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Comment by aussieguy1234 | Hacker News Reader

Some unused office buildings are being converted into vertical farms. I'd like to see more of this. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/empty-office-build...

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And vertical farms are among the most pointless things one can do... Transforming office space to housing would solve, or at least help solving, a real world problem so.

This can be done, but it's not easy or cheap: https://theconversation.com/empty-office-spaces-can-be-conve...

Office buildings and housing blocks are designed differently.

I’m curious if it is easier to convert an office building into a vertical farm or into an apartment building.

Probably to a vertical farm as that avoids the whole interior apartments are required to have windows regulations.

The developer would likely want to remove alternate non load bearing floor|ceilings to optimise for automated farm tray stacking heights.

There are several modular designs that can be fitted into large open spaces ~two story clearance.

And it would still be pointless and the opposite of profitable. With enough VC money on the other hand... It seems the vertical farming hype is over quite a while so.

And yet in the UK two separate companies are opening second and third vertical farm locations on the back of demonstrated profits with their earlier endeavours.

eg: https://www.foodmanufacture.co.uk/Article/2024/02/20/jones-f...

The questions then are why are V-Farms profitable in some locations and not others, where are the locations with cheap enough energy that can compete on local area transportation costs against salad and table vegetable farmers with higher transport issues, etc.

FWiW I agree that back fitting V-Farms into vacant "designed for office use" isn't likely to be profitable, they're better with (see link) open greenfield warehouse spaces with loading docks and a clean slate to optimise layout for tray handling, lifting machines, etc.

So, three vertical farms, of which one was, propably, profitable. That revolutionizes everything!

Two new V-Farms, one as the third of three owned by one comapny, the other as the second of two owned by a second company.

Ergo five V-Farms, of which three are likely profitable.

If you're going for low hanging snark at least learn to parse English and math a bit.

Didn't read your source, but I did follow the reporting on the death of vertical farming on HN a while ago. Confirmed everything I knew about the field. That someone can make it work, great (we'll see long term so). We are still lightyears away from the agricultural revolution for which people stoll try to sell vertical farming.

I like the low hanging snark joke, goes well with the subject matter at hand!

Edit: Just read the article. Nice PR piece for two vertical farm companies. All that articles contains is claims from the founders and their companies, nothing else. Could be ripped straight of the company websites. Also, 3.6 acres... that is nothing.

Since we need both, appartments and farms, let’s extend that to: convert office building into appartment and have horizontal farm vs convert office building into vertical farm and build new appartment.

Those mods can be done hilariously cheap vs starting with a raw block of land with no utilities. Just having a foundation with exterior walls and utilities ran to it, even undersized, is massive time save.

To start with,for many conversions you might need changes to the exterior walls to be able to pack in enough flats with required access to windows, depending on your local regulations, so it's not a given even the exterior walls would be untouched.

It certainly can be done - given many have been done, but it's not at all a given it'll be cheaper for all properties vs. tearing it down (which would still keep the utilities to the property, of course) and starting over.

If you were struggling to find a less economic use for unused office buildings, have no fear, your search is over.

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In Germany the bloodbath in the commercial property market coincides with the legalisation of cannabis and the formation of local grow clubs on 1st April. Just saying!

Can you elaborate on this?

It's probably in jest to joke that the newly emptied out office spaces could be converted to vertical farming of cannabis for growers' clubs which are going to be legal from April 1st in Germany.

To be honest, if these growing clubs could cover rent + electricity + water in my opinion it is not really that bad of an idea to take over empty office buildings, most legal cannabis is already grown in very controlled environments, open plan offices would be pretty good for it.

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