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It's funny you brought up lettuce because for my thinking, head lettuce and salad greens are likely the only thing vertical farming would make sense for. The p
by RosanaAnaDana 3y ago
It's funny you brought up lettuce because for my thinking, head lettuce and salad greens are likely the only thing vertical farming would make sense for.
The plants themselves are compact and mostly green bags of water. The big costs are cleaning, processing, transport, and refrigeratoration. There is almost no manual labor involved.The life cycle is extremely short. The demand is extremely high.
Lettuce might be the only vegetable that vertical farming makes sense for, but it would need to be able to cover the cost of expensive light-industrial space very close to market.
Ultimately plants are solar panels and even in vertical farming it's space you are paying for. Even if you can plant 10 layers deep, youre dealing with maybe having to pay >10x per SQ ft for space in a location close enough to be relevant.
- klyrs 3y agoI agree with the sentiment on lettuce. It should effectively be grown in-store. I'd say that a few other leafy greens fit the bill -- cilantro, basil, spinach, kale. There was a startup operating in my area doing just that, that recently went under. They were focused on higher-price herbs, and I think a major mistake in their model was in using valuable retail space for the hydroponic setups. A couple of stacked containers in the parking lot should be much cheaper, and produce enough volume to be competitive on lower $/kg crops like lettuce and spinach.