I will preface these comments by saying I spent over twenty years in a previous career as a practicing agronomist.
The dirty little secret of all these vertical farming stories is that the numbers don't add up. The Sunday NYT had an article where they talked about growing corn in one of these buildings.
If I gave you the building and the land you couldn't make money growing corn. They speak of turning a crop every six weeks, I don't know of a single hybrid variety that matures in less than 78 days. Quite simply the NYT reporter didn't ask any critical questions.
Even with high value crops like lettuce and flowers it is dubious. But farming vacant urban land with hoop houses like they're starting to do in Detroit does make sense, There are security risks in an urban environment but those pale beside the costs associated with twenty stories of hydroponics.
The dirty little secret of all these vertical farming stories is that the numbers don't add up. The Sunday NYT had an article where they talked about growing corn in one of these buildings.
If I gave you the building and the land you couldn't make money growing corn. They speak of turning a crop every six weeks, I don't know of a single hybrid variety that matures in less than 78 days. Quite simply the NYT reporter didn't ask any critical questions.
Even with high value crops like lettuce and flowers it is dubious. But farming vacant urban land with hoop houses like they're starting to do in Detroit does make sense, There are security risks in an urban environment but those pale beside the costs associated with twenty stories of hydroponics.