And there's plenty of prime farmland in the US and Mexico, already. But the real cost center of farming is labor, not transport, and the claimed automation sav

And there's plenty of prime farmland in the US and Mexico, already. But the real cost center of farming is labor, not transport, and the claimed automation savings are pretty dubious. Especially given every previous vertical farming startup claimed the same gigantic savings from automation before they went under. My head aches a little bit just reading about the comparison of "spring mix" costs. Spring mix is a product built on a big markup for the act of peeling and combining romaine lettuce and other crops. You might as well say, "Hey, a salad at a salad bar is $12, let's compete with that!" A sensible comparison would be with plain romaine lettuce or whatever. If these startups could provide cheap, high-quality romaine lettuce or whatever at any real scale, we wouldn't be hearing the umpteenth repetition of funding hype for vertical farming, we'd be hearing about how well vertically farmed crops were selling.