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Comment by senectus1 | Hacker News Reader

I've always loved this idea.

Would love to setup a vertical city farm... I reckon it'd be an awesome job and business.

I certainly agree with you. The idea is indeed great but one has to be very sure about its economies of scale when setting up a vertical farm. I have a small setup in my apartment and it needs a lot of upfront setup cost and recurring monitoring, electricity cost etc.

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.

> Vertical farms, if designed in a sustainable way, can be profitable in a long run

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.

How do you solve the general problem with the lack of sunlight? Isn't using artificial light extremely inefficient?

It seems like for a large-scale commercial operation you could use solar collectors on the roof and fiber optics to deliver sunlight to lower levels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_solar_lighting

1m² of crop requires 1m² of sunlight. If you have 1000m² of crops and 100m² of sunlight hitting the roof you will need to get that missing 900m² from somewhere else.

Depends if it offsets the inefficiency of watering. As water becomes more and more of an issue the power needed to run LED grow lights isn't the biggest issue.

I believe farms like this use a lot less water to grow the same yield.

If you want to take your indoor farm to the next level check out both www.growcomputer.io and www.openagriculturesupply.com!

Did not get the whole idea behind www.growcomputer.io. Practically my need is a monitoring and automation suite. Something like autogrow (https://autogrow.com/product-category/hardware/) which can monitor PH/EC/TEMP/HUM and automate nutrient supply.

Are you affiliated with growcomputer.io? If not, how do you know what they are doing? The site is blank.

"Would love to setup a vertical city farm... I reckon it'd be an awesome job and business."

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.

An awesome job and a terrible business.

Maybe not so terrible. Of course "some" crops are more valuable than other, but I bet than growing vegetables is only half of the business here.

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.

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