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 p

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