Enough vertical farms have been put into operation that early data can offer a suggestion how that idea is going to work out.
Full disclosure: I never thought they made sense on any level other than futuristic fantasy. Like monorails. Multi-story buildings filled with produce in the heart of a city were such seductive images that believers bet technology could solve all the messy details like economics, thermodynamics, and agronomy if we just tried hard enough.
While there are some operational vertical farms, and this could be the ugly period most new technology struggles through, it appears the industry could go the way of other capital-eating startups. Vertical farming could be the Segway of agriculture, falling way short of the hype.
Some of the obstacles are obvious – energy use being top of the list. While LED cost and efficiency triggered the whole concept of growing stuff indoors by lowering growing-light costs, it’s still an order of magnitude more expensive than free solar outdoors in someplace like Arizona.
There were agronomic surprises like what happens when plants don’t experience wind and pollinators have no access. There was consumer uncertainty about the product – it’s clearly not organic, for instance. Nobody really has invented the standard building to prevent reinventing the wheel each time, making each structure a one-off expensive prototype.
The capital burn is enormous, and investors are running out of patience. Meanwhile, as the Finger Lakes region around Leamington, Ontario has demonstrated, properly located enormous horizontal greenhouses seem to have cleared many of these hurdles. To be sure, our dependence on concentrated growing areas like California or Texas is being tested by climate change and especially water availability, not to mention labor for some crops, but they keep groceries supplied - as long as the trucks run, of course.
As trade frictions ease and ingenious retailers find workarounds to import specific products, the vegetable business continues to be highly competitive and demand-, not supply-driven for the most part. The clincher for me was all I ever saw growing in those futuristic photos were greens. How much salad do we need anyway?
