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Comment by mtalantikite | Hacker News Reader

I spent a lot of time thinking about and researching vertical farming a few months back, even going as far as to start prototyping out a system, and while I love the vision for the future, I'm wondering how this ends up being profitable for those doing it. As LED prices continue to fall it starts making more sense, but can you really compete with the Sun and industrial agriculture on price? How many of these units would you need to install to meet demand at my grocery store up the street here in Brooklyn? I think we forget that a huge amount of automation already exists in the agricultural supply chain.

I'd love to see it work since you can reduce water and pesticide requirements, which is great for the environment. I'm just skeptical that you can be more than a basil and microgreens service for yuppies.

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Don't think about a comparison to organic agriculture. This is not an agricultural technology. This is marketing technology, aimed at separating wealthy people from their paycheck at the grocery store.

As for the future for vertical farming ? i'm more optimistic towards using regular greenhouses, with extra led lights optimized for the right color, and "wavelength shifter"[1] layer, that will transform sunlight to the optimal color for the plants - if that tech becomes cheap enough.

[1]They're made of fluorescent die embedded in a clear plastic layer.

A few grocery stores here in Atlanta make sure you know when they locally source vegetables so I would assume this happens across the country as a whole. Throw in that all of the goods in the produce isle are labeled with country of origin.

so this technology in the article is in the realm of, sounds cool but not really workable. put too much thought into and it falls apart. plus how do we keep the man power needs of the store down as that is one area many are trying to affect

It also reduces transportation costs, and cuts out the farmer's profit margin, and any other middlemen between them and the grocer

This is actually a huge reason that food costs as much as it does. The seeds are free, water's cheap, Sun's free, fertilizer is plentiful (and overused), and machines do all the heavy lifting. You don't need a lot of manpower, and farmers don't make a ton of money. All that money that we pay for food is going into three things:

1. Transportation costs: when everything grows in Ohio (and/or South America), it's going to cost a lot more to get it in front of consumers in Seattle or New York. To make matters worse, there's a built in timer on the goods. 2. Waste: something like 12% of America's food supply goes bad in transit. Then after that, some more rots on the shelf. That which doesn't is brought home, or to a restaurant and is wasted there. There's not much we can do about the last part of the equation, but having the food fresh in the store is a big step for the first two prongs. 3. Aesthetics: This one I don't fully understand, but apparently people turn down perfectly good produce because it doesn't look normal, despite being perfectly healthy and nutritious. I've always had a taste for mutant carrots, myself. It's possible (not guaranteed) that selling this produce at reduced costs and directly from the dirt where it was grown might help that.

It'll all come down to whether or not grocers sign on - my guess is that the price point on something like this will ultimately be pretty good, but it might take 10 years for the technology to develop enough to be useful out in the wild.

Seeds are not free and are becoming more and more expensive. Fertilizer is overused for sure but the alternative to not using so much is fallow land or at least permaculture which certainly won't be adopted tomorrow.

You also forget pesticides, crop insurance, storage, etc

Seeds are not free. Seed is a $100 billion a year market: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/seed.asp

I wonder what that 40% looks like if you do it by calorie.

There's no way 40% of potatoes or flour (or vegetable oil or ...) is expiring in transit.

Yeah, I'd bet that's mostly fresh fruits and veggies. For reference: https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf

The largest part of the 40% in that report is consumer losses.

So food that spoils at home or is thrown away after it is served at a restaurant.

Distribution and retail losses aren't terrible.

You're correct, will edit to reflect more accurate numbers

Of GP's three categories, storage would best fit "in transit", and potatoes store well, but you are definitely getting some spoilage when sold in the spring.

That's certainly true, but then you have to add back in the cost for LEDs, land space, and labor for harvesting. A retailer is going to be required by local laws to pay at least minimum wage, which is often higher in urban centers than out near farms. Also, unfortunately quite a lot of farm labor is exploited and only paid per pound harvested and not even paid minimum wage. There are lots of horrifying stories about the treatment of migrant laborers, which we all should be more aware of and demand more protections for.

I totally support the vision and want to see this work, but I'm really not convinced it makes economic sense (I'd be happy to be proven wrong though).

It seems like the harvesting is done mostly by customers, or at the least by existing grocery employees, and land space would just replace the existing produce section - light and water and licensing the tech seem to be the main costs

Seems like it should be possible to let the sunlight into part of the store.

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