Ask HN: What are the biggest obstacles to vertical farms?

The cost of providing lights (even using LEDs) is still not economically cheaper than the sun in most cases. If hydroponics is done in open it would be interesting to see if there are actually any advantages given that hydroponic farms will be near city where land is more expensive than where the farmlands are. Also pests again become a problem. There is a reason that most hydroponic companies are targeting micro-greens and other leafy vegetables as they are easy to grow and also most of the produce is edible so less waste of area and electricity.

In my experiments, I built multiple automated hydroponic setups and I have been able to grow only micro-greens and lettuce successfully and in a shorter cycle. All other experiments of growing strawberries and saffron failed.

> Why is this not feeding developing countries?

Because that is not the problem, the problem is neocolonialism/imperialism the highest stage of capitalism[1].

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism,_the_Highest_Sta...

In addition to cost of lighting, I've found that the cost of hydroponic fertilizer is also too high, at least for small growers buying it premixed. I've successfully grown hydroponic tomatoes following standard guidelines, and found that the cost of the fertilizer is roughly equal to the value of the tomatoes harvested.

The idea of a vertical farm is a brain scam.

They make zero logical sense.

A bit like subterranean levels on a house, everyone loves them because they seem 'free' because of lack of exposure. In reality they are the same as adding a level above a house, which everyone 'knows' is expensive.

Anyway vertical farms don't work because if you add surface area with the same sunlight then it's obviously greatly reduced per plant, nothing is free.

All the, "but, what if", are answered in longer blog posts. IE adding the word hydroponic doesn't change the fact they suck.

Separately, hydroponic are great for high end rich person food. They don't add to food security.

Land is cheap, sunlight is free, what's been happening for thousands of years is still the best, improving yields to these is what matters.

One, if not the biggest issues with developing countries is lack of vitamins in kids 0-2 and pregnant women. This is what needs solving.

It is very hard to commercially beat the Dutch greenhouses, which for decades have been the most efficient method of providing food both in summer and winter.

The thing to compare vertical farms to is their horizontal greenhouse equivalents which are also closed systems with very high levels of control and yield per land area.

Once you do that, the balance is basically between the greater capital and power costs of vertical farms vs being closer to urban markets.

Transport is cheap so that never works out in favour of vertical.

Also, developing countries with low agricultural yields would adopt technologies like drip irrigation, better fertiliser and pesticide management before greenhouses and greenhouse before vertical farms.

Gravity is definitely the biggest obstacle to growing vertically, it takes a lot of capital to overcome gravity.

I'm on a small farm with some buildings but I have no desire to grow indoors, there is an abundance of soil and light outdoors, my customers buy the type of food grown outdoors, the environmental impact is probably always going to be less, and vertical growing is only suited for a small amount crops.

We can't feed people from vertical farms because they do not grow the types of food people eat the majority of, mostly cereal grains. Tomatoes, potatoes and larger vegetables are not viable so we're limited to salad greens, herbs, wheat grass ect.

We are a commercial agricultural producer using polyhouses in southern India; we have couple of playhouses so I am well aware of the nuances.

polyhouses and any other associated with these like vertical farm,hydrophonics etc are firstly suited for specific set of plants.

Not all plants and veggies can be grown , some plants cannot be grown inside polyhouses at all, i would say almost 70 % of veggies which are mass consumed can never be grown in polyhouses,hydrophonics etc.

Just think of all the veggies you had today or yesterday and you will easily understand these cannot be grown in polyhouses let alone hydrophonics.

there is no doubt significant increase in production, compared to outdoor farming. These are because of various factors. The main factors are we allow the plant to grow suitably thereby maximizing required production.

For example in a capsicum polyhouse, there are nets which help the plant to climb, and almost everything is supplied to the plant on more than required basis.

The capsicum plant is allowed minimal leaves so that max nutrition is allowed for the capsicum alone and not for the plant leaves etc. You can think of it it like a kid with a silver spoon, these plants get everything in return for capsisum and capsicum alone. ( who cares abt capsicum leaves BTW )

Secondly The price of capsicum is not determined by the buyer nor the producer , its determined by some trader who is totally unknown. This unknown person gets to decide on the price.

You the end customer nor the farmer has any say in determining the price. This is especially difficult when the output is perishable. The farmer has to sell it at whatever the price which is offered or else his produce will rot. When you grow a bumper crop its all the more difficult to find that many no of traders , transport etc. Selling 1 Ton itself is difficult enough, imagine the complexity when you have 10 tons from the same farm. You would need more resources to manage everything. The trader will never offer the same rate as he would have offered for 1 ton since he knows very well that you would never be able to sell 10 tons.

No country has the ways and means to distribute all the produce effectively across to its citizens.

The problems with polyhouses compound when other methods are introduced ( think hydrophonics,aerophonics,vertical farming etc), There is no economics involved in these.

Unless you do it as a passion. its never profitable to grow brocolli or lettuice in hydrophonics. The trader will never give you the right price if you have an huge quantity.

Its very easy to say brocolli sells for $X and we can do this and that and reduce it by $y in reality no one can control every aspect of the food chain.

Isreal does it becuase of its limited land availabilty , not with the case of India ,china and USA.

I am not sure if I had explained the whole correctly but Hydroponics + etc is only a hobby never commercially viable.

Surely a significant part of the problem is subsidies for entrenched, petroleum centric, industrial agriculture.

Subsidising already successful business as usual corporations has got to make improvements through external disruption extremely difficult.

There was a really interesting link on a related subject a while back where they were using solar concentration to generate heat, power and desalination for use by the attached greenhouse. To me that's a much more impressive use of technology.

Edit: I think this was it http://www.sundropfarms.com/sundrop-system/

My take is that more complex cultures need a symbiotic relationship with bacteria, fungi and insects to thrive.