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Not surprised but this also misses some of the big wins of vertical farms - big increases in sustainability. Money is not everything - and if it can be profitab

Not surprised but this also misses some of the big wins of vertical farms - big increases in sustainability. Money is not everything - and if it can be profitable (even if it is less profitable than outside) it could potentially still make sense. Realistically though I think this will not see bigger use until we actually get fusion power working and/or it becomes more useful on places like the Moon or in environments where there is far less natural sunlight (like very northern latitudes)

a1371 4y ago
> Money is not everything I don't think that's true for the VC-funded startups. I actually expect to hear that from the farmers I have known in my life. With the margins I saw, they were not in it for money. They would pride themselves in being self-sufficient, living off the land, and co-living with the nature. ABF -- Always Be Farming -- they say. I have yet to see an actual environmental lifecycle analysis of these "disruptive" vertical farms. That amount of steel, precious metal, and plastic that goes into making a facility has high upfront Embodied Carbon. Can that really have a pay back compared to when you use the sun and the land? How many acres of land can you really replace with a farm on top of an abandoned parking lot? What they say about vertical farms is way too rosy. They must compare their methods with borderline medieval farming techniques to calculate some 99% efficiency improvement. Farmers today care as much about biodiversity, ecology, and sustainability as anybody else, if not more.