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Comment by Mizza | Hacker News Reader

It's for weed. They're all for weed. Every "indoor farming" company is just trying to get capital and build a brand with a cover story for when marijuana is inevitably legalized. The only thing that it really makes positive ROI sense to grow in this kind of way in the United States is for marijuana. Everbody working in the indoor farming industry knows this, the whole "we're saving the world by growing basil" thing is said with a big smirk. (Similarly, big pharma has acres and acres of farmland just waiting to be used for this purpose.)

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I get the desire to say "it's for weed". You can say the same thing about "its for porn" (VHS, DVD, Bluray, high speed internet, etc)...

But I don't think it's the same.

There's going to be an inflection point where the cost to transport lettuce from Mexico and California is going to be more than the cost of some vertical farm down the street.

There's also this slow drumbeat of "Save the Planet!" and "Oil is da DEBIL Bobby!". Making stuff local and "sustainable" is marketable - even at a premium. There's a reason people go to local farmers markets.

I can't say you're not wrong that "it's for the weed, man"... but I think you're limiting yourself if you think that's the ONLY reason - or even the biggest reason.

>There's going to be an inflection point where the cost to transport lettuce from Mexico and California is going to be more than the cost of some vertical farm down the street.

How sure are you about that? Buildings are expensive, and you can fuel up trucks with solar arrays.

...or make rail shipping more efficient

there was a planet money about getting a t-shirt made, and like... 40% of the cost was for the last couple mile deliveries.

No matter how automated 95% of the journey is, the last mile will require someone to be there and do deliveries. In theory local producers have less coordination problems with their consumers.

A grocery store is pre-last-mile. The consumer handles it themselves.

Or the store does some kind of delivery, but that's no easier or harder because of producer location.

Driverless trucks that run on sustainable energy is not that far away. Closer than this idea being cost effective.

Trouble is, food that comes from far away tends to be the type that has been bred to look good and last a long time before spoiling but actually tastes like food shaped nothing.

That's a really pessimistic way to think about it. Not having fresh food is a real problem in America. People overbuy produce, poor people can't afford fruit or vegetables these are real issues.

You might think it is for marijuana but you miss the point. Self suffiency is something we should strive for, we shouldn't be dependent on other places for food or shelter or water, we should produce those things locally.

If you think ahead even more, this is important for space travel and colonizing other worlds or even different parts of the world.

This should be an open standard and shouldn't be something people can't afford. This could change how people get food and drastically adverse the effects of being in a food desert.

Poor people can afford vegetables just fine. The problem is that grocery stores tend not to site in locations convenient to poor people. That's a problem, but it's a not a problem stuff like this solves.

You must be talking out of some disillusioned perspective, do you understand the food stamp allowances? Do you understand how living in American outside the realm of hacker news is not 401k plans and stock options. People are actually having problems surviving. This does fix that problem, the cost of labor and transportation is removed from the equation and is just a matter of making money on water and chemical. This can really fix a problem of affordable and sustainable agriculture in America.

tptacek understands this problem as he is/was in Chicago, which has had issues with "food deserts" where poor regions of the city do not have grocery stores within a reasonable commute. And the grocery stores in those poor areas are often overpriced for exploitive reasons.

So tptacek is correct that a farm inside a grocery store does not solve grocery affordability for the poor, because the problem is due to transportation/access, not the cost of the goods.

The bridge between these two views would maybe be if there was a solution of vertical farming that used little real estate and was able to set up a vertical farm in a poor area and had minimal real estate footprint/low rent costs.

Paper on Food Deserts in Chicago (or just google "food deserts chicago"): http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/IL-FoodDeserts-2011.pdf

I would say if that is the case the best move forward would be to make this something you could put in a consumers house.

How about we just build grocery stores where low-income people can reach them? Farms produce vegetables more cost-effectively than low-income people or retail outlets. This is a solved problem.

I'm not sure if you shop mostly in Whole Foods or buy individually plastic-wrapped bell peppers at Trader Joes, but go to a Mexican grocery store some time and fill a cart full of green things. Vegetables are very cheap.

Like a vending machine?

Never had anything to do with weed, so maybe someone can help me here - is its freshness key to its end-user, as is the case with salad greens and herbs?

It's generally dried before smoked, or for food products the oil is extracted. I would think the oils would eventually evaporate from the dried or the extract but I don't actually know. It's legal here in WA and the packaging I've seen doesn't have any dates on it so take that with a grain of salt with the supply problems we've had (the state limited the amount produced, so for the first year at least there were reported shortage; they heavily misjudged demand :)).

I'd think it's very similar to tobacco. Vape for tobacco doesn't really expire, it's just the niccotine. And cigs keep for a long time. They get brittle over time, as do cigars, so I would think it's very similar. Again I'm not an expert, I just live in a state where it's common.

So city-based vertical farming of marijuana is likely less advantageous as freshness isn't a key driver? If it's more expensive than salad greens, maybe the transportation cost isn't as big a factor either? Crush salad greens and they're going to sell poorly.

I'd guess that security and surrounds might be an issue for growing an in-demand product too? Doubt lettuce farms suffer too many break-ins!

You didn't hear about the recent lettuce heist?

http://globalnews.ca/news/3356810/romaine-calm-hamilton-poli...

Several billion people and the internet mean that it's almost impossible to make any statement with confidence!

It's my understanding that empty warehouse space is hard to come by in colorado because it provides year round controlled growing conditions so there is a price floor on the spaces.

High yield production needs precise control over lighting, needs to have approx 12-12 hour light/dark lighting for blooming, otherwise it'll grow indefinitely unlike most plants which start blossoming at a certain age. Additionally, having good control over irrigation and nutrients with hydroponics can increase yield. And being indoors is good for security against theft, etc.

Freshness has got nothing to do with it, the product has to be dried in a well ventilated area.

If marijuana is legalized, why bother growing it indoor?

I think they're hoping for a "sweet spot" of legalization, where the product is legal to produce and sell, but regulations prevent outdoor farming (or mandate additional security in such a way that makes indoor farming an appealing alternative).

Because some places have winter, no?

Because of the plants' sensivity to lighting (need about 12-12 hours of light/dark) and the requirement for female plants only, around the year production is not feasible in all parts of the world. Indoor production can also have higher yield and quality and lower labor requirements.

It's also a good protection against theft and vandalism as well as preventing spreading in to the wild. There might also be legal requirements that prevent outdoors production.

Not trying to discredit you, but do you have any sources on this? What are some publicly traded companies with acres of farmland allocated for marijuana?

How are they going to compete with big pharma once it's all legal?

Or is the goal to get acquihired the same way small tech companies get acquired by giants?

It seems they'll run into the same problems that they are running in now growing herbs against large scale producers.

Like the post above you said, economies of scale will grow far quicker on fields in the middle of nowhere because of how cheap land is.

Microbreweries compete just fine against Budweiser

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