Thread: Vertical Farms
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Old Posted May 4, 2010, 2:45 AM
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Jasoncw Jasoncw is offline
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Commercial farming takes advantage of such incredibly huge economies of scale, and individual people require such huge areas for their food, that this idea is very unrealistic.

These buildings (even if they're massive horizontal structures, and not these absurd skyscraper shapes) would be very expensive to build, especially with all of the automated systems and controls, and it would add a lot of cost to the food. Normal commercial farming is having problems as it is, and building these buildings wouldn't help any. The economics don't justify them.


But I think there might be some exceptions where this might be a feasible idea.

One could be for spices and other products which have low volumes, but sell for a lot, and which could fetch even higher prices if they were at the near perfect quality that could be achieved in a controlled environment. But for this they might be using greenhouses and things already anyway. And if these were to be built for that purpose, they would still be one story horizontal structures.

Another might be on places like Hawaii, where, if oil prices go high enough, the saved money in shipping costs might justify the cost of building these structures. But I have a hard time imagining it would come to that.


Although I think it's a cool idea and I'd like it if it was a practical one.
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