Las Vegas vertical farm aims to produce over a million pounds of produce a year
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
It could work for niche stuff, but energy costs is always what kills these ideas for the mainstream market. Sunlight is free. If we had Mr. Fusion maybe it could work.
Edit: I suppose it could work in the Middle East too where energy may be cheap enough (solar, cheap gas) vs. the cost of shipping it from Europe or further away.
With unlimited power, everything changes. We get the incredible luxury of scientifically produced vegetables. They can be optimized to perfection in harmony with consumer tastes. Every season brings a new designer crop...
Well, maybe it could happen without unlimited power. We can dream.
http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.aspx
Around noon PST you'll see upwards of 11GW of solar. (This includes rooftop installations if they have smart meters.)
Of course it's more efficient to just put the plant's leaves in the sun, but water isn't free either and you lose far more water that way. I wonder if cost of water in the desert could outrun the cost of indirect solar -> electricity -> calories? It could be true in the US Southwest, but it could definitely be true in Dubai or Saudi Arabia. In places like that desalination is one of the only sources of fresh water, and that's likely more energy intensive than indoor farming.
So yes it could work in a few markets, but it's not going to replace conventional agriculture broadly.
7.5 people per floor isn't a lot and it's very expensive. Maybe useful for colonizing Mars where money isn't that big of a deal, but definitely not feed-the-world level scaling.
I've visited a couple of these in Europe. There's a lot of manual labor and electricity involved and it's very expensive. The only way to make it work is to sell your lettuce as '100% environmentally friendly, zero pesticides' and ask 10x the price of 'regular' lettuce.
But honestly, I've never really tased the difference and I wonder if the environmentally-friendly stuff holds true if you really look into it.
I had a fairly large aquaponics system for a while. 30 meter diameter pond with tilapia and a long channel full of gravel that was planted with various vegetables through which pond water was pumped at regular intervals. The pond was large enough and had enough plants in it that it achieved balance on its own without having to continuously run the pump. So maintenance was easy and no fear of the fish dying. In fact, it got out of control with the tilapia multiplying like crazy.
That's still pretty small by farming standards.
"Pounds of produce produced by a produce company" is a real metric, not a vanity one -- it's just not that impressive of a number in this case.
Farm area equivalent has some direct relationship with profit and would be allowed. But in that case it would be a tiny farm and show they would be better off spending 1/3 as much on buying land an 30 minuets from the city than going vertical.
Oh BTW ...how much does one pay for a nice ceaser salad nowadays?
That said I'm really excited to see vertical farming grow as a market, ideally in denser cities like SF or NYC where proximity to the nearest farms can be a few hours away depending on what you want to buy.
Would love to setup a vertical city farm... I reckon it'd be an awesome job and business.
Vertical farms, if designed in a sustainable way, can be profitable in a long run. Since it can be automated one should automate it completely saving on man power.
Also, understanding of what crop to grow, how to grow and most important how to sell it will make any vertical farm profitable.
This comes down to the cost of urban real estate versus the cost of transportation. As that ratio shifts, the optimal distance from city centre, for an urban farm, moves.
I believe farms like this use a lot less water to grow the same yield.
The dirty secret of the agriculture is that this green creatures love manure, and need it to growth well.
I happens than Las Vegas Hotels generate large amounts of animal waste each day and need to pay for getting rid of all this stuff asap by road or pipeline... Connect the dots.
What's wrong with a traditional horizontal farm in a greenhouse? As people collect in urban centers there certainly won't be shortage of land.
Urban space is expensive, rural is not.
If they can sell to grocers in order to make the business equivalent of sleep(untilpotbecomeslecal()) sustainable then good for them but that's not really the primary goal here. Indoor vertical farming just doesn't work out except in niche cases of very high margins or legal requirements that require things be farmed indoors. City land is just too expensive to grow stuff on unless you're growing a really lucrative crop. Other than pot that's not much that meets one/both of those requirements.
edit: This isn't a condemnation, I'm just calling it like I see it.