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Comment by rdlecler1 | Hacker News Reader

There was a lot of discussions about the benefits, and some discussion that was missed. However, vertical farming is still not cost effective compared to more traditional greenhouses. And that's for the highest value crops like lettuce and tomatoes. Commodity crops and animal agriculture are the biggest resource users in this system and vertical farming is no where close to finding a substitute for those. The cost of production will need to come down below the alternatives and that will be challenging, although not impossible in principle.

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Farming comes with huge amounts of negative environmental externalities (lost ecosystems, runoff, pesticides). I'm curious how the cost effectiveness would change if farms were properly taxed for their environmental impact.

> I'm curious how the cost effectiveness would change if farms were properly taxed for their environmental impact.

Conversely, I wonder if the viability changes if urban areas would subsidize the underlying (most likely expensive) land costs for vertical farming, due to food being required to survive.

> Conversely, I wonder if the viability changes if urban areas would subsidize the underlying (most likely expensive) land costs for vertical farming, due to food being required to survive.

Well, the viability of living in urban areas would certainly change if another land use competing with housing and existing commercial uses was subsidized by taxing existing residents.

The same is true about the environmental impact of manufacturing all of the steel, aluminum, LEDs, electricity, etc. used in a vertical farm.

I don't think anyone is claiming that vertical farming needs to disrupt all traditional farming. Vertical farms would bring food production to urban areas, where the people are. That benefit would be lost on growing livestock fodder.

> Vertical farms would bring food production to urban areas, where the people are.

i.e., it would drive already high urban real estate prices higher, by competing with existing urban real estate uses, while not being cost effective, because increased output per square foot of land footprint would be offset by the higher cost per square foot of land footprint of urban land.

It seems like the kind of thing that makes a lot of sense in places that have very limited access to land with inexpensive shipping costs to populated areas like densely populated islands, but a lot less economic sense in most of the rest of the world.

If solar and battery tech were strong enough, could people have shipping containers buried underground and dedicated to growing using artificial lights? The vertical, compactus-style grow beds.

Could bury these things under drive ways, under lawns, garages, decks, pools, etc.

> If solar and battery tech were strong enough, could people have shipping containers buried underground and dedicated to growing using artificial lights?

Aye, and if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon. -- Capt. Montgomery "Scotty" Scott

Why do we need to bother with bringing food production to urban areas? Just grow the lettuce outside town and bring it in.

Because a nontrivial portion of the environmental costs of modern food production is all the dinosaur bones being burned to shlep it from farm to factory to warehouse to store to home.

Not to say that vertical farming is cost-free; it's most definitely not. It does avoid (edit: or at least reduce) that major (hidden) cost, though.

What fraction of the energy costs that go into food production are involved in its transport?

Urban areas are valuable. People in cities have less environmental impact than people spread out. The people displaced by an urban farm don't disappear -- they either stay out of the city or go to another city.

With some very quick searching, I'm seeing a few references suggesting an average of between 10-15%, and an average distance of some 1500 miles from farm to plate. In actuality, those probably vary widely, though.

> Not to say that vertical farming is cost-free; it's most definitely not. It does avoid that major (hidden) cost, though.

Does it? By competing with existing urban land uses, if adopted any substantial scale it forces the existing uses to spread out over larger areas, increasing the energy costs of transportation associated with those uses, while also creating a major new demand for energy in food production which replaces some of the use of energy in food transportation.

Seems to me your are shifting around the fossil-fuel related energy use externalities, but I haven't seen any analysis showing it to be a net win even in that narrow regard.

The other added benefit is that the plants get to the site faster which increases the shelf life and reduces the amount thrown out due to wilting and such on the shelves.

Growing hydroponically also reduces crop loss from about 50% down to about 10-15%.

Why isn't it as cost effective? Is that just from a higher start-up cost or is it significantly more expensive to run in the long run? Seems like it would be cheaper (closed environment).

Anecdote: I heard that peaches were grown in Greenhouses to avoid rot & bugs and it's been very helpful.

I work for a vertical farming company (Verticulture Farms) and high property values and utility costs are killers in higher populated areas.

Two major , expensive costs - the factory, the equipment, land,etc.very expensive - but maybe this can be solved. maybe.

But there's also the required energy:

"just to meet a year's U.S. wheat production with vertical farming would, for lighting alone, require EIGHT TIMES as much electricity as all U.S. utilities generate in an entire year"

There is no reason to grow wheat in a vertical farm. Vertical farms would be for specialty crops. Would love to see your source on that too.

Additionally, not all vertical farming relies on artificial lighting.

sorry , forgot to add source: http://www.alternet.org/story/146686/why_planting_farms_in_s...

Yeah, traditional farming uses the sun directly as a major input, and vertical farming has to use a lot of electricity to make up for that -- which is why all the "positive" energy comparisons you see for vertical farming are to other indoor methods.

But without cheap, abundant, clean power to replace the way traditional farming uses the sun, vertical farming is either not going to be economically viable on a large scale, or is going to be trading one set of negative externalities for another (traditional farming's externalities from runoff, etc., for the externalities from the power production for vertical farming), or both.

Lots of construction and real estate expenses. The more your farm resembles an actual building rather than a greenhouse or polytunnel, the more expensive. It also sounds like it requires energy and skilled labour. Using externally powered lighting is going to be hugely expensive. Where is that energy coming from, anyway, and is it renewable?

I don't think people realise how low farm-gate prices for commodity foods are.

That's just not true. Vertical farming isn't about building a whole new facility with fancy LED lights. It's about effectively utilizing space to get the most calories/input. There's no reason a traditional greenhouse can't grow crops vertically in their existing infrastructure.

Additionally, it seems like you are writing off the idea because "Commodity crops and animal agriculture are the biggest resource users in this system and vertical farming is no where close to finding a substitute for those"

Vertical farming isn't going to just poof magically fix everything. It's meant as a supplement to an unhealthy food system.

And I think the cost of production will come down.

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