Ecologieforum

Indoor farms have some major inefficiencies, too. Instead of using sunlight and rain, they have to use electricity to power LEDs and water pumps. Instead of simply cultivating a field, they require a huge up-front investment in machinery. Indoor farms are exciting, because they are a radical departure from traditional techniques, but that also makes them risky. The innovators are trying to improve an age-old process by replacing a free, naturally occurring system with a mechanical one — it’s like trying to improve humans by building synthetic hearts.