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Comment by bell-cot | Hacker News Reader

> it’s not financially viable when there is ample land for farming.

I've not heard of it being financially viable even when farmland is very constrained - say, in Holland.

The numbers probably work on the ISS, Moon, or Mars...so those places will probably be "stars of the show", in the next round of hype which vertical farming companies use to bilk idiot VC's.

(St. Helena has a reasonable latitude and low population density - so at most you'd need some greenhouses.)

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> I've not heard of it being financially viable even when farmland is very constrained - say, in Holland

There is EU single market. If farmland in Holland is constrained, it would be still cheaper to farm in other EU countries with plenty of land.

Most of the big hydroponic cannabis growers here in SoCal use vertical farms for sea of green operations. Financially-viable? Those people rake in MILLIONS yearly. Those systems consume very little in the way of resources, with tightly-controlled NFT hydroponic application and targeted-spectrum LED lighting running the show.

We accounted for high margin things like drug producing plants and high value gastronomic things like mushrooms and leafy greens. These are the only viable crops and are exceptional, not normal.

This is like saying mice are a desirable pest because drug labs use them for research. Yes, sure but it’s a very specific use case, but don’t pretend it’s the norm.

"These are the only viable crops and are exceptional, not normal."

No, they are not the only viable crops. I'll guarantee your studies don't take into account various methods of hydroponics for various crop types. Almost every study I've ever seen is purely focused on NFT vertical farming. NO JOKE it doesn't cover everything. You aren't growing corn in an NFT system. You will do it in a vertical DWC system.

I took ag/hort-sci in high school, where I learned about these systems (hanging gardens of Babylon, anyone?) I was running vertical farming systems in the 90s in high school. The tech works. Learn which method of hydroponics is required for which crop. Plan your economic requirements.

Literally basic high school education requirements and most of you don't seem to get it. not sure what happened between the 90s and now for y'all to mess up basic technology so badly.

> Those systems consume very little in the way of resources

Since when is electricity not a resource?

Unlike cannabis, you can’t sell tomatoes for $2,000 a pound.

In a small footprint you need drastically-lower energy requirements. Also, with the advent of LED lighting, you use even less in atmospheric regulation, which becomes the major power-saver outside of the lighting itself.

Also, the trick to vertical tomatoes is not what most people expect. They should look more into the upside-down pot idea and think about how best to take advantage of a top-down hanging system, like near-360 degree lighting between rows of hanging tomato plants to maximize exposure along the entire length of the curtain. These can be mounted horizontally under the nft channels the hanging plants grow from, allowing them to receive all the light they want while leaving walkway space (and overhead human-vision lighting space.)

It takes a LOT of research to make things work and everyone just promises a turn-key system. THAT can't work. My systems work because of research and lots of first-principles thinking.

Ah, Nutrient Film Technique.

I was trying to figure out how the blockchain helped with hydroponics.

Right, I agree about Holland. Same would apply to Belgium or Luxembourg. But what about 90% of the countries that do not have this problem? Everything east of France is just fields and fields of nothing.

That's not true. There are lot of forests and mountains. To get to nothing you have to go all the way to Ukraine. It is relatively featureless south and east of Kyiv.

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