Thanks boss!

Actually I prefer the video, but thanks for trying

@@ahernandez50 I didn't say you'd prefer my version. I was just trying to save you time.

Ah, figured that thanks 😊

@@yuchoob And I appreciate your effort, but honestly the video has a lot more context and valuable information than the (correct) conclusion you extracted, so a summary leaves out a lot of important facts.

Oh that sounds super cool! You've chosen incredible products to grow and i would actually love to learn more about your experience with blueberries and goose berries! Is there any way that we could connect e.g. on Linkedin?

THIS NEEDS TO HAPPEN

curious on why the 10 mo at a loss was caused by, is it because the buyers didn't know you guys yet hence cannot sell enough or what?

What were the real estate costs?

​@@fltfathin it might be news to you but most plants give fruits once per year, and it takes a lot of time from first plant to first harvest. That's the main reason vertical farms always go for lettuce because it grows fast, in good conditions it's 6 to 8 weeks, and it's possible to have continuous harvest by planting new batch every week.

Haha that's a fair point 😅. I was trying to referr to individual farmers and agricultural workers who have a history of running agricultural businesses buy i see what you mean.

I mean, we've farmed for less than 5% of our species' existence

@@Joshukend Not true I saw a KZfaqST (stone tablet) video on farming from 30,000 BC just the other day.

Depends what you call traditional farming, it's an industry thats rapidly evolved.

@@turningpoint4238 And I have just the idea for the next innovation! Horizontal vertical farms! Like vertical farms, but we flatten them out and spread them across a wide area of outdoor land so we can use the sun's energy instead of paying for electricity! Horizontal = Vertical 2.0 !

That's a great point as well! While the technology is proven and does bring benefits, the issue is that it's currently only applicable to low cost products - which makes the general unit economics unsustainable. But as I mentioned in the video, I believe this is just the beginning of an adjustment which will lead to a betterarket where the technology will serve both financially and socially better purposes.

@@ArcticFarming In this world there is not enough reference to "unit economics" when it comes to analyzing business performance, which is a huge mistake. Good thing that you clearly understand the concept and apply it widely.

You are wrong, the opposite is true. Leafy greens are actually very expensive when you look at the price per ton and their actual nutrient content. For vertical farms to work they would need to produce staples like rice or wheat (things that are actually very cheap). You would need almost free and limitless energy to pull that off in a vertical farm.

@@ArcticFarming How on earth are salads low-cost products in your opinion? They are very expensive compared to staple agricultural crops.

What? Cashews? Do you even know how Cashews are farmed..??

Good points, i always stay away from anything that is saturated since competitions is high hence lower profits and demands. You and I should talk and go into businesses together

I was thinking the same thing. There are many different products that would bring in a lot more per square foot, man hour, KWhr, or any other expense.

personally I been considering if coffee beans could be a interesting crop for it, but guess shipping is still too cheap for that

Maybe saffron is best for indoor farming.

@@SodiumSyndicate::: Mmm, that’d be awesome! This whole vertical growing concept will have to become vertically value added, as well. Using saffron as the example, how many spin off products could be integrated into the business model, so that more of the investment is diversified?

Agreed. That's because they don't scale properly. They did centralization instead of replication. Biological systems are better scaled via replication and not via "bigger is better".

I think these will be a good thing for the planet and people. But we dont have the massive amount energy(light, pump water, temperature, infraestructure...)to make these economicly posible. When land gets more expensive than energy vertical farming will be viable. I think these is a nice idea that could help reduce cultive space something that is eating all (forest, water, humus soil, space, ecositems ) way worst that CO2 in my opinión.

@AdrianRodriguez-yq4up I don't think you uderstand farming. Even with 7 bln ppl on the planet, there is still plenty of room for crops without the need to deforest. Heck, aside from staples, most people could grow their own food in a tiny apartment if they wanted to.

@@sblijheid i think you never looked Google maps or take a plane to see the amount of space that It needs. also crops dont grow on the desert. U need some kind of soil and water u cant put crops in whatever place. Might be better making the desert a jungle than a building that is something. But crops need Big space my country is like 60% crops.... If that is not much for u ok

@@sblijheid yea sure mate mini farms are more space eficcient than intensive tecniques😂😂

AND.... is the food really that high quality? Does it have all the iron, minerals, etc when farmed vertically? AND... nature needs to be in touch with nature. If it isn't part of the natural cycle it will end up damaging everything.

​@@KootFlorisThat's a great point, but tbh, not sure we will have great options in the long future as weather patterns continue to become more and more unpredictable.

@@YizzERR ..if we have a future. Let's try.

@@KootFloris huge part of the food is nowadays produced in green houses, often in trays. It doesn't have much contact with nature anyway

​@@KootFlorisyea these is massive in weed industry the indoor cultives are often better because all is control. These works because weed is expensive and will give you money to pay the lights/setup/electricity. But like the original coment said Sun is way cheaper. When espace gets expensive and energy becames cheap It might jump to other cultives. But no way some one can make money producing tomatos these way. Most vertical farming is microgreen wich has lots of energy in the seed. So only a bit of light is needed. But full Sun is other thing, is like x80 House bulbs at 100 cms of the soil. A normal light bulb is 1700lux at 1m, full Sun si 150.000 lux everywere

yes yes they do that can be said for a lot of "smart rich" people. they think they can design something better. But that is almost always never the case. mostly because there not smart at all they just think they are.

Well, the guy in the video even shows his biases, saying traditional farming is basically for the stupid poor people, and vertical farming is smart wealthy people. Even though almost every major commercial farm in America is using equipment that costs upwards of $500k.

@@razor191919 $1000k per piece nowadays, plus land costs, plus storage, plus inputs, plus marketing, plus operating costs.. Farmers are some of the most educated and capable folks out there. Chemist, plant biologist, mechanic, marketer, etc..

The success of creating the conditions of the Dust Bowl because farming wasn't "rocket science."

Unfortunately, it's been discovered that in many parts of the world where agriculture has been practiced for centuries, the fertility of the soil and soil depth is at its last gasp. Some parts of the world, namely Europe, but also some others, have about 30 harvests left in their soil - and the fact that increasing incidents of flooding and heavy rains are flushing away thousands, even millions of tons of valuable agricultural soil isn't making matters any better. On top of that, when droughts hit regions and turn soils into dust, the soil surface is easily blown away into the air, lost in drainage ditches, blown onto other land such as roads and into nearby cities, etc. Microfauna in drought-ridden areas are at severe risk too, and while some are detrimental to plants, a greater number are very beneficial. Their loss all affects future crops.

Oh thats fascinating. Im wondering how they grow tall crops like tumeric efficiently. Do they perhaps have a shorter variation that can be fit into a smaller space..?

@@ArcticFarming that I have no idea. But there are plenty of videos on KZfaq from farmers and also by agricultural journalists.

What I don't understand is why they don't realize they can grow fodder for animals VERY cheaply. This is one way vertical farming can be profitable. There are sheep, goat and cow ranchers experimenting with this using both shallow growth and microgreens and doing very well.

@@ArcticFarming Mushroom farming is the best vertical farming project in India & villagers are doing it to make good money. Focus only on exotics.

​@@timothyblazer1749most vertical farmers are vegan nut jobs. The point is grow sustainable food, not slaughter more animals

Gotta get rid of that labor cost ya know 🙄

@@chrism8180 thats where they royally fucked up, trying to get rid of the labor costs skyrocketed the labor costs because now they can't pay immigrants 4 dollars an hour to pick produce they have to pay six figure salaries to robotics and electrical engineers

@@solarpunk9994 it's the future!!!

I don't think they are super mega dumb. They have a business model. It is called "pump and dumb". It is what made Elon, Zucky, Newmann, Sam Bankman Fried and all the shitcoiners rich as hell. The goal is to make a dumb company but to hype it. The dummer the better. Vertical farming is quite supid. The main selling point is vegetable that have never touch soil or see the sun... Then dumb people see the hype on Robin Hood, buy the crap and few days after it crash in flames. Then you rince and repeat with another dumb idea.

@@solarpunk9994 Not to mention the capital investment in all the expensive equipment and added electricity costs.

Thats why they want to automate everything and this is the huge profit killer. It can't be competitive.

It can’t be competitive so long as (a) cost of automation is too high and (b) competitive cost of conventional produce is too low. Both may conceivably change.. Automation may become cheaper (either, paradoxically, with more advanced flexible robotics scaled up in production being able to do more conventional staff replacement, or with simplification and commoditisation of any successful simple agri-automation strategies). As for competitive cost of food.. main (theoretical) advantages of ‘vertical’ farming are volume density, control of resource, predictability of production and proximity to market.. if crops grown outdoors (or in a an insufficiently protected / controlled environment) get systematically trashed by adverse climate conditions then having a more controlled environment for short supply chain provision of crop production may become more attractive… (although by that point scaling production volume to meet need and breadth of crop type demand would become a serious issue).. and, of course by that point people may be juggling dealing with many other problems..

@@drmartinbartos Absolutely, the margins just aren't there for large scale production at least by current standards. I was thinking more along the lines of incorporating into new housing builds, southern wall (part of or all) and you remove the automation part as the family residing there farms their own preferred crop as part of their daily routine. Like this place but replicated in a package that can meet building codes and retail sensibilities. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/oJljaKWF2sXadok.html

@@drmartinbartos Hope you don't want to change (2) because this turns you into a mass murderer. So many people can barely afford food today. And i can't see (1) ever happening, not in a capitalist society where you have to add at least two more industries to the (pun intended) food chain. The building architecture with all the cement and the equipment industrie (already huge portion goes to John Deer).

Okay, hear me out bro. Groundfloor = Restaurant, Second, third and fourth floors = farm. The best way to get the highest mark up on food is to serve it in a restaurant. Excess food waste can be composted and grey water from dish washing can be used to water crops.

Because investors are idiots that jump on the latest trends without thinking about practicality. Robotics are the future in their eyes, and they probably already have money invested in robotics. So in their mind incorporating robotics into vertical farming will fuel profits in both areas while cutting labor cost.

@@chrism8180 probably so with conveyor belts to move as much as possible with less effort and work, sensors to detect atmospheric changes along with pest control/detection, sickness detection, nutrient deficiencies, toxicity levels in soil/substrate used, transplantation arms, harvesting arms, and so and so. It just takes too much tech to run these facilities through robotics alone and we are not close to those levels yet. Great idea, awful timing.

Agriculture in the traditional method is the riskiest business and it just got worse with climate change. I have a friend in Japan, just him and his wife, who have a series of greenhouses (structurally reinforced) and they grow tomatoes. The tomatoes grow on shelves and with the use of some tech (climate control, soil samples, crop production and pricing) they make a fairly good profit. But like many farmers they need to expand so that they're not working 7 days / week, 365 days / year. I grew up on a dairy farm. Vacation wasn't really a word for us).

@@rabbit251 there are maybe other solutions, vertical farming is not.

@@kuantumdot Well, don't keep us in anticipation; what other solutions are there? And my point was that high tech vertical farming is a waste of money, but lo-tech vertical farming is profitable. Look up what the Netherlands has been doing. The guy who made this video focused only on the high tech companies. The Dutch have been doing vertical farming for decades with only minor problems.

​@rabbit251 He did sort of touch on it, but he blamed it on hype, particularly from VCs, who wanted to see fancy tech at play. Well, he didn't really blame the VCs as much as he should have, but hype and VCs are pretty synonymous in hindsight. I did get the feeling that there was just so much unnecessary technology being thrown at this, but the VCs never would've invested unless it was there. Low tech vertical farming just wouldn't 10x or even 2x their investment, and they're not there for that. Plus, the fact that it already exists, and it's not everywhere suggests that it won't grow like they want it to. Ironically, safe investments are just way too risky for VCs, because they take on so much risk that they can only afford investments with ridiculously huge potential just to break even.

There are many other solutions to the problem. The best would be more sustainable methods of food production. If you would for example grow more crops on your farm and not separate them, you would have a much smaller pest problem. If you do it right and plant something that is susceptible to one specific pest to the plant that pest is not a fan of, you will have a better yield than you would if you used a pesticide. Monocultures are way less productive way of farming because of pest problem. If you have a huge field of just tomatoes for example, you will need to use a lot of pesticides because your field will be a "promised land" to some species that likes to eat tomato leaves. Use of pesticides just means that the ones that have a genetic variant that is making them survive eating your crop will survive and reproduce. After some time you will need to use more pesticides and the stronger ones. That costs money. That is to eventually happen no matter which crop you will decide to grow. That is why the polyculture means larger yield. The problem is that the people who were to buy from you and then send it to the stores are not fans of this behaviour. They prefer getting a large amount of tomatoes from you over getting a smaller amount of 8 different crops.

Fully agreed. Its no wonder why VF companies that focus on more expensive produce (like Oishii) are doing well while most of those focusing on basic herbs are struggling.

Vertical meat farming might do well producing giraffes.

Surely hydroponics on the cheapest land (desert) to make algae or something would be better. All that sunshine is wasted.

Vertical farming leaf vegetable has to compete with traditional farming in Arizona where land is super cheap and winter growing conditions are amazing (cool with strong sunlight)

Because they are annual crops where you can harvest just 1 or 2 weeks and wait 10 months for the harvest. You need seasonal workers or need a mega farm with dozens of grow rooms. Soybean cost nothing.

Well As someone in south eastern europe Tasty tomatoes are kinda all the time Most people i see complaing vegetables have no taste or taste like styrofoam are americans But i always viewed that as their conscious decision to sacrifice their actual food and health for the sake of profit and to please their god the "Capitalism" And they even seem against chaning that as well Money is king in the us

Planting cotton, coffee, cocoa, dwarf sugarcane could bring in the riches

The big problem still remains, greenhouses can do all of that at a fraction of the cost of artificial lighting. The sun is free... The cost of land is not that big competed to energy cost to make it profitable to stack crops on top of each other and have lower or similar cost to a greenhouse where you have the same environment control and can grow crops in the winter but you don't need to artificialy light your plants.

Oh that's interesting, hadn't heard of this before. Do you have any recommendations for videos or blogs that I could read about the topic?

@@ArcticFarming kzfaq.info/get/bejne/rt14l89jyKqZkp8.html

​@@ArcticFarming How did you manage to miss it? It was caused mainly by Obama-era green incentives. Leading to a lot of greenwashing and businesses that were never even viable on paper. It's a common theme from algae to plant-based meat substitutes to vertical farming.

Same pump and dump scheme!

true.@@pierregravel-primeau702

Majority of vertical farms

2022년 빛 없이 밀과 쌀, 엽채류 등을 키워 우주식량으로 개발하는 프로젝트가 성공하였었습니다. 미래에는 전등을 사용하지 않는 수직농업이 활성화 될 것이라 예상합니다. 또한 수평공간에도 더 촘촘히 심을 수 있어 곡물류에는 더 효과적일 것입니다. 나아가 더 미래에는 뿌리와 잎 등을 퇴화시켜 곡물생산에 더 집중된 맞춤형 종자도 나타날 것이구요. 제 의견이 정답일겁니다.

Yes. you take gold and turn it into lead. Why would anyone do that? Because they know how to get rich quick : Pump and dumb baby!

Environment sustainability is a joke.

Yep, this is thi basic idea in any sustainable business. Sustainability can't live on its own unless you are running a non-profit.

@@denniskatinasas is what is accepted as business sustainability

I think you have great points here. A lot of VCs and institutional investors were investing into the first-movers with expectations of incredible returns while putting a huge emphasis on the IP. The issue is, even if your particular VF startup is the first to develop a certain technological solution, there is no guarantee that the IP can be protected. Again, there is nothing weird going on at the market when comparing to other new industries - there was a ton of hype and a lot of people jumped on board. Now that hype bubble has burst, a lot of people lost money and those still standing will have to take a hard look in the mirror, making sure that they dont repeat the same mistakes.

There were a couple in India who used this technology to produce and sell weed 😂😂😂😂 Of course the government arrested them

​@@zbsishrth3734name please?

Hey and thanks for the great point! Would love for you to elaborate a bit more on your point. I can see the use of desalinisation in certain VF applications but would love to learn more about your thoughts.

@@ArcticFarming I haven’t studied VF much but I have thought a lot about how it could change the world by removing the need for transportation and by decoupling supply from seasonality/locality. However freshwater is in short supply in the areas that would benefit the most from it, like North Africa or other desert regions. Food security goes hand in hand with the stability needed for economic development and water supply is a big part of the limitation on food supply for nations like Egypt or Libya. Decoupling these areas from limitations imposed by water supply is one challenge. Then VF can help decouple them and others form limitations imposed by climate.

Your problem is not water, it's electricity. You don't need an advance in desalination, you need a fusion reaction. The most expensive input in agriculture is solar energy.

@@Invisiblehand123 I think fission is sufficient so long as it is supplied in controlled territory.

​@@DavidConnerCodeaholic Too expensive. Calculate how many watthours of sunlight a ha of wheat receives during its growth period. Now convert that to artificial lighting. You will see it is not even close. You would need damn near free energy for vertical farming to make sense for staple crops.

That's actually awesome, I've never heard of it

Semi-neat idea but I bet the power produced is weak compared to a bank of regular solar cells off to the side somewhere. Only so many milliwatts per square meter in sunlight to extract energy from.

@@ARoyalLyon Honestly, the current state of what you can buy for PV glass isn’t particularly impressive. One of the more compelling options is ClearVue, which lets 70% of visible light through, and provides 30 peak watts per square meter. You could get the same transparency by covering 30% of the surface of the glass in traditional, opaque solar panels, and you’d probably get around 60 Wp/m2. But there’s been some stuff in the lab that’s 80% transparent to visible light and provides 130 Wp/m2 under simulated sunlight. As we all know, plants only use red and blue light for photosynthesis. PV glass used in greenhouses could then absorb green light for conversion to electricity without depriving plants of anything useful to them. Sadly, I can’t find any PV glass designed to absorb green light. Quite the opposite, research seems to be focused on making color-neutral PV glass. Good for human dwellings, but suboptimal for agriculture. LUMO makes panels with a luminescent dye that absorbs green light and re-emits it as red light. So, I guess that’s another way to prevent the green light from going to waste. They put the stuff in PV glass that they claim makes 50 Wp/m2. Not sure what the effective transparency is, when you consider that some of the wavelengths are converted. Accounting for the differing usefulness of different wavelengths would make it hard to compare to other PV glass.

@@billberg1264 Thanks for all the interesting info. I studied a bit about plant wavelength utilization when experimenting with indoor farming which proved more trouble than it was worth for me.

The atmosphere blocks most of the IR that comes from the sun.

Thanks a bunch for the positive feedback! I do appreciate it. The thumbnails kinda need to serve the youtube gods sooo.. 😅. We have some really cool new content coming out (starting today) and i hope you feel the same way about them as well.

It's a personal decision, but considering the uncertainty of the future, connecting with a financial advisor for proper financial and investment planning is a wise move.

@@FaithMotasiAbsolutely agree, I consider myself fortunate to have been introduced to finance early in life. Started working at 19, got married at 26, bought my first home at 28, but faced a lay-off at 36 during the 2020 pandemic outbreak. To navigate the challenges, I hired an advisor, made subsequent investments, and now I'm only 25% away from reaching my $1 million goal.

@@RobertWilliam-1975 Seems like you made some good moves, except for getting married :) Do you think your advisor would be willing to speak with a newcomer like me? I really need help with portfolio reallocation, the market has been incredibly volatile.

@@kelbenjamin I have the privilege of being guided by Eric T Witt, an experienced and reputable advisor. If you do your research, you'll likely discover his success stories as well.

@@RobertWilliam-1975 thanks for info, curiously copied and pasted her full name(found out T is for Thomas btw) on my browser, found his site and skimmed through the credentials, no sweat .. over 10+ years of undisputed experience is quite striking!

That's where my revolutionary idea for the next innovation comes in! Ready...? Horizontal vertical farms! Like vertical farms, but we flatten them out and spread them across a wide area of outdoor land so we can use the sun's energy instead of paying for electricity! Horizontal = Vertical 2.0 !

@@yuchoob Was thinking you would come up with diagonal-farming (staircase-farming) but you went a bit flatter than that..... ;-)

Except when your farm is at the higher (& lower) latitudes on the Earth. Then the sunlight comes in from the side more than from above.

Great analysis! Whenever I've sat down with friends and gone over their gung-ho business idea with this level of seriousness and detail, they always seem to end up saying, "You're so NEGATIVE!" then ignoring me. If they do proceed they usually fail spectacularly then blame externalities including "negative people."

The key to big returns is not big moving stocks. It's managing risk in relationship to reward. Having the correct size on and turning your edge as many times as necessary to reach your goal. That holds true from long term investing to day trading.

Even with the right technique and assets some investors would still make more than others, as an investor, you should’ve known that by now, nothing beats experience and that’s final, personally I had to reach out to a market analyst for guidance which is how I was able to grow my account close to a million, withdraw my profit right before the correction and now I’m buying again

@@cloudyblaze7916 Please can you leave the info of your investment advisor here? I’m in dire need for one

@@roddywoods8130 Mrs Marisol Cordova really seems to know her stuff. I found her online-page, read through her resume, educational background, qualifications and it was really impressive. She is a fiduciary who will act in my best interest

@@cloudyblaze7916 Thank you for this Pointer. It was easy to find your handler, She seems very proficient and flexible. I booked a call session with

We've actually spoken about this risk in another video but its definitely a risk alongside pests and diseases. Naturally, any well run indoor farm would have redundancies for this but you do have a point - what if a natural disaster hits and cuts the power for a longer period of time? Does this mean that vertical farms cannot be located in high-risk areas where floods and tornadoes are an annual threat? All good questions.

@@ArcticFarming Vertical farms are probably safer against floods. Just get a secondary generator. But say solar storm kicks out electricity for weeks. What would the people eat then if 10-20% of city's consumption were grown in farms like that...

If electricity goes out for weeks, civilization would collapse with or without vertical farms.

Seasons. I might try it on my own (no hiring anyone), just to have a basement garden producing lettuce and cabbage year round. But that's mainly for fun.

Water usage, pest/environmental control / reducing waste, transportation costs, plants that can put more of their growth into producing edible parts since they don't need to be hardened against a harsh environment.

I clicked on this video for the same reason xD

Don't forget about the depopulation agenda...

Theoretically meat grown in a lab could be much more efficient since you only need to grow the edible portion of the animal.

That's awesome!!! I know nothing about investment and I'm keen on getting started. What are the strategies?

I'll advise you to work with a financial advisor.....Building a good investment portfolio is more complex so I would recommend you seek Fergus Waylen's support. This way you can get strategies designed to address your unique long/short-term goals and financial dreams

Wow. I'm a bit perplexed seeing him been mentioned here also Didn't know he has been good to so many people too this is wonderful, i'm in my fifth trade with him and it has been super.

YES!!! That's exactly his name (Fergus Waylen) so many people have recommended highly about him and am just starting with him from Brisbane Australia

I don't want to put a figure to how much i've made doing that but let's just say it's more than enough to make trading worthwhile. And when i say worthwhile, i mean it.

@Freakhealer has a good recommendation in the thread here. We are not necessarily experts in all kinds of nutrients but there are a ton of great resources online that you can use. ZipGrow has also a great academy for VF called Upstart University (we are not affiliated with them) that had a ton of great info and a wonderful staff.

Oh thank you so much I really appreciate your reply’s

​ @wombleok112 hey wombleok im planning to make a tower fountain over winter to do maybe chinese cabbage.. im also in the uk.. be interesting to see how yours goes aswell.. im a need some form of netting i suspect.. also with kratky method i just use compost tea and maybe some miraclegrow or whatever..

@@ThomasVWorm::: Seaweed has to be harvested, processed, and pulverized, to allow it to move through a hydro system.

@@willappleton::: Please look for organic food for your garden.

Well, an additional theoretical points for vertical farming are (1) independence of a season (produce whatever and whenever you want); and (2) controlled environment, so you do not need to use pesticides and etc

Hydroponics and aeroponics use way less water, too. Then there's the matter of transportation costs getting harvests into cities. There do seem to be some major upsides to vertical farming if the power usage problem can be solved.

That's hilarious, but I wouldn't give them ideas. I can hear the sell, "we need locally based heroin to stop funding overseas terrorist groups, and ensure there's no fentanyl being cut"

hahahahahah

Our team is actually researching a few crops like these. The issue is, they take a hell of a long time to grow so accumulation data on the validity takes a lot of time compared to growing salads 👉 this being one of the key reasons why most VF companies started with leafy greens and herbs.

@@ArcticFarming let us know how it goes.

How big is your aquaponic setup? Running cost, electricity? Coz i heard conventional aquaponic use lots of electrics for pumps

@@user-tf8ib2hb7i The water and air pumps arent too bad and are roughly similar to a typical hydroponics setup on a per volume basis. However, the heater can be a real killer, depending on your environment. Any heating elements (aquaponics heater, hair dryer, etc) can be rough on a battery system. Similarly, keeping it cool can be an issue too.. but doesnt necessarily need anything that uses electricity. Ive run a few different systems, from one-trip food safe IBC totes to entire ponds where the crops are grown away from the water itself. Scalability is a strength much like hydro. Remember though.. aquaponics is a significantly older form of farming than hydroponics. The aztecs were doing it by floating rafts or islands in shallow, large ponds. It was done a few thousands years ago again in southeast asia by combining fish in paddy fields. Even more broadly, the concept is about creating a relatively small, but complete ecosystem. In that, nature has been doing it without electricity at all for quite some time. From that conceptual base, it becomes more about adapting an ecosystem to your specific environment/needs and the costs that may be incurred to gain stability. I could go into the automated systems that complement this, but this is already long for a youtube comment lol But a properly setup aquaponics system is self-sustaining and I run it all the other stuff off an rPi anyway with ultralightweight code.. so power isnt much of a concern there. It basically just runs sensors for the aquaponics, but how that integrates with harvesting, specific crop needs for different crops, and the larger system (decentralized HVAC, solar panel/wind turbine alignment, etc) gets a lot more complex.

A lot of those green technology come from hard sci fi concept, but here is the catch, most of the those concept were developped to answer to new limitation that we might encounter, while ignoring some of the limitation we currently have. Vertical farming was literally born when a professor and its student tried to estimate how much food could be grown on the roof of new york, when they found the answer unsatisfactory they simply explored the idea of creating farm inside a building that could feed 50 000 people. It was never supposed to be built or practical Vertical farming was basicaly developped with the assumption that acres of fertile lands are a premium and rare ressource that need to be optimized. But on Earth this isn't the case at all. That's why it doesn't work. It will probably be interesting to do vertical farming in places where fertile land is a premium and energy isn't. Like in desert or maybe space in the future.

Pretty much 😅

@@ThomasVWorm so what's the point of vertical farming then?

@@ThomasVWorm that's a nice hobby. I like gardening. On industrial scale it's not viable.

Yep, just like with any new technology, vertical farming is still in its early stages and will see many waves of development before it matures. If you are interested in working with vertical farming but you have no firms close to you, you could always start building your own small-scale system in your home 🙂.

Lol... we're running out of land. 😂

They are, that is a very good point 👍

They are growing things with artificial light. That's the part that's expensive, water and nutrient use is more efficient than traditional agriculture.

Thanks so much, i appreciate it! Do let us know if you have any questions or related topics in mind, that you would like to learn more about 👍.

@@ArcticFarming Of course, well earned and thanks for your response! I normally always have a topic to propose but I'm struggling. How bout how you/research see the industry evolving over the coming years and decades. What proportion of farming will vertical farms be along with lab grown meats versus traditional farming? Replace, become a sizeable fraction of, or only be a niche for the next 30-50 years? How will that affect soil regeneration/rewilding efforts, as well as consumer food prices (given sustenance has gone from like 50% of people's budgets to less than 16% over the last 100 years). Those are all topics of interest around this. But maybe these are too broad and not specific enough to this channel. I am new but definitely interested thanks to the quality of the analysis.

In the current state, this is true. But, once energy is cheap, we can save land, water, transportation, eliminate pesticides and so much more. Including consuming CO2 in cities. Right now it's an energy problem. That problem won't always be a problem. Leafy greens are just the first test and take the least energy. Energy abundance is coming soon.

@@tripplefives1402 I have five acres and market garden intensively on 1 acre. I feed a lot of people with two farmer's markets a week and restaurant sales. Lots of leafy greens but also root veg, strawberries, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, winter squash. We are also growing many fruit and nut trees as well as berry bushes, herbs chickens for eggs etc. Corn provides very little human nutrition, you must get tired of eating just corn.

@@tripplefives1402 Mark Shephard wrote a book 'Restoration Agriculture' where he does a comparison of the value of corn/soybean production vs his polyculture system based on permaculture scaled to feed a lot of people on a 106 acre scale, maybe consider reading that and challenging some of your beliefs. Respect to any farmer for doing what you do even if it is different!

@@tripplefives1402 Yes He is setup for machine harvest for some of his crops including nut trees and berry bushes. He also has cider apples and grows asperagus etc. He also does mixed rotational grazing of cattle, turkey sheep and chicken. Yes I'm sure there is labour but this is far more productive than corn and with perrenial plantings you don't have annual planting costs and your harvests increase each year. A multitude of crops insures against individual crop failures or shortcomings.

Glad you enjoyed it!

I would like to see a single traditional farm that gets even close to a majority of its irrigation water through rain. According to the World Bank, agriculture accounts for an average of 70% of all fresh water withdrawals globally. On top of this, large scale farms use huge pumps and irrigation systems (ergo energy) to move that water around and to distribute it evenly around the farmland. On your other point, one of the key issues why vertical indoor farming has potential is because we are running out of arable land. So no, we cant simply expand our outdoor farms indefinitely. Yes, traditional farms do use sunlight, but this is not always a good thing. What we need is an even and a predictable amount of light - something that can be very hard with traditional outdoor farms. I appreciate the comment and as i stated in the video, vertical farming is not perfect. Still, traditional agriculture has huge issues that "free sunlight" is simply not going to fix.

@@ArcticFarming For some reason, YT decided not to post my reply, so I am trying again. I think it is because I am trying to cite my sources, and YT does not like that. If this comment ends up showing up twice, though, I apologize. First, the vast majority of traditional farms get the majority, or, indeed, all, of their water from rain. That same World Bank you cite reports that only 20% of farmland is irrigated, and only 40% of total food production is from irrigated land. Granted, irrigated land is disproportionately productive, but it could hardly be otherwise: the costs of irrigation can only be economical where irrigation would make the land highly productive. To put it another way, that irrigated land is so disproportionately productive shows just how efficient irrigation is. Second, we are not running out or arable land. Since 1960, the amount of land under cultivation has actually shrunk in the developed world, even as agricultural output in the developed world had risen. Since 2000, the amount has been falling in much of the rest of the world as well, including China, the Middle East, Oceania, and even India now. The only places where there is any growth still occurring are Africa, Asia (excluding India, China, and Russia), and Latin America. And even in those places, the growth has not been large. Vertical farming is a non-solution to a non-problem.

​@@redrackham6812 You're assuming all that land that is no longer under cultivation is still arable. It's not. The Midwest will be unfarmable in 60 years as they've done nothing but monoculture over the last 150 years and the land is running out of topsoil. We've lost another 5% of our farmland due to suburban sprawl. Every day we lose 2000 acres of mostly arable land around cities (which were built around agriculture) to build McMansions that do nothing but destroy the planet. What's more, climate change is going to destroy most of our best farmland by 2150, because our most productive farmland is located in river deltas that will be completely under salt water. I can't imagine a problem that needs solving more urgently than this.

@@VulcanLogic Except that pretty much all of that is nonsense. First of all, let's deal with the suburban sprawl argument, since that at least has some basis in reality. Yes, it is true: some of the land that is no longer being used for farming is now being used for other things, including housing. Not all of it, by the way. There are huge tracts of New England and northern New York that was all farmland fifty or sixty years ago and now it is all forest. But so what? The idea that land that was once farmland but is not anymore should be preserved as is so that it could be turned back into farmland at a moment's notice in the future is frankly absurd. Of course it is being used for other things, including housing. As for the claims that agricultural productivity in the Midwest is going to collapse because of topsoil erosion over the last 150 years, the reality is that agricultural output from the Midwest and the rest of the country has done nothing but increase since the end of the Second World War. It is now almost triple what it was then, even as inputs have been flat. Meaning that efficiency has almost tripled. Topsoil erosion was a big problem during the dustbowl of the thirties, but not since then. As for the claim that farmland is all going to be under water, please allow me to reassure you that the world has been much warmer than it is today at many times not only throughout recorded history but also in prehistoric times, and sea levels were no higher than they are now. But let us suppose that I am wrong about this and you are right, and that there is a looming ecological catastrophe coming. Vertical farming would not be the answer. It would be a huge part of the problem. As I said, it would require enormous amounts of extra energy, since you would have to replace natural sunlight with energy-intensive sunlamps, and you would have to pump enormous of water straight upwards. At least with horizontal farming, irrigation, when it is needed at all, does not have to directly fight gravity. Water is very heavy, and you are talking about pumping an enormous amount of it straight upwards. So you want to prevent an ecological catastrophe by making agricultural much more energy-intensive? That would not be part of the solution; that would be part of the problem.

​@@redrackham6812 We know sea level was higher 3 million years ago because we know how geology works. It was almost 100 feet higher than today. Fun fact, the concentration of CO2 was actually lower than our current ppm (412 ppm vs 418). So yeah, we can just dismiss you as not credible by that comment alone.

Its easy to grow tomatoes in a vertical context, simply choose a micro tom variety to maximize efficiency, especially light which is, by far, the biggest cost for indoor facilities.

That's the billion dollar question that many VF firms seem to have failed to answer.

@@ThomasVWorm I can, but no one is hiring me.

The main input in artificial fertilizer is natural gas. So I agree with you . However even in the long run this makes it unsustainable.

​@@phillipphil1615 Natural gas and potash. Both exports that Russia and its allies hold a huge international market share of.. Our dependence of fertilizer and upcoming food shortages is far more worse than people understand.

That's a great point, thanks for bringing this up! While the video makes the issues seem rather simple, there are a million different issues that impact the overall market - fertilisers being a big one.

@@phillipphil1615 all forms of unnatural hydroponic food production require artificial crude based fertilisers , and produce tasteless vegetables filled with glyphosate and other carcinogens . Because of human stupidity and unreasonable demands, not practising crop rotation and converting the most fertile land into housing instead of farms . We require enormous amounts of artificial fertiliser to sustain our food supply .

Except if that happens, vertical farms still won't be able to provide the volume needed to replace that, so adapting outside farming will still be a better solution than vertical farming. Vertical farming is a pipe dream meant to solve a problem that doesn't exist on earth, and never will.

There are a ton of really interesting mixed solutions that combine vertical farming and greenhouses and I think this has a lot of promise! Really interested to see how this works out in the long term.

@@ThomasVWorm that's why you have to leave enough room for the light to not leave its shadow over other towers.

@@ThomasVWorm growth input advantage is reserved, growth speed might be slower due to the light force, but remember the light reflects and even under shadow plants grow, the sun is powerful enough. And the output is organic and available in all seasons. Anyways I saw this concept in Agrotonomy, I don't know about the efficiency

Yep, thats pretty well summarised.

LMAO

Oh man that hurts...

From my own occasional attempts to grow my own closet cannabis over the decades, I learned the dirty secret of successful indoor gardening is LOTS AND LOTS of chemical spraying. Every "organic" crop I tried failed... some to fungus at the seedling/clone rooting stage, some to pests like spider mites when crop was 90% of the way to harvest time.

Close enough 👍

Perhaps. Its hard to say for sure because of the lack of general transparency in the industry. Most firms that ive seen cite personnel costs and energy costs as the main drivers for their financial struggles but if im being honest, i dont think its this simple. Im pretty sure that a ton of the issues are rooted in fundamental problems with how businesses are run. But again, its hard to say for sure because information is still quite scarce.

@@ArcticFarming I am not surprised that the information is hard to get. I am also positive that there are many other factors at play, not least of all would be lobbies from the big farming conglomerates that don't want to lose control of the lucrative specialties market (chilis, berries...higher value per kg products) to new players. I am in Canada and I am sure that if there was a reliable source of...blueberries all year round, that was locally produced, pesticide free...people would be willing to pay a bit more for that. That is just one product out of dozens that this industry would be perfect for.

::: Look at who’s chosen to run our gov’ts. Does the movie, “Idiocracy” ring a bell? We’re short on great minds, and even shorter on strong men.

Oh that's an interesting point, didn't think about that at all. Any idea if there is a way to check the amount of shorting that has been done on the stocks? Would be fascinating to see the volumes over time.

I'd hardly doubt anyone really paid attention to Appharvest. And this isn't even always the case. As seen with gamestop and Tesla

Appharvest has $200M of debt, it is not profitable and not projected to become profitable even by the company itself within the next 2 years (which probably means 4 years) and needs about $180M to ramp up the production on the current 4 facilities. And even if it became profitable, revenue would be ~$60M and earnings would be in the single digit millions which does not justify a value of $1B which it had when it deSPACed (or even $4B at its ATH). Not to mention that all 3 of its financers are alleging them of default. It is also at risk of being delisted from Nasdaq because it does not comply with listing criteria. This stock absolutely deserves its value and it has nothing to do with being "woke" or political.

@@ArcticFarming The NASDAQ website has a "Short interest" page for stocks which includes the history for the last year, records exist for longer frames, but don't seem to be as easy to find, I'll reply again with a link (just in case YT filters outside links here) APPH has generally had 15-20% of it's shares sold-short continuously for at least the last year. (that percentage is considered high, "Typical" short interest is usually approx 2-4%)

@@GameFuMaster You're probably right, but with them trying to do indoor farming in Kentucky with a well-paid and diverse workforce. And all the B-Corp, ESG, community stakeholder stuff they feature so heavily it's easy to imagine how conservatives in/around Kentucky might see them as both a threat and a target. An obvious point of concentrated "wokeness" to make an example out of. "Go woke, go broke" The finance bros have the tools to make that happen.

I think this is one of the key reasons for why many of the current market leaders like Infarm are backing away from Europe and moving to the Middle East.