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What are the biggest factors that contribute to the cost? Is it mostly increased labor?

• cogman10 4y ago
  Labor and machinery. You can't run a harvesting tractor through a greenhouse. So, a lot of produce from greenhouses or vertical farms (etc) ends up with a manual harvesting step. This is why you pretty much see greenhouses exclusively used for foods which would require that manual step anyways.
  • cupofpython 4y ago
    we have AI based dancing robots now, maybe they can figure something out for this
    • cogman10 4y ago
      I think it's possible the whole system could be automated. The problem really ends up being one of cost. It's similar to the "burger flipper robot" problem. Possibility solvable, but also gonna be costly and buggy for v1 of the robot.
    • shagie 4y ago
      Its an area of active development and research - https://youtu.be/5chk9Sory88 https://youtu.be/5chk9Sory88 Note that this is an area that is rather specialized - a pepper picking robot isn't good for tomato picking or lettuce picking ( https://youtu.be/EFC3OvkVKaQ https://youtu.be/EFC3OvkVKaQ ). Compare that to the incredibly versatile human ( https://youtu.be/oxbJVqfIK1U https://youtu.be/oxbJVqfIK1U ).
  • DarylZero 4y ago
    >You can't run a harvesting tractor through a greenhouse. Sure you can. Just needs to be big enough.