a quarter of the space to produce a head of lettuce, and can do so in 34 days rather than 54 - all year round. Integrated systems have no additional fertility cost and the main source of water loss is evapotranspiration (which is often trapped in condensers, chillers, and exchangers.......then returned to the system for climate control).

There are some really impressive systems already up and running. The problem is subsistence level ag. Unless we want to surrender food production to retired hedge fund managers, we have to make the systems less expensive. UVI wrote the book on this. They managed to put together a small 1/5acre system that covered it;s operating costs and hit it;s roi @ the 4 years mark while providing for 45kUSD in labor per year split between one full time manager and one part time seasonal assistant. Cost about 80k to build it (and that;s because they were researchers stuck on an island, not procurement pros here in mainland usa with a badass sales staff, lol).

That system loses about 5 gallons a day from discharge, and produces 5.6klbs of fish and @12klbs of green veggies and fresh herbs. It was built for tilapia, lettuce and basil and fed to favor the fish with minimal planting space to scrub the effluent. Fed to favor the veg...you can utilize roughly 1kg of 32% protein feed for every 50m2 of rafts. 1kg of feed supports about 700lb of fish in the late growout. Breeders can get even more raft space out of a given mass of fish because fry and juveniles froduce more ammonia by bodyweight than adults.

I voted for Johnson in SC, which didn't help Trump win (Clinton didn't have a chance in SC, though she won the county the capital is in), but the Democrats will have to front an extremely stinky candidate to get me to vote third-party in 2020.

Answering the question in the title: Yes.

(May 15, 2018 at 11:32 am)Jehanne Wrote:

(May 15, 2018 at 1:39 am)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: Do you need dirt to raise chickens and fish?  And dirt for vegetables can be brought into the buildings.

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Things don't grow well inside, and it can get really, really expensive, very quickly.

Have you ever heard of Iceland?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Iceland

Learn what other people have done.  Use their ideas and refine them to fit your unique situation.