LEDs outperform incandescent lights, hands down. But they should also give farmers unprecedented control over plant growth, development and nutritional content in future, say researchers.
It won’t come as a surprise to discover that consumers all over the developed world are increasingly demanding seasonal vegetables all year round, even when the local climate simply doesn’t allow that kind of growth. Particularly sought-after are tomatoes, cucumbers and leaf vegetables. Which is why greenhouse farming has become a major factor in the food supply of the developed world.
Consequently, the number of commercial greenhouses and the area they occupy is rocketing. In the Netherlands, for example, greenhouses occupy around 0.25 per cent of the land area of the entire country. And the Netherlands isn’t even the largest producer of greenhouse vegetables in Europe. That position is held by Spain. And the largest producer of greenhouse vegetables in the world is now China.
This kind of farming has a significant impact on the environment. Commercial greenhouses have to be lit and heated in a way that optimises growth. And up to 35 per cent of the cost of greenhouse tomatoes comes from this heating and lighting.
So an important question is how to minimise the energy it takes to grow these crops. One obvious answer is to convert greenhouses from the traditional incandescent lighting, usually high pressure sodium lamps, to more energy-efficient LEDs.
That might seem like an economic no-brainer but the industry has been slow to make this change because of the high initial cost of LEDs. The question that farmers have pondered over is whether they will ever recoup the upfront cost of a brand-new system of lighting.
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