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I've never been able to understand the excitement around vertical farming from VC. I assume the primary reason for VC interest in this boondoggle is just that s

I've never been able to understand the excitement around vertical farming from VC. I assume the primary reason for VC interest in this boondoggle is just that sleeping at the Comfort Inn in Sedalia, MO is not nearly as fun as a champagne black tie at the media lab. But, during COVID, I now think there actually is a strong case for large-scale vertical farming: robustness. It's a backstop against famine in case of long-tail events: "locusts", plagues that wipe out key crops, once-in-a-millenia systemic flooding, a super-volcano eruption, etc. But it's not going to be profitable. It's going to be horrendously unprofitable. And it's not something we should be doing now; it's just something that we should be able to quickly start doing immediately in case of a catastrophic event, and at a scale large enough to get 1200-1500 calories to everyone each day. In other words, the primary customer for vertical farming is government, not the private sector. Unless you can mass produce morels, as the author notes :)

amerine 6y ago
It’s interesting to think about it this way. Thanks for the new lens.
mrtksn 6y ago
No one wants to start a career in Agriculture, it only makes sense when you are payed extremely well and currently that's the case when you can make the bare minimum but that minimum is a lot somewhere else. In West Europe, Agriculture is done by Eastern Europeans who can work for few months and make some money that is uninspiring the West but life-changing in the East. Western youth would't touch it. In Turkey it is done by people who escaped a war or tyranny : Syrians and Afghans. It makes sense for them because the alternative is worse but the Turkish youth would not touch it unless it's some kind of organic avocados hipster thing. The Agriculture production is now cheap but unless everything gets robotised at the same pace(or faster) with the people leaving the business or the inequality in the world vanishes it can get real expensive real quick. The vertical farming looks like an option before automatic drones produces us all the produce in a sense that no one ever seen a tomato field in life. But as the author states, farming is massively automated and the efforts are still going on. So, maybe it's about lifestyle? Having a vertical farm in each garden could be desirable even if not efficient.

amerine 6y ago

It’s interesting to think about it this way. Thanks for the new lens.

mrtksn 6y ago

No one wants to start a career in Agriculture, it only makes sense when you are payed extremely well and currently that's the case when you can make the bare minimum but that minimum is a lot somewhere else. In West Europe, Agriculture is done by Eastern Europeans who can work for few months and make some money that is uninspiring the West but life-changing in the East. Western youth would't touch it. In Turkey it is done by people who escaped a war or tyranny : Syrians and Afghans. It makes sense for them because the alternative is worse but the Turkish youth would not touch it unless it's some kind of organic avocados hipster thing. The Agriculture production is now cheap but unless everything gets robotised at the same pace(or faster) with the people leaving the business or the inequality in the world vanishes it can get real expensive real quick. The vertical farming looks like an option before automatic drones produces us all the produce in a sense that no one ever seen a tomato field in life. But as the author states, farming is massively automated and the efforts are still going on. So, maybe it's about lifestyle? Having a vertical farm in each garden could be desirable even if not efficient.