4 ms·

I dunno, I grew up shopping at Key Food in Brooklyn. Key Food sucks. Gristedes is indeed worse. Even the revamped Key Food sucks. It's way more expensive than g

I dunno, I grew up shopping at Key Food in Brooklyn. Key Food sucks. Gristedes is indeed worse. Even the revamped Key Food sucks. It's way more expensive than grocery stores in other lower cost of living states that I have lived in since. Even the high end NYC grocery stores are basically just bad and expensive compared to a lot of other places in the country. Sure, transportation isn't all of it. Most of it is probably labor and real estate. But how awful it is to drive a truck in NYC versus how easy it is to make commercial deliveries in just about any other city or town in America has a lot to do with it, especially because the article babbles an awful lot about the challenge of delivering stuff to cities from rural areas. It's way more complicated to deliver goods to Manhattan (an island) than in most American places which just involve pulling off an interstate exit and making a delivery. If the question is whether or not it makes sense to focus on a( Heavy public investment into fake-tech urban farms or b( Identifying the really big sources of the costs and working to bring those down I think b( is the better way to go. I think we could probably agree on that. I don't really know the specifics because I'm shooting off the hip about another lame urban farming article. Come to think of it real estate prices are probably what make up the bulk of the added cost on top of what the consumer pays in other markets and not delivery costs. But the purported problem that these farms are supposed to fix are the cost of bringing food from rural areas to cities. Personally I doubt that even if the magical infrastructure fairy gave the mayor a quintillion dollar grant to spend on infrastructure improvements that anything positive would happen (it would probably get much worse somehow). But again, the problem that this is supposed to fix is the cost of bringing food in from rural areas.

zimzam 9y ago
Indeed, grocery stores in NYC generally have terrible produce. However most of the costs for urban farms have to do with replicating things that rural farms have for free. Instead of using the sun urban farms have to pay for electricity, lighting, wiring, etc. * Sunlight: electricity costs and capital costs for lighting * Water: even with an efficient hydroponic system city water is more expensive * Growing medium: either dirt or a hydroponic system, which requires maintenance and a capital outlay * the farm building itself: unlike fields, buildings cost money to build and maintain An efficient urban farm could theoretically use land more efficiently (by growing more crops per square foot) and use less water, but those inputs are cheap. Transportation would also be less expensive. Iowa farmland is less than $9,000/acre[0]: in Staten Island (the cheapest borough) land prices are $37.62/square foot[1] or $1.64 million/acre: so yields would need to be over 180x better to break even on the land alone! Absent some huge breakthroughs on the pricing of all of the inputs (or astronomical increases in transportation costs) the economics for generally don't work for crops. [0] http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/2016/12/13/iowa-farmland-values-tumble-third-year-row/95368680/ http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/2016/12/13/iowa... [1] https://therealdeal.com/issues_articles/486631/ https://therealdeal.com/issues_articles/486631/
galdosdi 9y ago
I dunno, I can get tomatos in season for like a buck a pound, and while I haven't bought boneless chicken breast in a couple years, it was findable for like $2 or $3 a pound. Milk is like $3 to $4 a gallon, and eggs can be had for $1 to $2 a dozen. Parsley and cilantro for like a buck or two, but you can't always find good quality for both. Whatever, I use them interchangably so it's fine. Potatos and onions are always dirt cheap everywhere, well under $1 a pound. Kale is cheap but I don't remember how much because I discovered I like cabbage even better, and they practically give cabbage away. These are the prices I get from going to nearby fine fare / key foods type places in the Lower East Side, and they're pretty much the same prices I remember seeing in NJ and Arkansas, with some variation. Individual supermarkets do vary a lot though, so if you don't have a bike/car and just go to the one that happens to be closest to you, it may seem way worse than it actually is. I don't know if real estate makes a difference. The dollar pizza places stay in business somehow, making it up on volume. Suburban supermarkets seem to compensate for their cheaper real estate by wasting way more of it, with huge stores with tons of aisles and 100 brands of each kind of product, and then 4x that land spent on parking. I wouldn't be surprised if such a facility spends the same or more on their lease as a random C-Town in Brooklyn. Also, I kind of agree with a lot of other stuff you said, just responded to what I found interesting to respond to :)

zimzam 9y ago

Indeed, grocery stores in NYC generally have terrible produce. However most of the costs for urban farms have to do with replicating things that rural farms have for free. Instead of using the sun urban farms have to pay for electricity, lighting, wiring, etc. * Sunlight: electricity costs and capital costs for lighting * Water: even with an efficient hydroponic system city water is more expensive * Growing medium: either dirt or a hydroponic system, which requires maintenance and a capital outlay * the farm building itself: unlike fields, buildings cost money to build and maintain An efficient urban farm could theoretically use land more efficiently (by growing more crops per square foot) and use less water, but those inputs are cheap. Transportation would also be less expensive. Iowa farmland is less than $9,000/acre[0]: in Staten Island (the cheapest borough) land prices are $37.62/square foot[1] or $1.64 million/acre: so yields would need to be over 180x better to break even on the land alone! Absent some huge breakthroughs on the pricing of all of the inputs (or astronomical increases in transportation costs) the economics for generally don't work for crops. [0] http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/2016/12/13/iowa-farmland-values-tumble-third-year-row/95368680/ http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/2016/12/13/iowa... [1] https://therealdeal.com/issues_articles/486631/ https://therealdeal.com/issues_articles/486631/

galdosdi 9y ago

I dunno, I can get tomatos in season for like a buck a pound, and while I haven't bought boneless chicken breast in a couple years, it was findable for like $2 or $3 a pound. Milk is like $3 to $4 a gallon, and eggs can be had for $1 to $2 a dozen. Parsley and cilantro for like a buck or two, but you can't always find good quality for both. Whatever, I use them interchangably so it's fine. Potatos and onions are always dirt cheap everywhere, well under $1 a pound. Kale is cheap but I don't remember how much because I discovered I like cabbage even better, and they practically give cabbage away. These are the prices I get from going to nearby fine fare / key foods type places in the Lower East Side, and they're pretty much the same prices I remember seeing in NJ and Arkansas, with some variation. Individual supermarkets do vary a lot though, so if you don't have a bike/car and just go to the one that happens to be closest to you, it may seem way worse than it actually is. I don't know if real estate makes a difference. The dollar pizza places stay in business somehow, making it up on volume. Suburban supermarkets seem to compensate for their cheaper real estate by wasting way more of it, with huge stores with tons of aisles and 100 brands of each kind of product, and then 4x that land spent on parking. I wouldn't be surprised if such a facility spends the same or more on their lease as a random C-Town in Brooklyn. Also, I kind of agree with a lot of other stuff you said, just responded to what I found interesting to respond to :)