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Comment by avip | Hacker News Reader

There's no shortage in players in this space: Alterrus (built Vancouver's vertical farm, filed bankruptcy), infarm (Germany), aerofarms (US), growup (UK).

There are lots of issues to settle with vertical farming. One is organic labelling, which is N/A for detached soil in most (all?) countries. They can't compete in the non-organic market.

There's currently nothing "sustainable" or "ecologic" about these indoor farms. They are used to grow leisure low-calorie high price ingredients for hipsters.

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Yeah, I was wondering about the organic labelling. Also about the claim that there are "no pesticides or chemicals of any kind used in the cultivation of Plenty’s crops". Presumably they have to add nutrients to the water?

Assuming they manage the convince a large player in the organic retail biz to play they can create some sort of a "label" and go from there. Not that big of an issue.

Big enough of an issue for everyone that's tried so far it seems.

This is not how food labelling usually works.

For the current state of hydroponics in the US: https://www.forbes.com/sites/annefield/2017/04/18/usda-to-we...

The article says the USDA would make a decision on April 19th of this year but I can't find what that decision was. Do you know?

At first glance, it seems attractive to put a giant CO2 sink in urban areas where it can reduce those pesky greenhouse gasses. But on closer inspection you will find that they actually pump CO2 into these facilities to improve crop growth.

>a giant CO2 sink

Just to set the numbers straight:

  Very clean US city: 10^10 [Kg*CO2/year]
  Absurdly hefty tree, in his prime: 10^2 [kg*CO2/year]
  vertical farm: _____

Such is the impact of the giant sink.

It's not a sink.

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