6 ms·

I think these kinds of stories play well to governments, the press, and some groups of people as ideas or as cool photo opportunities, but they don't translate

I think these kinds of stories play well to governments, the press, and some groups of people as ideas or as cool photo opportunities, but they don't translate into meaningful agricultural production. I encourage people to scroll around Google Maps (or better yet, drive) through some of America's most productive agricultural regions. The sheer scale of American farmland dwarfs any possible urban farm development. I know from personal experience growing seedlings in my basement here that new LED grow lights make it much more cost and energy efficient to run a greenhouse than it used to be. But fertile soil is a massive input cost that you can't really get around for most full sized plants. I spent hundreds of dollars recently on garden soil for a small set of raised beds. I have a tiny flock of six chickens supplementing my compost pile. Anyone can grow bad produce indoors. I think the real problem (having lived in urban, rural, and suburban areas) they're trying to address is the transportation cost of bringing quality produce to the city. Right now many cities are not really set up for affordable freight transportation. Cities like NYC are almost designed to make it pointlessly expensive and complicated to bring freight in from the country to the store. Commercial truck traffic gets redirected to cramped streets while personal car traffic gets access to the expressways and parkways. That's one of the reasons why it costs you 4x to buy a pound of worse quality bacon in NYC what it costs in many other US towns and cities. So if you are trying to deploy technology to make quality food more available to American cities the solution is probably not just hanging up some grow lights and growing weak plants in trays. It is to attack the largest sources of the added costs. The 'local' label has salience to high end grocery shoppers because they believe that it indicates quality. If 'local' comes to be associated with tray farms using poor inputs, it will stop being associated with quality in the minds of Whole Foods shoppers. It'd be great if America had the sort of urban freight network that was state of the art in Japan in 1980 instead of trying to come up with pretend-technology patches to much larger cost of living problems.

mceoin 9y ago
Cities have two things in abundance due to human input/output: fertilizer and water. They lack sunlight but with cheap energy LEDs fill that gap. High density city-"farming" makes economic sense in certain contexts: - high density living environments - inefficient or expensive transport costs - lack of available farming land relative to population (expect net-food-importers like Singapore to lead here) - northern hemisphere (full-year growing cycle increases appeal and cost efficiency) - cities not located in close proximity to farmland (e.g. Abu Dhabi, Dubai) They don't replace organic, and subvert the "local" farm-to-table movement and I'll be surprised if they can match the taste of produce grown in a robust/diverse ecosystem. But they do provide a market need for controlled environments and consistent output that dials into local demand. Pros and cons, but inevitable part of our agricultural future. On a long enough timeline, I see this as the future of the industrialization/technology trend that touches everything, including ag. While the "old" industrial-ag model shows that bio-mass reduces over time with fossil-fuel inputs and mass production, so won't stay viable forever. Higher end consumers will support the fully-organic small farm sustainable rural modal, but it remains to be seen if/how they can scale and be price-competitive for mass-consumption vs cheaper alternatives.
- galdosdi 9y ago
  You missed an even bigger input: labor! Cities have tons of people, with a wide variety of skills. The boonies have few, and there's a chicken/egg problem (thinner market) that makes it harder to change jobs since there's fewer employers and harder to fill jobs because there's fewer employees.
- j-c-hewitt 9y ago
  Farm-to-table is a mark of quality for gourmets because the food tastes better and has more nutrition when it has more expensive inputs. Feed a pig nothing but acorns and he's gonna taste great, but he's gonna be really expensive. Feed a pig nothing but hyperprocessed nutrient foam or whatever and he's gonna taste bad but he's gonna be cheaper. >On a long enough timeline, I see this as the future of the industrialization/technology trend that touches everything, including ag. While the "old" industrial-ag model shows that bio-mass reduces over time with fossil-fuel inputs and mass production, so won't stay viable forever. Higher end consumers will support the fully-organic small farm sustainable rural modal, but it remains to be seen if/how they can scale and be price-competitive for mass-consumption vs cheaper alternatives. Why? When people can afford it, they tend to want to upgrade what kinds of food that they eat. The quality issue is not something that is easy to sidestep just because of the law of conservation. Output can't exceed input. It is a huge operation to move soil and fertilizer around. It is expensive even in rural areas. Hydroponics have certain fertility, plant type, and plant quality limitations and cost more money to set up. Not to mention the issue of devoting expensive urban real estate to agricultural production.
mceoin 9y ago
Cities have two things in abundance due to human input/output: fertilizer and water. They lack sunlight but with cheap energy LEDs fill that gap. High density city-"farming" makes economic sense in certain contexts: - high density living environments - inefficient or expensive transport costs - lack of available farming land relative to population (expect net-food-importers like Singapore to lead here) - northern hemisphere (full-year growing cycle increases appeal and cost efficiency) They don't replace organic, and subvert the "local" farm-to-table movement and I'll be surprised if they can match the taste of produce grown in a robust/diverse ecosystem. But they do provide a market need for controlled environments and consistent output that dials into local demand. Pros and cons, but inevitable part of our agricultural future. On a long enough timeline, I see this as the future of the industrialization/technology trend that touches everything, including ag. While the "old" industrial-ag model shows that bio-mass reduces over time with fossil-fuel inputs and mass production, so won't stay viable forever. Higher end consumers will support the fully-organic small farm sustainable rural modal, but it remains to be seen if/how they can scale and be price-competitive for mass-consumption vs cheaper alternatives.
galdosdi 9y ago
I call bullshit. How much dollar (retail) value of goods do you think the average heavy truck rolling around NYC carries? And how much cost do you think is added due to the current freight network versus your ideal world? > Commercial truck traffic gets redirected to cramped streets while personal car traffic gets access to the expressways and parkways. That's one of the reasons why it costs you 4x to buy a pound of worse quality bacon in NYC what it costs in many other US towns and cities. Let's do a little estimating: A crate of milk at $4 per gallon is $24 and is about 1x1x2 feet. If you pack an 8x16x8 box truck, which is way smaller than the maximum size limits, that's 512 crates, so about $13,000 back there. That's also about 26000 lbs, which is within the MGW of some trucks that size. You're lucky I didn't use bacon as an example because a 1x1x2 crate filled with up to 48 pounds of bacon can be sold for much more than a 1x1x2 crate filled with 48 pounds (6 gallons) of milk. Now consider how long it takes a truck, even denied access to parkways (in NYC, trucks DO have access to interstates, such as the BQE, Van Wyck, Verazzano, Triboro, GWB, I-95, etc etc etc) to get around. Maybe a couple hours. How much better could you make it? How much driver pay and extra gas and such is being spent in the extra hour or so? Let's be generous and say $500. So we're talking no more than a 5% change in the price of the goods in there. Stop and go traffic with that kind of weight is not great for fuel, but it's a lot better when deliveries are done off hours. Off hours, it's easy to catch a "green wave" on the wonderful one-way avenues in Manhattan and never have to stop again till you need to make your turn. You're alleging a 400% increase, not a 5% increase. My numbers are off, this is an estimate, but this is probably the order of magnitude of this effect. You are going to need sources to make such a shocking statement. Part of the reason your food costs so much is you're shopping at the wrong damn stores. Go to Key Foods or something. A real normal cheap grocery store, not like, Gristedes or some such. Most foods costs about the same as NJ or Arkansas. Also, most food goes through the Hunts Point distribution centers, which are conveniently located off of I-95 which permits heavy trucks including full 18 wheelers. No idea where you're getting your info. From there they can take the BQE all over inner Brooklyn/Queens with access to Manhattan via any of the major east river bridges except the Brooklyn (some smaller trucks may even meet the restrictions for the tunnels) Making our "Freight infrastructure" any better with roads is a waste of money that at best, may, at the cost of billions, reduce food prices 5-10%. It'd be much better to use a fraction of that money to subsidize food stamp programs or something, with much more effect. The only real problem with all the trucks on our local streets, is it's annoying and dangerous to pedestrians. A good start here would be just enforcing (and educating regarding) the existing mandatory truck route system better. Trucks have an extensive map of permitted routes in NYC, and it's really not that hard to deal with, but you do regularly see trucks violating the same.
galdosdi 9y ago
> But fertile soil is a massive input cost that you can't really get around for most full sized plants. If you had read the article, you'd know this is a hydroponic system. No soil. Yields are substantially higher and less water is consumed. Hydroponics are pretty interesting technology. > Anyone can grow bad produce indoors. Yeah, if they just stick some dirt under a random LED light. That's not what they're doing here. A different article I recently read about the same farm in Newark mentioned some gourmet chef next door raving about the quality of the greens.
- j-c-hewitt 9y ago
  I said 'full sized plants' because hydroponics can only be used for some kinds of plants. For other things you need soil. Hydroponics are also much finickier and require more labor and energy -- not to mention climate control, drainage, and dehumidifying.
  - galdosdi 9y ago
    So what? There's no merit badge for making hydroponics work for all the plants. Like, if you can make it work for just one plant that there's a sizable market for, like say, tomatos, that alone is enough to sustain a huge industry. Like, if you then extend it to other crops, that's cool I guess, but there's no economic need to. In order for your thesis that this is all bogus and useless to hold, hydroponics has to be industrially infeasible for ALL plants of any market value. It makes sense to start out with high value density crops like herbs or something (and it seems the Newark facility is starting with leafy greens for that reason)
    - j-c-hewitt 9y ago
      Well, the gist of articles like this is that indoor rack farming could replace traditional dirt-and-soil farming. This is commentary on an article and not some separate argument about whether or not hydroponics are good or not for certain crops.
awkwardtortoise 9y ago
> I think these kinds of stories play well to governments, the press, and some groups of people as ideas or as cool photo opportunities, but they don't translate into meaningful agricultural production. As with almost all of these type of stories, it's "filler" material for journalists who need to write something to justify their paychecks and it's free advertisement for the companies. Nothing more, nothing less. Companies contact WSJ|NYTimes|etc to do pieces on them all the time. It's free publicity and journalists need to write something and of course the media has to sell ads. It's a form of busybody work. At least this is a break from the relentless "solar savior elon musk" craze on social and traditional media.
dionidium 9y ago
I encourage people to scroll around Google Maps (or better yet, drive) through some of America's most productive agricultural regions. The sheer scale of American farmland dwarfs any possible urban farm development. Anyone who thinks the U.S. is crowded should book a window seat on a daytime cross-country flight and see if they still think that when they land.
- thatcat 9y ago
  Small farms (below 350,000 / yr gross income) account for 25% of production value and 90% of total number of farms [0] and if you look at the crops being produced by large farms they're often not for direct human consumption. Urban farm development is high density farming which doesn't require the same available area and often produces crops with higher nutrient density. It seems technically feasible for medium density urban areas to produce a large percentage of edible food locally in the near future; though that doesn't guarantee a viable business model will exist. [0]https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/farming-and-farm-income/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic...
  - jakewins 9y ago
    > It seems technically feasible for medium density urban areas to produce a large percentage of edible food locally in the near future I absolutely agree with this - but I don't understand what the selling point is. You can't use greenhouses in an urban setting - if you've ever seen a modern hydroponic greenhouse light up the night sky you know why - and the efficiency loss from entirely replacing sunlight is staggering. I guess I don't get it.. what's the selling point that I'm missing?
    - thatcat 9y ago
      The initial selling points will be for high end markets. This style farm would give more control over the humidity and temp to the farmer who could then make significant changes to the flavor profiles that would be easily repeatable. Additionally, all out of season crops will taste in season and there will be no issue with shipping time leading to degradation. This could be enough of a selling point for certain high end restaurants. The loss of sunlight does seem staggering to overcome, but plants can only use a few narrow spectrum bands of light which can be efficiently replaced with led.
stinkytaco 9y ago
I disagree that intensive indoor agriculture can't work. It has worked pretty well. High value, low space plants like tomatoes and marijuana will translate well to a system like this. Lower value crops like grain, where you need lots of it and it doesn't cost much, will not.
jakewins 9y ago
Entirely agreed. I feel like I'm utterly missing something with these indoor and urban farming setups - someone is clearly investing millions into them and is presumably doing due diligence.. The CO2 output of these farms is higher than modern industrial agriculture, even if you assume all the traditional produce is shipped across the entire continental US. Cornell has some good lectures on this subject: https://youtu.be/VrpyUA1pQqE?t=1842 https://youtu.be/VrpyUA1pQqE?t=1842 So, urban farms are worse for the environment - is the selling point cost then? I did a back-of-the-envolope trying to guesstimate this a while back on a similar post about container farms. Granted, a larger factory-style farm will have higher efficiency, but the basic problem of entirely replacing sunlight with artificial light, vs a green house that simply augments, remains. Indoor farm Freight farms has a cost estimate page(1) that gives us, for lettuce, something like: 50-100lb/week, lets say 75lb, so 3,900lb of lettuce a year $17,600/year operating cost $17,600/3,900lb = ~$4.51/lb of lettuce However, it's worth noting that Freight Farms doesn't include labor or capital costs(!) in their estimate. But fine - lets pretend the container farm itself is free, and that somehow plug setting, harvesting, packaging, and equipment maintenance is happily done by people working for nothing: $4.51/lb of lettuce it is. Traditional farm The university extension system provides great estimates of production costs for tons of crops. For lettuce, using traditional soil and machinery, production including labor, packaging and chilling UC Davis estimates(2): $7,754 total overhead per acre 9.38tons of lettuce per acre, 18,760lb a year $7,754/18,769lb = ~$0.41/lb of lettuce BUT, that estimate only includes shipping to the local chilling facility. To then ship the lettuce from CA to NY, you need to hire a trailer. This week, the spot price for chilled lettuce trailers going from CA to NY is $6,000(3). Each trailer carries 40,000lbs of lettuce: $6,000/40,000lbs = ~ $0.15/lb of lettuce to transport For a total cost then, of: $0.41 + $0.15 = $0.56/lb In summary Assuming labor is free for the container farm, you're gifted all the capital assets of it, and that the traditional farm is shipping its' produce across the continental US, the production cost is $4.51/lb for container farm, $0.56/lb for regular soil. (1) https://www.freightfarms.com/blog/data-from-our-growers-operating-the-lgm-as-a-business (2) https://coststudyfiles.ucdavis.edu/uploads/cs_public/7d/96/7d96db67-49ca-442f-9543-4482187c9cd1/lettuceleaforganiccc09.pdf (3) https://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/wa_fv190.txt
- oppositelock 9y ago
beamatronic 9y ago
>> Cities like NYC are almost designed to make it pointlessly expensive and complicated to bring freight in from the country to the store. Didn't I just read an article on here last week about high quality cheap produce in NYC Chinatown?

mceoin 9y ago

Cities have two things in abundance due to human input/output: fertilizer and water. They lack sunlight but with cheap energy LEDs fill that gap. High density city-"farming" makes economic sense in certain contexts: - high density living environments - inefficient or expensive transport costs - lack of available farming land relative to population (expect net-food-importers like Singapore to lead here) - northern hemisphere (full-year growing cycle increases appeal and cost efficiency) - cities not located in close proximity to farmland (e.g. Abu Dhabi, Dubai) They don't replace organic, and subvert the "local" farm-to-table movement and I'll be surprised if they can match the taste of produce grown in a robust/diverse ecosystem. But they do provide a market need for controlled environments and consistent output that dials into local demand. Pros and cons, but inevitable part of our agricultural future. On a long enough timeline, I see this as the future of the industrialization/technology trend that touches everything, including ag. While the "old" industrial-ag model shows that bio-mass reduces over time with fossil-fuel inputs and mass production, so won't stay viable forever. Higher end consumers will support the fully-organic small farm sustainable rural modal, but it remains to be seen if/how they can scale and be price-competitive for mass-consumption vs cheaper alternatives.

galdosdi 9y ago
You missed an even bigger input: labor! Cities have tons of people, with a wide variety of skills. The boonies have few, and there's a chicken/egg problem (thinner market) that makes it harder to change jobs since there's fewer employers and harder to fill jobs because there's fewer employees.
j-c-hewitt 9y ago
Farm-to-table is a mark of quality for gourmets because the food tastes better and has more nutrition when it has more expensive inputs. Feed a pig nothing but acorns and he's gonna taste great, but he's gonna be really expensive. Feed a pig nothing but hyperprocessed nutrient foam or whatever and he's gonna taste bad but he's gonna be cheaper. >On a long enough timeline, I see this as the future of the industrialization/technology trend that touches everything, including ag. While the "old" industrial-ag model shows that bio-mass reduces over time with fossil-fuel inputs and mass production, so won't stay viable forever. Higher end consumers will support the fully-organic small farm sustainable rural modal, but it remains to be seen if/how they can scale and be price-competitive for mass-consumption vs cheaper alternatives. Why? When people can afford it, they tend to want to upgrade what kinds of food that they eat. The quality issue is not something that is easy to sidestep just because of the law of conservation. Output can't exceed input. It is a huge operation to move soil and fertilizer around. It is expensive even in rural areas. Hydroponics have certain fertility, plant type, and plant quality limitations and cost more money to set up. Not to mention the issue of devoting expensive urban real estate to agricultural production.

mceoin 9y ago

Cities have two things in abundance due to human input/output: fertilizer and water. They lack sunlight but with cheap energy LEDs fill that gap. High density city-"farming" makes economic sense in certain contexts: - high density living environments - inefficient or expensive transport costs - lack of available farming land relative to population (expect net-food-importers like Singapore to lead here) - northern hemisphere (full-year growing cycle increases appeal and cost efficiency) They don't replace organic, and subvert the "local" farm-to-table movement and I'll be surprised if they can match the taste of produce grown in a robust/diverse ecosystem. But they do provide a market need for controlled environments and consistent output that dials into local demand. Pros and cons, but inevitable part of our agricultural future. On a long enough timeline, I see this as the future of the industrialization/technology trend that touches everything, including ag. While the "old" industrial-ag model shows that bio-mass reduces over time with fossil-fuel inputs and mass production, so won't stay viable forever. Higher end consumers will support the fully-organic small farm sustainable rural modal, but it remains to be seen if/how they can scale and be price-competitive for mass-consumption vs cheaper alternatives.

galdosdi 9y ago

I call bullshit. How much dollar (retail) value of goods do you think the average heavy truck rolling around NYC carries? And how much cost do you think is added due to the current freight network versus your ideal world? > Commercial truck traffic gets redirected to cramped streets while personal car traffic gets access to the expressways and parkways. That's one of the reasons why it costs you 4x to buy a pound of worse quality bacon in NYC what it costs in many other US towns and cities. Let's do a little estimating: A crate of milk at $4 per gallon is $24 and is about 1x1x2 feet. If you pack an 8x16x8 box truck, which is way smaller than the maximum size limits, that's 512 crates, so about $13,000 back there. That's also about 26000 lbs, which is within the MGW of some trucks that size. You're lucky I didn't use bacon as an example because a 1x1x2 crate filled with up to 48 pounds of bacon can be sold for much more than a 1x1x2 crate filled with 48 pounds (6 gallons) of milk. Now consider how long it takes a truck, even denied access to parkways (in NYC, trucks DO have access to interstates, such as the BQE, Van Wyck, Verazzano, Triboro, GWB, I-95, etc etc etc) to get around. Maybe a couple hours. How much better could you make it? How much driver pay and extra gas and such is being spent in the extra hour or so? Let's be generous and say $500. So we're talking no more than a 5% change in the price of the goods in there. Stop and go traffic with that kind of weight is not great for fuel, but it's a lot better when deliveries are done off hours. Off hours, it's easy to catch a "green wave" on the wonderful one-way avenues in Manhattan and never have to stop again till you need to make your turn. You're alleging a 400% increase, not a 5% increase. My numbers are off, this is an estimate, but this is probably the order of magnitude of this effect. You are going to need sources to make such a shocking statement. Part of the reason your food costs so much is you're shopping at the wrong damn stores. Go to Key Foods or something. A real normal cheap grocery store, not like, Gristedes or some such. Most foods costs about the same as NJ or Arkansas. Also, most food goes through the Hunts Point distribution centers, which are conveniently located off of I-95 which permits heavy trucks including full 18 wheelers. No idea where you're getting your info. From there they can take the BQE all over inner Brooklyn/Queens with access to Manhattan via any of the major east river bridges except the Brooklyn (some smaller trucks may even meet the restrictions for the tunnels) Making our "Freight infrastructure" any better with roads is a waste of money that at best, may, at the cost of billions, reduce food prices 5-10%. It'd be much better to use a fraction of that money to subsidize food stamp programs or something, with much more effect. The only real problem with all the trucks on our local streets, is it's annoying and dangerous to pedestrians. A good start here would be just enforcing (and educating regarding) the existing mandatory truck route system better. Trucks have an extensive map of permitted routes in NYC, and it's really not that hard to deal with, but you do regularly see trucks violating the same.

galdosdi 9y ago

> But fertile soil is a massive input cost that you can't really get around for most full sized plants. If you had read the article, you'd know this is a hydroponic system. No soil. Yields are substantially higher and less water is consumed. Hydroponics are pretty interesting technology. > Anyone can grow bad produce indoors. Yeah, if they just stick some dirt under a random LED light. That's not what they're doing here. A different article I recently read about the same farm in Newark mentioned some gourmet chef next door raving about the quality of the greens.

j-c-hewitt 9y ago
I said 'full sized plants' because hydroponics can only be used for some kinds of plants. For other things you need soil. Hydroponics are also much finickier and require more labor and energy -- not to mention climate control, drainage, and dehumidifying.
- galdosdi 9y ago
  So what? There's no merit badge for making hydroponics work for all the plants. Like, if you can make it work for just one plant that there's a sizable market for, like say, tomatos, that alone is enough to sustain a huge industry. Like, if you then extend it to other crops, that's cool I guess, but there's no economic need to. In order for your thesis that this is all bogus and useless to hold, hydroponics has to be industrially infeasible for ALL plants of any market value. It makes sense to start out with high value density crops like herbs or something (and it seems the Newark facility is starting with leafy greens for that reason)
  - j-c-hewitt 9y ago
    Well, the gist of articles like this is that indoor rack farming could replace traditional dirt-and-soil farming. This is commentary on an article and not some separate argument about whether or not hydroponics are good or not for certain crops.

awkwardtortoise 9y ago

> I think these kinds of stories play well to governments, the press, and some groups of people as ideas or as cool photo opportunities, but they don't translate into meaningful agricultural production. As with almost all of these type of stories, it's "filler" material for journalists who need to write something to justify their paychecks and it's free advertisement for the companies. Nothing more, nothing less. Companies contact WSJ|NYTimes|etc to do pieces on them all the time. It's free publicity and journalists need to write something and of course the media has to sell ads. It's a form of busybody work. At least this is a break from the relentless "solar savior elon musk" craze on social and traditional media.

dionidium 9y ago

I encourage people to scroll around Google Maps (or better yet, drive) through some of America's most productive agricultural regions. The sheer scale of American farmland dwarfs any possible urban farm development. Anyone who thinks the U.S. is crowded should book a window seat on a daytime cross-country flight and see if they still think that when they land.

thatcat 9y ago
Small farms (below 350,000 / yr gross income) account for 25% of production value and 90% of total number of farms [0] and if you look at the crops being produced by large farms they're often not for direct human consumption. Urban farm development is high density farming which doesn't require the same available area and often produces crops with higher nutrient density. It seems technically feasible for medium density urban areas to produce a large percentage of edible food locally in the near future; though that doesn't guarantee a viable business model will exist. [0]https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/farming-and-farm-income/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic...
- jakewins 9y ago
  > It seems technically feasible for medium density urban areas to produce a large percentage of edible food locally in the near future I absolutely agree with this - but I don't understand what the selling point is. You can't use greenhouses in an urban setting - if you've ever seen a modern hydroponic greenhouse light up the night sky you know why - and the efficiency loss from entirely replacing sunlight is staggering. I guess I don't get it.. what's the selling point that I'm missing?
  - thatcat 9y ago
    The initial selling points will be for high end markets. This style farm would give more control over the humidity and temp to the farmer who could then make significant changes to the flavor profiles that would be easily repeatable. Additionally, all out of season crops will taste in season and there will be no issue with shipping time leading to degradation. This could be enough of a selling point for certain high end restaurants. The loss of sunlight does seem staggering to overcome, but plants can only use a few narrow spectrum bands of light which can be efficiently replaced with led.

stinkytaco 9y ago

I disagree that intensive indoor agriculture can't work. It has worked pretty well. High value, low space plants like tomatoes and marijuana will translate well to a system like this. Lower value crops like grain, where you need lots of it and it doesn't cost much, will not.

jakewins 9y ago

Entirely agreed. I feel like I'm utterly missing something with these indoor and urban farming setups - someone is clearly investing millions into them and is presumably doing due diligence.. The CO2 output of these farms is higher than modern industrial agriculture, even if you assume all the traditional produce is shipped across the entire continental US. Cornell has some good lectures on this subject: https://youtu.be/VrpyUA1pQqE?t=1842 https://youtu.be/VrpyUA1pQqE?t=1842 So, urban farms are worse for the environment - is the selling point cost then? I did a back-of-the-envolope trying to guesstimate this a while back on a similar post about container farms. Granted, a larger factory-style farm will have higher efficiency, but the basic problem of entirely replacing sunlight with artificial light, vs a green house that simply augments, remains. Indoor farm Freight farms has a cost estimate page(1) that gives us, for lettuce, something like: 50-100lb/week, lets say 75lb, so 3,900lb of lettuce a year $17,600/year operating cost $17,600/3,900lb = ~$4.51/lb of lettuce However, it's worth noting that Freight Farms doesn't include labor or capital costs(!) in their estimate. But fine - lets pretend the container farm itself is free, and that somehow plug setting, harvesting, packaging, and equipment maintenance is happily done by people working for nothing: $4.51/lb of lettuce it is. Traditional farm The university extension system provides great estimates of production costs for tons of crops. For lettuce, using traditional soil and machinery, production including labor, packaging and chilling UC Davis estimates(2): $7,754 total overhead per acre 9.38tons of lettuce per acre, 18,760lb a year $7,754/18,769lb = ~$0.41/lb of lettuce BUT, that estimate only includes shipping to the local chilling facility. To then ship the lettuce from CA to NY, you need to hire a trailer. This week, the spot price for chilled lettuce trailers going from CA to NY is $6,000(3). Each trailer carries 40,000lbs of lettuce: $6,000/40,000lbs = ~ $0.15/lb of lettuce to transport For a total cost then, of: $0.41 + $0.15 = $0.56/lb In summary Assuming labor is free for the container farm, you're gifted all the capital assets of it, and that the traditional farm is shipping its' produce across the continental US, the production cost is $4.51/lb for container farm, $0.56/lb for regular soil. (1) https://www.freightfarms.com/blog/data-from-our-growers-operating-the-lgm-as-a-business (2) https://coststudyfiles.ucdavis.edu/uploads/cs_public/7d/96/7d96db67-49ca-442f-9543-4482187c9cd1/lettuceleaforganiccc09.pdf (3) https://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/wa_fv190.txt

oppositelock 9y ago

beamatronic 9y ago

>> Cities like NYC are almost designed to make it pointlessly expensive and complicated to bring freight in from the country to the store. Didn't I just read an article on here last week about high quality cheap produce in NYC Chinatown?