ZipGrow: Vertical farming/urban agriculture system

https://shop.zipgrow.com/

by davelnewton • 6 years ago

136 95 6 years ago

shop.zipgrow.com

gonesilent• 6 years ago

$399 for $25 in plastic. Go to home depot and buy some rain plastic gutters.

swiftcoder2• 6 years ago

Every time one of these vertical/rotating indoor farms comes onto the market (usually via crowdfunding), it has roughly the same level of cost inflation. Haven't quite figured out who they are conning into buying these setups.

gullyfur2• 6 years ago

What's the best DIY video on building something like this? I don't even know where to start.

Bertio• 6 years ago

I have a way overpriced aerogarden farm and for me it's really just decor along the lines of having an aquarium. It certainly doesn't yield enough of anything to be worth the price. I contemplated something DIY but I didn't think I could get the clean aesthetics. I have a 3d printer now so I could probably make something that looks less like a hack now.

bootlooped2• 6 years ago

Square vinyl fence post or large diameter PVC pipe are commonly used with Nutrient Film Technique aka NFT. Both super cheap at Home Depot as well.

jseliger• 6 years ago

This is reminiscent of the people who ask, "Why would anyone buy a pre-loaded Linux laptop, Dell's Developer Editions, when you can already install it on an older Thinkpad?"

Service, support, ease of use and setup, and, in the case of something that might be visible in a readily trafficked area, aesthetics.

If those things are not valuable to you (and they may not be) then you are not the target audience.

Pfhreak2• 6 years ago

Having built a system in my basement to grow basil, spinach, and lettuce, there's a whole lot more to it than $25 in plastic.

First, you should use food grade plastic, then there are lights, a pump, shelving, growing medium, fertilizer, ph adjustment, extension cords, timers, cups, air tubing, and air stone, and a bunch of other stuff.

Then you have to get it all home, double and triple check you are doing it correctly.

I don't think I spent $500, but no way anyone can put together an equivalent system for $25. Like most things, there's a lot more complexity than people realize.

atomi• 6 years ago

Perhaps not NFT. But you can get into other forms of hydro real cheaply if you're thrifty.

flagada2• 6 years ago

I don't really understand the whole "urban agriculture" crowd.

People do often live in crowded cities, but there's plenty of space to grow stuff on outside of cities. It's the same kind of thinking that gave us the solad roads (which were, predictably, a catastrophic failure).

Mountain_Skies• 6 years ago

If (a really big IF) solar panels can get efficient enough while LEDs also become more efficient, in theory plants grown indoors being fed by LEDs attuned to the precise portions of the spectrum they need with the whole thing powered by the solar panels, you could get a better yield than outdoor growing. Figure out cost effective fusion, things get even better. But neither is the case right now.

As far as the urban agriculture crowd goes, they're concerned about the length of their logistics lines to their tables. Raspberries grown half a mile down the street in winter is better for the environment than flying them in from another hemisphere... provided you get the energy costs of the indoor farming system low enough.

wallacoloo• 6 years ago

As far as the urban agriculture crowd goes, they're concerned about the length of their logistics lines to their tables. Raspberries grown half a mile down the street in winter is better for the environment than flying them in from another hemisphere.

Aside from environmental effects, it’s also just a more secure logistics chain. A person needs water, food, and shelter to survive. Sometimes it feels strange to me that the trend of the past centuries has been to increase the distance between a person and those sources — to introduce more points of failure between you and the things you need in order to survive.

Retric2• 6 years ago

Until you genetically engineer a more efficient plant and your back to a net loss even assuming absolutely free panels and LED’s etc.

Vertical farming only really works as either artistic preference for maximum visual appeal or the kind of science fiction where you assume only a small handful of technology advanced.

mrfusion• 6 years ago

Indoor you could surround the plant with mirrors so more light gets input into the plant. Also no wasted water.

AngryData5• 6 years ago

Unless you do pull out fusion, you will always have too huge loss between solar panels and LEDs. As efficient as LEDs are now, and I know because I just built 1200 watts of the latest and most efficient LEDs that are available, they are nowhere near cost effective in comparison tot he sun. Plants are not nearly as inefficient as people believe, especially when you consider the fact that solar panels themselves can also only absorb a small fraction of the light spectrum.

That 1200 watts is only really covering a 6 by 6 foot square worth of growth area at about 35 watts a square foot at 200 lumens per watts. It could be slightly larger but only if you want most plants to grow extremely slow or be really weak, and you can go up to 50 watts per square foot before requiring supplemental CO2 but not all plants like that amount of light.

Converting that to 1 acre worth of coverage, which is what is about what is needed to feed a single human for one year, you are looking at about 1,500,000 watts running 12-18 hours per day. That is a ridiculous amount of energy. Even assuming you can get away with 1/3 of that area by super careful and efficient growth year round that is still a half million watts in lighting costs alone. Not to mention all the other work and costs.

I don't see indoor farms being good for anything other than extreme specialty plants or extremely fragile plants until we can pull essentially limitless energy out for far cheaper than we can get even with fossil fuels.

heurist2• 6 years ago

Food production in US is increasingly consolidated into hands of large agriculture corporations. Why not decentralize, make the system more robust to shock (look what's happening with grocery stores today)?

flagada2• 6 years ago

I entirely agree, this would be great. I don't see why it has to be done in cities though. Farmers in smaller co-ops can provide a similar decentralisation.

pault3• 6 years ago

The grocery stores are low on stock because of selfish people panic buying, not because there's not enough food. The supply chain is still functioning normally.

Barrin92• 6 years ago

The system looks pretty damn robust given that we've just shut the global economy down and the food still keeps coming in. Maybe with some hiccups but that's complaining at a high level.

The reason decentralization doesn't make a lot of sense is because we need to produce food cheap and at scale to feed the world. Putting thousands of dollars into vertical farming equipment that doesn't fit into the apartments of most people on the planet is kind of silly.

There's also simply division of labour at work here. It's uneconomical for large portions of the population to spend their time farming.

It's essentially just a recreational hobby for wealthy people or maybe reasonable on a Mars Colony, but here it does not make much sense.

philipkglass2• 6 years ago

Urban farming only makes sense for high value, easily perishable produce. Fresh herbs, leafy greens, tomatoes, and other salad ingredients can be produced with higher quality when they are harvested and used on the same day, and when the plants don't have to be bred for shipment-and-storage durability. The real benefit is superior flavor and texture for quality-focused, price-insensitive eaters.

Note that this product site touts how much lettuce the system can grow.

More radical claims about how vertical farms will reduce CO2 emissions or feed a growing world population are aspirational to the point of delusion. Vertical farming isn't going to replace the calories that people get from potatoes and beans grown in big plots of dirt outdoors. If you ate potatoes grown in a nearby vertical farm instead of ones grown in Idaho and shipped across the country, you'd actually be increasing your carbon footprint.

It takes only a little energy to move a potato a thousand miles cross-country. It takes a lot of energy to grow a potato under artificial light. Even though renewable energy is ~20x better in life cycle emissions than fossil energy, it takes more than 20x as much energy to grow potatoes under artificial light. From a CO2 life cycle perspective you're better off eating potatoes that had ordinary diesel powered tractors, trains, and trucks involved in their production and delivery than to eat potatoes that were grown in a wind-powered vertical farm next door to you.

cosmodisk• 6 years ago

These arguments are often lost shen people believe in something blindly. Tomato grown in Spain and flown to England will end up costing our earth less than the smae tomato grown in England because of additional energy to keep it worm required.

natmaka3• 6 years ago

Source?

AFAIK traditional artificial light sources do indeed dissipate much more energy for the same amount of 'useful light', and also produce so much heat that they cannot be placed near the plant.

Is artificial light mandatory in urban farming? Aren't some (non fiber-optics-based) "light tubes" able to transmit light along with the necessary UV?

mandelbrotwurst2• 6 years ago

This is a false choice. Urban agriculture doesn't need to mean indoor agriculture / relying on excessive electricity / complex equipment etc.

Cities can be plenty dense while still having enough space for people to grow potatoes for themselves and their neighbors.

TACIXAT2• 6 years ago

It appeals to me. Even if the cost was higher, building the capability locally seems very valuable. As well, not all costs are monetary. If the pollution is lower (e.g. from eliminating transportation) it may be worth paying the higher price.

Another appeal is knowing exactly what goes into your food.

TheSoftwareGuy• 6 years ago

Most of the pollution from food production comes from actually producing the food. Things like tractors and stuff use a lot of fuel.

Furthermore, putting farms in urban buildings means that some urban businesses or residences will ha e to be moved further out, increasing pollution. In reality, this would move the pollution to the urban areas, and not reduce it.

Lastly, I can’t think of a reason that you’d know more about farming practices if it happens in an urban environment than in a rural environment

wenc• 6 years ago

What are "solad roads"?

geomark• 6 years ago

I it was intended to be solar roads.

mjcarden• 6 years ago

Typo for 'solar'?

hogFeast• 6 years ago

Look at the Netherlands. They have no land and one of the largest agricultural producers in the world.

More efficient, cheaper, better for the environment...the benefits are pretty much endless. It isn't about "urban" but using what we have more efficiently.

natmaka3• 6 years ago

In Japan there are also some pertinents operations.

Mirai ( http://miraigroup.jp/en/ ) states some benefits.

asdkjh345fd2• 6 years ago

They have no land and one of the largest agricultural producers in the world.

That's a bit of a misconception. Most people get the impression from the headlines that they produce a lot of food, but that is not really the case. The Netherlands is the world's second largest EXPORTER of "agricultural products", by dollar value. 10% of that is consulting and equipment. Another 10% is flowers. Those are not food. Even in the remaining 80%, it is mainly products that are high in monetary value, but low in land efficiency, like cheese and flavorless hydroponic tomatoes. The Netherlands actually only produces 50% of the calories needs of their population, and exports away a good chunk of that. They rely on importing staples to feed their population.

More efficient, cheaper, better for the environment

The Netherlands model is none of those things. It is just used as a propaganda tool for a corporate greenwashing campaign to convince people that spending lots of money on environmentally destructive and wasteful technology is good for the environment, when it is actually being done because it is good for the bank accounts of a small minority of wealthy people.

hatchnyc• 6 years ago

True, but it is very nice especially in the winter to have bright lights and green plants in your living space. That alone is worth it for me, having something to eat along the way is just a bonus.

opportune• 6 years ago

I think I read an article at one point that most "urban agriculture" and indoor farming tools were originally funded with the expectation that they would only be valuable for cannabis production. Because while you could grow tomatoes and lettuce indoors if you wanted to, it's really only economical to produce cannabis. I think that's still true today.

hanniabu4• 6 years ago

This is true to an extent, but I certainly wouldn't say it's the case for most. From my observation working in the field it was really only a thing between 2013-2015.

elasticventures2• 6 years ago

First, it's independence from the industrial farming infrastructure of the USA and knowing what fertilizers went into your food or medicine. Produce sold in your local store are the 'industrial' versions which are genetically bred for transport, storage and presentation over taste.

Second, it's climate change which is making outdoor farming more and more difficult by the year, as well as a push towards higher efficiency. Also, having a garden (or being around nature, things growing) has been clinically shown to reduce stress in humans.

Third, it's MUCH less climate impact to transport renewably sourced electrons over a regional grid than it is to transport decaying produce in cold storage to a grocery store. Free sunlight is still cheap, but creates dependence on the seasonality (frequency, duration) which means a variety of crops are totally non-viable in certain hemispheres. Full outdoor growing has a much higher level of exposure to pests, requiring pesticides -- whereas indoor growing under lights gives you a higher level of defensibly without that risk.

vangelis• 6 years ago

Get yourself some plastic containers, a Rain Bird starter kit, some LEDs, and you've got yourself your own indoor grow op for much cheaper.

dublinben• 6 years ago

There's an entire community building these makeshift "space buckets" for growing plants indoors.

https://www.spacebuckets.com/

https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceBuckets/

elcritch2• 6 years ago

I worked for the company that developed the technology. Personally not much of a green-thumb myself, but it's great to see how much you can grow with vertical towers, either in a greenhouse or indoors with LED lights. You can grow about 3-4x what you would get with a flat grow bed for many plants [1]. While the towers are great, the real trick is the grow media as you want it robust enough to survive while not suffocating the roots.

For those interested in starting your own farm or just gardening I'd highly recommend "UpStart Farmers" [2]. A friend of mine help's moderate it and is really focused on helping people learn vertical farming and aquaponics. They have an enormous selection of content regarding various aspects such as nutrient mixes, dealing with pests, etc. The community is also active and helpful to each other.

FYI: This is from the Canadian licensee's of the original Bright Agrotech that was acquired by Plenty Ag [3]. I'm bullish that indoor farming will be a big boon in providing more localized and therefore fresh and nutritional vegetables and leafy greens for much of the world's population. The economics are slowly improving with LED efficiency increases and capital infusion to scale farms.

1: https://search.proquest.com/openview/ccf876147b3e8a224da6770... 2: https://www.upstartfarmers.com 3: https://www.plenty.ag/the-feed/plenty-acquires-bright-agrote...

doctoboggan• 6 years ago

I thought the technology looked familiar. I had been following the Bright Agrotech people on YouTube for a while, they produced great content for those interested in indoor hydroponics for the home grower.

Do you know what happened to the company? Did they go bankrupt and have to liquidate their IP?

eurekaSky• 6 years ago

They were bought out by a company from Cali. Bright Agrotech started in Laramie Wyoming.

Their first "major" greenhouses were behind the building that my company was in. Really interesting people.

elcritch2• 6 years ago

Sibling is correct. Plenty Ag acquired Bright Agrotech for people and IP. Bright was profitable but faced a difficult time scaling. It’s business model depended on individuals getting enough capital to start a farm. Many farms were profitable, but not all, and it’s difficult finding lots of people wanting to take out loans to start farms and banks didn’t understand the idea of indoor farms. Plenty Ag raised $200 million (largely from SoftBank) and needed to get a jumpstart on working tech and experts in the field. I’m still hopeful that once indoor farming tech keeps improving (based partly on large investment in the Plenty’s of the world) and banks accept indoor farms that individuals will be able to easily run indoor farms. A big part of that would be more labor automation. Plus if an asteroid ever hits Earth knowing how to grow indoor food would be valuable. ;) More realistically (hopefully!) indoor farming will be critical for colonizing Mars or asteroids. Long term, indoor farming and vertical farming will be critical technology for humanity to perfect, IMHO. An example (and fun) tech innovation was Bright’s invention of “water cooled LED towers”. That’s an early “Google style” innovation akin to using trays of cheap servers. Regardless hardware innovation takes massive amounts of capital. I’m hoping the Plenty Ag people are able to make fresh produce “a thing”! Edit: link to water cooled led’s https://info.brightagrotech.com/hubfs/Downloadable_Guides/Co...

tomp• 6 years ago

Do you have any idea, why do people concentrate on aquaponics, not aeroponics? Is it just simply easier to implement, or better researched? Or is it actually better (higher yield, closed-loop system, ...)?

Sophistifunk• 6 years ago

Hydroponics would be the alternative to aeroponics, I think? Aquaponics usually means a hydroponics system in a loop with fish tanks.

pault3• 6 years ago

Sibling is correct. Aquaponics is a (partially) closed loop system where fish provide nitrogen for the roots, and the plants clean the water for the fish. You still need to feed the fish and sometimes balance the water pH.

hanniabu4• 6 years ago

A lot more maintenance issues with aeroponics

knodi123• 6 years ago

I've experimented with both. Aeroponics is a LOT more complicated- you really need a high-pressure system if you want good results (fogponics with an ultrasonic humidifier doesn't work well enough). And a high pressure system has to worry about clogs in the nozzles, and it has more moving parts, and some of those parts need to be well sealed.... vs. hydroponics which can be as complicated as turning on and off an aquarium pump.

bootlooped2• 6 years ago

I am skeptical about the reusability of the media. How hard is it to clean all the dead roots out of it? How do you sterilize it for reuse?

hanniabu4• 6 years ago

It's generally not feasible to reuse, not to mention if it's not done properly then you put the next crop cycle at risk.

gdubs• 6 years ago

I remember seeing this one a while back and thinking it was a cool concept — I wonder if anyone’s tried on / what’s become of it:

https://www.fastcompany.com/3037719/turn-your-kitchen-into-a...

orasis4• 6 years ago

I own 20 ZipGrow towers and have become quite disillusioned with them across 3 growing seasons.

The biggest problem is that there is nothing to buffer moisture on the roots if there is an intermittent problem.

You might get a nice crop of basil growing and then a clogged emitter for 12 hours can be the death of those plants.

Here are all of the failure modes I have experienced:

- pump dying - Leak in base causing all water gone in 24 hours - clogged emitters - water choosing off route through tower and not hitting the plants on top - emitters getting blown off causing water to spray outside tower - circuit breakers trip from pump

Overall I’ve probably lost half of everything I’ve planted in a zipgrow.

A professional operation with a daily maintenance routine could probably use them, but they are no panacea.

elasticventures2• 6 years ago

It's worth mentioning that the facebook forums for hydroponics farming are full of people trying to sell these things second hand with no explanation 'why'.

orasis4• 6 years ago

Yeah, they were quite expensive and I'll probably just end up giving them away.

orasis4• 6 years ago

I should clarify that the problems I experience are probably not specific to ZipGrow, but would happen to any vertical hydroponics that require functioning system to keep roots damp.

Soil is an amazing technology.

syntaxing3• 6 years ago

I want to get my feet wet with hydroponics because my daughter loves fresh produce and I love the idea growing her favorite fruits and veggies. Do you now how Zipgrow compares to Aerogarden (the "farm" size one).

ShakataGaNai• 6 years ago

The Aerogarden Farm and ZipGrow 2-Tower setup are fairly close in price (About $600 USD). Beyond that they're fairly different. The ZipGrow is certainly targeting a more prosumer/commercial demographic where as the Aerogarden, even the farm, tops out at high-end prosumer.

If you're an average person who isn't interested in dedicating their life to hydroponics, the Aerogarden is going to be the safer bet. It's small-ish, it's simple, it has a nice touch screen and beeps reminders at you.

mythrwy• 6 years ago

An aquarium water pump https://www.ntotank.com/20gallon-duracast-rv-water-tank-x348..., a liquid holding container https://www.ntotank.com/20gallon-duracast-rv-water-tank-x348..., one or more large Tupperware (or whatever you find) tray(s) draining back into the liquid holder, Rockwell bricks (or another grow medium) in the trays, a cheap timer for the pump and you have your own ebb and flow system for a couple hundred bucks.

I've build several of these over the years. There's no need to spend extra money. But the soil and the sun are free if you can get it and imo better.

Fiahil2• 6 years ago

If you like fresh products, I'd suggest to stay away from anything like hydroponics. Vegetables won't taste good.

LoveMortuus• 6 years ago

Wouldn't something like Minecraft Vertical Farms be more effective, specially because you could just have a basin a top of another basin, and have the water drip from the top one to the ones below, thus requiring only one pump to pump the water that collects at the very bottom back up to the top. Of course, having aditional pump to add more water to the system would be helpful but not necessary. The only problem that I've faced with such a design is the amount of mass that all together would have and the required flood strength to support such a weight. That being said, having smaller such systems for room like enviroments shouldn't have many problems.

ansible• 6 years ago

People have been making flood and drain systems for years, controlled by a super-reliable mechanical system. The downside is that these are typically much larger and heavier. The ones I've seen have a bed of gravel as the grow medium. It also has many gallons of water in the system, and no doubt that evaporation is more of a concern.

mohankumar246• 6 years ago

The economical value of growing veggies after paying city rents/wages/ and infra investment doesn't paint a good picture profit wise. The food business is mostly based on low wages paid to immigrant employees. It works because usually these people live in rural areas. Look at the milk price. I haven't seen it increase in 5 years..

tjomk• 6 years ago

I think the goal here is going distributed so that by moving the end produce closer to you, you save on packaging, logistics, and other expenses. Plus growing something gives you joy.

Doing that in schools teaches kids about farming, about food, and how it gets on their table. I'm doing the same at home to teach my children the same.

Also in the times of the crisis you reduce the pressure to producers and shops by consuming your own instead of going to the shop.

ZipGrow: Vertical farming/urban agriculture system

Related Stories