Vertical Farming's EPIC FAILURE – What Happened?
Vertical Farming's EPIC FAILURE – What Happened?
Vertical Farms Fail: Checkout Ground News Today! https://ground.news/twobit
Vertical farming, once hailed as the answer to global hunger and sustainable agriculture, saw a massive influx of investment, surpassing 2 billion dollars in 2022. By 2023, the market had skyrocketed to over 5 billion dollars, marking a significant milestone in the…
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Checkout Ground News Today! https://ground.news/twobit
A little sad about this. I wanted to maybe set something up like this just privately. Just because I like the idea, but I guess that is what investors liked too.
To me its an investor thing, You cant invest in farming very well. Leave it up to the owner operator the business will adapt and become profitable. Use abandoned buildings or underground spaces. Then learn how to do it. As a stock it will too often fail.
Vertical Farm did not fail. They just got fogged up by those delusional ones who approach the business with unrealistic methods.
These technologies are more suited for colonies on the Moon and Mars.
The only way I see this being viable is if global trade collapses and places without a local food source are required to use this technology due to a lack of natural options
The biggest problem with most inventions is they don’t solve a problem that actually exists. People that live in cities are the only people thinking the planet is over crowded.
The main problem I see with these facilities… is just how much money they waste when setting up. It's easy to spend other people's money, especially under the pressure of producing results that can be relayed back to the shareholders and initial investors. How much 80/20 extrusions and customized robots do I keep seeing in the company's videos? It's like they are in such a hurry to be the most futuristic, and quickest to market, they don't do the actual math of what their end product will have to sell for, if they keep spending money on the facility. And stop with the lettuce and kale already. It's basically a nasty way to eat your water with a bit of fiber.
If I were setting up a vertical farm, I'd simply start with greenhouse designs. Taking advantage of the sunlight for both growth and year round temperature control. I'd add lights that only needed to come on at night to increase growth phases, under/over certain trays… not the whole place. I don't need robotics, only a handful of people who actually know a thing or two about growing fruits and vegetables. You know it takes 90 days to get a bell pepper from seed to fruit under ideal conditions. So, you'd need a scheduled staggered approach so there's consistently a harvest. This can literally be done with a spreadsheet. If you want to create an app, I'm sure something already exists pretty close to what you'd need anyway.
The watering system can be completely closed loop, if you incorporate fish pond for both hydro and aeroponics. Honestly, the hardest part about contained systems like this, is monitoring the water pH and keeping the levels nominal for each type of thing you are growing. Not every plant can share the same water with their individual needs for food/fertilizer balance.
Lastly, I think a lot of these places try to be too big too soon. Instead of starting small, focusing on one product, and perfecting it… then taking profits from that product to grow into the next phase.
Im from colombia. Hydroponic lettuce is around 1 pound for 1 dolar. More natural ones are around 2/3 dolar.
The minerals of a vertical farm needs to be extracted from a mine and refined. That cost is not negligible.
Fire was our first invention. Farming was our second. Farming is WHAT HUMANS DO. The arrogance to think some nerds in California were going to outsmart the whole of human history with a few tech bros and tech bucks is laughable. Farmers in fly over country are nearing the point of complete robot automation IN THE FEILD. Once that is done, this "urban farming" idea is over. Tick Tock.
Minerals must come from the soil. Cannot do better than nature.
So a bunch of tech-bros that know nothing about agriculture, plant biology, soil chemistry or farming though they could “disrupt” a 9000+ year industry with just as long learning curve….. oh ok.
Vertical farming works in small scale and in combination with traditional farming. It’s not to be hyper profitable
Put it inside of a solar dome ❤
Trying to fool Mother Nature ?
To me the issue seems to be the overdevelopment of certain areas. Smaller towns with the farms between allows farm to table to be a possibility. Less than a century ago we had that here in Australia. Now we rely on shipping food in for everyone. Harder to fix but it is how things should have stayed here.
The problem there doing it as its specified business. This should be dedicated for chain business, like restaurant that need high quality product. So they don't need to compete with another same market. With chained business mean they can limit the resource to be not too huge, but instead efficient. Another fault is it public company, where investor just too ambitious with the result, mean they burn too much money to grow very large farm, but for this market too large doesn't mean it profitable. Farm is not like an IT company.
So basically city people, who never been to a farm before, think that their pie in the sky idea will work but fail to see how much work you need to do to run a successful farm. Yeah, Silicon Valley, stick to technology stuff.
Excellent Analysis! Thanks!
You can't beat God's plan.
Only useful for highyield crops
Only useful for highyield crops
Those financial numbers would be for a small operation. Only 10k lbs per year. Also how many years is the capex deprecated over? There will be économies with scale. Certain high value crops can be produced out of season and charged more for them.
It sounds more like a greed issue. When America built it's rail system and their radio infrastructure they were not interested in the immediate ROI within their lifetime, they saw the potential of building up the nation for future generations. It worked and these systems are still in place today. That's the real benefit to the cost, being the pioneer to the future generations that will benefit greatly from these technological advancements.
Vertical Farms are the future but that doesn't mean the investors and innovators are going to see the true benefit in the long run, these companies today are most likely slowing the technological advancement as opposed to progressing it as they have proprietary information and patents that are being withheld from other innovators that can continue their advancement.
Look at all that electricity and material needed, duhhhh then need cocnentrated nutrients, menawhile traditional field farming you odnt need to worry about any of that to the same level, A vettical farm that can passivley harness sunlight to all levels will be much more successful, buts thats hard to do cuse of the nature of the verticality, green houses would be a better bet that vertical farming
You almost talked about this but what kinds of food can and can not be grown? Can potatoes be grown? Tomatoes? I get that you can grow lettuce and herbs, spinach but okra is going to be four feet high. A typical tomato plant is also four or five feet high PLUS you need to figure out how to harvest the tomatoes. Even something like eggplant or squash which covers huge amounts of ground per plant seems like it would be hard.
Hydroponic farming does work in greenhouses. I live just north of Montreal QC and i buy local greens and cucumbers year round .Strawberries now are also grown under glass and are available most of the year. There are several such farms with different marketing systems and they are thriving.
Labour in the city is more regulated than labour in the provinces.
Start @ 7:50 or 11:32 to get to the point.
I for one am not at all surprised because we know bluelight isn't just what plants can use so they need at least a percentage of Real sunlight and they didn't plan to try that