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 ha

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/