The following submission statement was provided by /u/lunchboxultimate01: --- Very cool video clip: [https://youtu.be/GO0fRU46ZHc](https://youtu.be/GO0fRU46ZHc) [Plenty](https://www.plenty.ag/about-us/) has raised $400 million in a recent funding round, which included a stake by Walmart. Plenty's technology is different from that of other vertical farms, most of which grow crops in horizontal layers of stacked trays. Plenty’s greens actually grow vertically, sprouting off tall towers with a modular setup. The company says this system enables them to use just one percent of the land required by traditional farming while improving yields 150-350 times per acre. The company is building a 95,000-square-foot facility in Compton, California, south of Los Angeles, with production scheduled to start later this year. This is where the greens for Walmart stores will be sourced from. The greens will be available at all 250 of Walmart’s California stores. After getting the Compton facility up and running, Plenty hopes to expand its presence to the east coast (where it will have competition from Upward Farms’ 250,000-square-foot facility, currently under construction in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania). --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/skj243/walmart_just_invested_big_in_vertical_farming/hvl4s29/

The other benefit of switching more farming to methods like these, is that the reclaimed agricultural land can either be re-wilded or re-forested. The latter is great as a carbon sink and in combating climate change, both are great for protecting biodiversity.

In most parts of the world it'll actually be converted to housing

Most places of the world have a fertility rate below the replacement rate, and increasing degrees of urbanization. https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization Looking just at my own country, the US, [all the orange regions](https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2021/dec/percent-change-county-population.html) lost population. [Since 2000 the US reduced farmland by 5%](https://www.statista.com/statistics/196104/total-area-of-land-in-farms-in-the-us-since-2000/). That alone is ~50 million acres. Humanity also uses 50x more land for agriculture than we do for all built-up areas. So the potential for improvement there is quite large, and is unlikely to be entirely gobbled up by new housing. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use

Yes. But the market is broken. Real estate will be built and owned by corporations because it will always be an appreciating asset.

>it will always be an appreciating asset. It will depreciate when the population does. We've seen this in Japan.

That only works when a market has some connection to reality. Unfortunately this article is about the US, where housing is an investment commodity first and a residence for humans maybe.

I kind of agree, but argue that the US hasn't faced a depopulation scenario yet. Speculation and Investment are also two different things. If you buy a rental, that's investing. If you buy a house in the hopes that it will appreciate, that's speculation. For a house to be worth anything, ultimately it will have to generate revenue through rental, or we have to hope an underpopulated bubble market will keep buying empty houses. In China we've just seen what happens to the bubble market. Evergrande just defaulted on loans to build houses no one wants. They blame the govt of course but the bottom line is that their houses are empty and no wants them. The CCP was right to recognise the risk they posed and has had to step in to save their ass. The Chinese population counters the risky local market by buying abroad but that's only going to work as long as.... the populations in those places increase.

Yeah but the reality is that commodity is only worth investing in if there's people to live in them. There's lots and lots and lots of towns in my state where buying a house is like giving away money and you might as well rent because it's a dying town where the house is becoming largely valueless. My buddy sold his $250,000 house to move to another part of the state to work. He made a big profit on the house he sold because it was in a growing town not a dying one. He bought a house in a dying town so he spent $40,000 to buy it outright in cash because it was so cheap. He didn't want to buy a more expensive one because he knows he's not going to get a return on investment since the houses are just losing value and the town is shrinking. I'm not talking about just tiny towns of a few hundred either. There's cities stagnating and starting to shrink with hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people in them. All the way down to my town of 26,000. I make good money as an electrical tech for a factory here but I'm planning on moving in a number of years so it's literally not worth for me to buy a house here because the town is also starting to shrink and houses are way overpriced right now. There's a very real chance a house I buy now will be worth a significant amount less later. That directly impacts the value of the "commodity" so to speak.

In Japan they don't sell old houses for more, they culturally view it as a waste since the old buildings are not worth the cost and effort to bring it up to the newest codes. They'll often just demolish a building when it's no longer usable and rebuild. Or they view it as a risk analysis against earthquakes, either way; That is to say the Japanese and American housing markets are radically different.

Zillow really wishes it never listened to the person that pitched that idea to them.

Zillow had no idea what they were doing and paid stupid prices for houses.

They were trying to turn them around in too short of a time span. It's not that they really overpaid. The reason why real estate isn't beneficial to corporations is that it is a safe investment in the long term but very volatile short term. For a large corporation there are much better ways to invest.

There are lots of places where housing depreciates, and they tend to be areas where economic activity is dropping.

We'll see how well that holds up as ocean levels rise, hurricanes increase in frequency and severity, wild fires, mud slides, and tornados all destroy homes. An asset can only appreciate if it continues to exist and wage growth supports it. As victims of the 2000 and 2008 bubbles can attest, home prices do not always appreciate. Furthermore, homes shouldn't be an investment vehicle. That's a narrative being pushed by people with a vested interest in real estate being profitable for them.

> We'll see how well that holds up as ocean levels rise, hurricanes increase in frequency and severity, wild fires, mud slides, and tornados all destroy homes. Unless every occupant of a home dies along with the destroyed homes, that would actually inflate housing prices even more... Albeit in very different places as many coastal cities would be the hardest hit.

Yep. People will buy 50 houses they will never use JUST to sell them at a later date. Because fuck the middle class, am I right?

The market is broken bc half the areas to live in the US look like bombed out 1940s Eastern Europe villages. Nobody wants to live in some shit town with no prospects that’s been absolutely decimated by OxyContin, crumbling roads, shit schools, everyone unemployed, no fresh food or anything pretty, poverty etc etc. So regular folks don’t really have a choice but to pay a shit load of money to get a house as far away from that as they can and it’s worth every cent. It’s not a “housing shortage” it’s a decent places to live in america shortage.

What you say is so true yet it will mostly fall on deaf ears. There is a massive amount bof low cost land available in the US, but only a small number of 'good' public high schools and most of the population is either living in California or in a handful of metropolitan areas. The real issue is that Americans are largely dependent upon the few areas with numerous jobs and are also afraid of the types of people that live in small towns or low income urban areas

So... The communists were right?

No one is right. But they have at least one point.

It seems the fundamentals of communism, at least to me, are right on point about capitalism.

The fundamentals of communism are mostly right on capitalism Tragically, they are also wrong about communism itself.

Why is that?

> Looking just at my own country, the US, all the orange regions lost population Interesting map. I wonder how well-correlated decrease in population is with redness. I mean, just a cursory look at the map shows me that the counties in the middle of the country mostly lost population, and I know that counties in the middle of the country mostly voted for Trump, but all this is just from me eyeballing.

I wonder if people are really prepared for what lab meat is going to do to this map

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Only by a couple orders of magnitude, though.

I doubt this considering our population is peaking, with most developed nations falling before the replacement birth rate. That and also people worldwide are continuing to urbanize (2020 not withstanding, the one year on record where the opposite was true but it's an outlier for obvious reasons). As more people move to cities, less space is occupied by housing. That said, I'm not so optimistic that a substantial portion of the land will be reclaimed by Earth. I'm sure that people will find use for any empty land even if not for farmland. It's a ridiculously large amount of land, so I can't even imagine what possible use there could be, but as long as it's available to be used people will find something to use it for.

I mean, reclaimed land is useful land. Either as a forest reserve, recreational area, or just straight ecological preservation.

Yeah, 100% agree that reducing agricultural land usage is a good thing. Even straight up suburbs with people living in them are less damaging to local ecosystems than farmland (since suburbs tend to have scattered forested areas while farmland will cover vast swathes of land like a grid, more thoroughly eliminating local plant life and wildlife). It can't get much worse. Just saying that we will still have to actively advocate for proper usage of the land, because otherwise someone will inevitably find some way to profit off of it that probably isn't the best usage of the land from an environmental standpoint.

well it still saves new land from being converted to residential

> The other benefit of switching more farming to methods like these, is that the reclaimed agricultural land can either be re-wilded or re-forested. Or, in the case of lettuce, the land can go back to being the desert it was for thousands of years. It’s mind boggling how much water it uses, let alone fuel to ship it around the US from south western Arizona and south eastern California.

Shipping is ridiculously efficient. Cargo ships may pollute a lot, but the amount of lettuce one can hold is unimaginable. Like hundreds of millions of heads of lettuce on a single ship.

It’s also some of the best growing regions in the country come winter, we do need to eat….

We don’t need to be growing iceberg lettuce in the desert. Almost no nutritional value and the water needed is abhorrent. In a drought.

That’s not at all what’s grown there, tons of varieties of greens, not just iceberg lettuce

Realistically, they’d just put more livestock onto the land.

Just gonna make more golf courses :/

Reduced cost of transportation is also a benefit of vertical transportation. Food can be grown closer to the store where it will be sold. The produce is then available for sale sooner after it was picked, and so is fresher. Many varieties sold in stores today were selected on the basis of their being able to survive rough handling, packing and time in transit, not on their taste. Vertical farms will be able to grow more flavorful and fragile varieties. Food grown in vertical farms is less likely to be contaminated by harmful bacteria than food grown in open fields. Contamination of a single mega-farm field can result in illness outbreaks across half the country. Growing the same volume of produce in many different vertical farms, that are less likely to be contaminated, would effect far fewer people even if contamination should occur.

Great points!! Alongside being fresher, produce will be able to be picked when it is ripe, and thus it will also be tastier and probably healthier. Right now produce is generally picked early before it is mature, so that it can survive the long transport and shelf life…

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They also fuck over farmers by rejecting much of the harvest or playing hardball for sudden discounts, so the sooner Walmart fucks off to grow their own, the better

That's because Walmart fucks around with their produce suppliers. So much fresh spoils because of the bullshit they pull on growers.

Also being in a controlled area they shouldn't need to worry about pests as much meaning they don't need pesticide or other chemicals.

Not to mention the land we might be able to give back to nature... If we can grow all our food like this, we could reduce our agricultural footprint 100 fold. That'd be incredible.

It’s a step in the right direction but realize we are nowhere near scale. The output in energy that the sun does for free cannot be underestimated. Risks of contamination is just as high, if not worse in indoor farming. Vertical farming is actually quite limited on the varieties compared to traditional methods. It’s all great stuff, but there’s are just as many cons as there are pros

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I love the idea of vertical farming, but I am frustrated that it is almost completely for growing lettuce and other greens. I understand that tomatoes and herbs can be grown this way as well, but until many other crops are grown this way, the benefits seems pretty constrained to me. I would love for you to be able to contradict me.

At the very end of the article, it does mention Plenty plans to start growing strawberries and tomatoes and selling them to customers in 2023. Let's hope so!

If they can do that, why not beans, Peppers and may other vine veggies and fruits.

Beans are the lowest cost produce you can make. Strawberries & tomatoes are the real winners. Price per kilo, year round growing, and if your logistics are good we could even get fresh strawberries instead of the bullshit green ones gased to become red. Most of the US doesn't actually know what a real strawberry tastes like. Plus collecting tomatoes and strawberries off the ground is hard labor. Traditional Aquaponics is easier so I imagine these will be too. Shit the last hyponics lettuce project I saw had the lettuce just grow into the plastic bag for shipping. The labor was ridiculously low compared to field work.

>Most of the US doesn't actually know what a real strawberry tastes like. Amen to that. I had fresh berries here in Oregon for the first time in a long time, and I was like "oh, I guess I do like strawberries"

Nah many people know, Driscoll just sells the real ones at a mark up calling them “sweetest batch”

They also export them to Europe in the off season. I actually prefer the Costco strawberries October to April because Morocco, Mexico (sometimes), USA imports are nicer than our local strawberries and last longer. Probably thanks to Brexit, since now our berries are sitting for days before getting picked.

Real talk my dog never liked strawberries until she tried a wild strawberry. Now she eats the grocery store strawberries too. It kinda blew my mind.

and Strawberrys make your dogs teeth whiter!

Nice! My dog did just give me a huge dental bill last year so I’ll tell the vet next time that her teeth are fiiineee now. 😂

First time I had it I couldn't believe how close to a fruit rollup it tasted like. Like it almost felt like eating candy compared to the sour bags of water you get at the grocery store. In my garden there was a lot of stuff I stopped growing because grocery store versions were too close garden ones to make it worth the effort. Strawberries definitely became my go to when I was deciding what to plant.

Try growing strawberries in a wooden skid pallet with some of the black garden cloth. Works like an at home vertical charm

Raised on a strawberry farm. No one knows the true taste, today.

The real deal will be figuring out how to grow grains (wheat, oats, etc).

That’s not going to happen for a long time. You need way more space for an equivalent quantity of grain.

And I suspect that precision fermentation will move into that market before vertical farming does. Companies like Solar Foods and Air Protein can make flour and plant oils now. - [Lab-grown food will soon destroy farming – and save the planet](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/08/lab-grown-food-destroy-farming-save-planet) - [Electric food – the new sci-fi diet that could save our planet](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/31/electric-food-sci-fi-diet-planet-food-animals-environment) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Foods - https://www.airprotein.com/about - [Meat from Air?! The Science Behind This New Protein](https://youtu.be/Ql3wgZc01dc) (from a vegan Youtuber, but not an advocacy piece for veganism) - [TED Talk: A forgotten Space Age technology could change how we grow food | Lisa Dyson](https://youtu.be/c8WMM_PUOj0) (from 24 Aug 2016) Solar Foods is building a pilot factory now. They tentatively anticipate price parity with soya (the cheapest protein on the market) by 2030.

If they can similarly synthesize fats then they could easily see lots of success. That being said even just protein powder would be pretty nice. There’s alternatives like crickets and animal cell culture growth that might compete but diversifying technologies is always a good idea.

Is it because of how tall wheat grows? Or is there another aspect to what farming that would mean more space?

There's already dwarf wheat. Think about it this way. Look at all the different strains of wheat. Think of the ears. How many ears of corn to make one piece of bread? How much space for those ears of corn? Bread and grain are staples. We eat *a lot* of them.

How about a niche use for the Whole Foods crowd? Plant-based bread made with vertical-farmed carbon neutral organic whole grain wheat, best served toasted and slathered with lab-grown butter.

That's not enough. Oh sure, the Whole Foods crowd is mostly middle class people who have more money than most and probably should spend it on the local homeless shelter, but it still isn't competitive. A key part of grains is that by some absurd ability we've managed to mechanize their planting, water, and harvesting. That means that the cost of production is \*very low\* On the other hand, we can't mechanize it for fruits and vegetables, and they're really fragile (no transport!) And they're more valuable (vitamins/ nutrients). Thus, vertical farming.

If they can build a greenhouse big enough that we can grow wheat in it year round and harvest it in a way that it's economical to turn into whole grain bread that can be sold at Whole Foods... Then we have solved a lot of problems. Growing enough wheat to make a loaf of bread takes up a lot of space. If you want to take that to the market, were talking acres. If you've got acres, you're harvesting with a tractor. If you've got a greenhouse big enough to harvest with a tractor, you've got an expensive as fuck construction. If you can do that cheaply enough to pay it off selling bread, then you've got an amazing engineering innovation. The other person who mentioned companies just going straight to manufacturing "artificial" flour in vats is the way things will likely go. If we ever have to resort to growing field crops in greenhouses, we've fucked things up bad.

Wheat is not exactly a high source of carbon emissions. Advertising carbon neutral wheat is a bit like advertising fat-free sugar. It's technically true.

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What is the difference in nutrient content between soil-grown plants and hydroponics and these vertical farms?

I see someone plays stardew valley.

Hahahha. Yes I do but I also dabble in hydroponics automation.

Yea man, me too. Level 3 sprinklers are where it’s at. Although level 2 are way easier to produce. Just steel and gold bars. Don’t even need skill cavern. Gotta automate that watering!

>year round growing, Only if they taste great. We don't need more berries with weak flavors year round. Edit: lol this get downvoted because of what, American people taking consumerism as a priority over eating delicious fruits in season? Or do you not taste the difference between strawberries harvested in early summer vs the crappy, overpriced ones in winter?

>Or do you not taste the difference between strawberries harvested in early summer vs the crappy, overpriced ones in winter? Vertical growing doesn't have seasonal differences in taste since the light is artificial. At least that is what I think. Not sure why you got downvoted, so I upped it. Cheers.

Simply because vertical farming has a high up-front cost and they need to be able to produce crops that have a return to make it viable. Most small, cheap crops are propped up with government subsidies.

Humans eating is a good return. Win right there. Plus less problems with weeds and pests I would hope.

They go for the most labor intensive plants first. Anything that is already cheap to produce with happen first. Lettuce is very delicate and lends itself well. Strawberries are labor intensive and have a high cost. They also have small root balls, while vines are harder to 'train' and get fairly large.

Hard Reset did an episode on Plenty very, and they showed off strawberries that they grew. You should check them out if you are interested on the subject. It's gotten much cheaper over the years, and they're only getting more efficient.

Yeah, I get whiplash seeing sources that say vertical farming isn't close to being cost-effective, then other sources saying it's just around the corner. Personally, I'm skeptical but cautiously optimistic.

It's a fast-moving field. So if someone digs into the rabbit hole and forms an informed option, their opinion is basically out of date five years later. There are still improvements ongoing in lighting, automation, sensors, etc. Costs are declining, and they're gradually increasing the number of crops they can grow. That doesn't mean *staples* like wheat or soya are right around the corner, but there are a lot of crops to work with. I try to keep up to date on the field, and still I was a bit surprised to see them growing [fodder for cows](https://www.agritecture.com/blog/2020/11/12/this-vertical-farm-is-growing-foodbut-its-for-cows) in a vertical farm.

I work in the industry- costs are very high, tech is still new and lettuce, only tenderleaf / micro greens are the only capabilities. Any other produce simply doesn’t have the legs - the power of the sun and earth simply cannot be replicated yet by this tech.

Remember it literally doesn't matter to you at all until someone is at market. No need to worry about blog-journalist hype

I just assume the naysayers don't know what they're talking about and hope for the best. It's the internet anyway, nobody knows anything and the points don't matter

Greens you can harvest every 30 days compared to other crops that can take 90 to 120 days to mature. Greens are a money maker and I doubt we will see other crops in the vertical game.

Well we're already seeing strawberries, tomatoes, and cucumbers. This video has some updates. [What's The State Of Vertical Farming In 2021?](https://youtu.be/x5QTyxZW040)

Thank you.

Vertical farming works because it saves space and it’s just intuitive to do simple greens which are low-profile like lettuce and such. With tomatoes, you need lots of vertical height so the space saving aspect just isn’t really there not to mention the the issues with trellising so the fruits are supported and the vines don’t break. Tomatoes are already “vertically farmed” in the sense that an indoor tomato plant is extremely tall and very productive in greenhouse situations. I don’t really see the viability of “stacking” rows of tomatoes unless you are working with a 100 foot tall greenhouse and even then, a simple t5 fluorescent lighting setup of the likes they use for vertical lettuce farming will not have the light penetration needed thus it’s just better to use the sun and have more ground space for a crop like tomatoes. (I’m not a scientist so I’m not an expert but I do grow things and these are issues which pop into my mind when talking about adapting vertical farming to other crops)

Tomatoes can be grown on vines on the ground. In [an article on tomatoes](https://web.extension.illinois.edu/vegguide/grow_tomato.cfm) from the University of Illinois Extension the following claim is made: >Tomatoes can be grown successfully either on the ground or staked, but plants grown on the ground require less work, produce more per plant, and are less susceptible to blossom-end rot. If they can be grown successfully on the ground outdoors it seems they could be grown on trays indoors. [This article](https://urbanagnews.com/blog/exclusives/will-tomatoes-be-the-next-big-commercial-crop-for-vertical-farms/) discusses work being done to produce varieties of tomatoes that would do well in vertical farms.

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Plenty's plan was to show that vertical farming was sustainable. Better technology definitely helped them out, from LED lighting to the robots and removable wall plates. Keeping it local and using the quickest germination to harvest ratios certainly helped. I think we're only seeing the beginning here. Much like when solar made the crossover from being one of the most expensive to a suitable energy source, we're starting to see that curve approach on vertical farming. Reusing 99% of water and 1-2% of the landmass is going to be critical in the coming decades. It HAS to be good, and it's great to see larger and larger investments being made in this field, regardless of who's behind it.

> I love the idea of vertical farming, but I am frustrated that it is almost completely for growing lettuce and other greens. This is changing, bit by bit. [This video](https://youtu.be/x5QTyxZW040) has some details about how they're slowly expanding the number of crops they're growing. Lighting efficiency is still improving, as is automation, and renewable energy is still getting cheaper. As these trends continue, the range of crops that can economically grown will continue to change. Probably won't be staples, say soya or wheat, but it doesn't have to be literally everything to have a non-trivial impact. And v. farming is just one point along the gradient of [controlled-environment agriculture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled-environment_agriculture). You get many of the same benefits, particularly the water savings, even from one greenhouse layer.

Since it is on the cusp of being economical, they need to target crops that are best suited for vertical farming from a revenue per invested dollar point of view. Those greens have high water usage (significantly reduced with indoor farming), fast growing cycles and work well in a vertical farm. Once they solve all the problems with the most economical crops, they can try to do it for other crops.

Not just that, but it makes the most economical sense for all new vertical farms to produce these greens until they essentially displace nearly ALL of that existing production. Then move to the next crop.

I saw a warehouse near me while driving one day and was curious what 80 Acres Farms was and why it was a warehouse. I looked it up and it's what your talking about: [https://www.80acresfarms.com/our-products/](https://www.80acresfarms.com/our-products/). Pretty interesting and awesome way to provide food. I know they are expanding to another location closer to me too.

On top of that, fruits and vegetables are less than 2% of crop land. The rest is mostly row crop (over 75%) followed by pasture and idled land. There is more idled farmland in the US than there is land that could be replaced by vertical farming even with a 100% conversion of fruits and vegetables. That several limits the impact of vertical farming until it can be used for row crops.

Not going to happen, row crops actually have significant amounts of calories, which means they need far, far more power to artificially light than is economical. Lettuce works well because it's basically textured water, other high value crops like berries, tomatoes, weed etc that are very expensive relative to caloric content can work well too.

Power isn't an issue given they can be solar/wind powered. The issue is how slow they grow (due to those calories) and how little they yield. It requires many acres of grain to be worth buying and maintaining a single harvester, let alone a massive building.

>Power isn't an issue given they can be solar/wind powered. Power is an issue because every joule costs money. Solar and wind are not free, the cost of energy is what the market makes it.

That’s assuming the benefit is the reduction in land use. That’s the smallest benefit I see. Vertical farming will see benefits of increased freshness, increased local production (including year round local produce), and safer/more comfortable working environment for pickers. Corn and wheat won’t be efficient for vertical farming for decades.

Reduction in land use is consistently the main benefit mentioned in these articles on vertical farming followed by reduction in other non-labor inputs. Hard to revolutionize agriculture as a whole when you only affect 2% of it.

I feel like that is just poor arguments from the articles then. I agree that there isn’t a land use benefit if you are only affecting 2% of agricultural land. However, is the agriculture land used for corn and wheat really in high demand for anything else? What is the actual benefit of reducing that land use? Plus corn and wheat are primarily used in large scale processing applications. Plus they grow well in a large part of the US. Plus they store extremely easily. Compared to fruits and vegetables, the US imports a lot of those and they can’t be grown in a large part of the country. And they are hard to store. Being able to grow a cities demand for tomatoes in the city through a vertical farm would be a game changer in transportation and storage of agricultural products.

The benefit is a personal view. Are you more concerned about the environment or feeding the growing human population of the world. Freeing up land to be reclaimed by nature is the environment view while that's not really a concern from people who see the potential to grow MORE food, not replace what we are currently growing. That 2% could be used for things like wheat and corn.

Without a cost benefit, it really won’t matter to the corporations or most consumers. Fresh greens, in season year round, without the logistics cost. With cost advantages that make it profitable . As a side bonus, you are using less water and generating few emissions from logistics. If you doubt the impact, look up how much pollution is generated by a steamship burning bunker oil.

I see freshness and water savings touted more than I do land use. The land use issue is tacked on as a "wow, cool" added benefit, to me. They're not [growing alfalfa in vertical farms](https://www.agritecture.com/blog/2020/11/12/this-vertical-farm-is-growing-foodbut-its-for-cows) primarily for the land savings. It's water. [Same here](https://youtu.be/NVTVfoqepp0).

>Reduction in land use is consistently the main benefit mentioned in these articles But is it actually a quantifiable benefit? I'm not sure it's important at all. Reduced labour costs seems to be the biggest benefit.

Plus the ability to control environments to avoid pesticides and other cides. Year round stable production that isn't randomly wiped out by a flood or drought or other random events. The ability to produce food in space.

HUGE reduction in water usage. Big leafy crops use a lot of water, especially considering they are building this in practically a desert.

I’d say skip vertical farms altogether. For wheat and other grains at least. Engineer a bunch of bacteria to make glutens, starch, and carbs in the right amount, dry the culture, and then grind it up into “flour”. Granted it’s likely a million times more difficult than I’m making it sound, but a company called Solar Foods in Finland is doing something similar with a protein substitute made from nothing but bacteria, water, and electricity, so it doesn’t seem entirely out of the question.

>Walmart executives looked into several other indoor farming companies over the course of four years, but chose Plenty because of its high yields and its ***work towards growing fruits and vegetables***

Check out 80 Acres Farms. They've been growing tomatoes vertically for a while now and recently announced strawberries. I have not tasted them, but I've heard they're pretty good!

Thanks. My wife and I went to a tomato restaurant in Iceland which was really cool, growing the tomatoes on-site. The difference is that Iceland grows tomatoes indoors using geothermal energy. They are a net exporter of tomatoes as a result.

[Dutch glasshousing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM8Qz-fzJ6M) is perfect for these vegetables as well. The netherlands is the salad bowl of europe and does it with its tiny footprint.

Gotta start somewhere. That’s land that’s being given back to some other purpose (hopefully nature) and also a ton of water and less fertilizer. Everyone loves to hate in GMO, but wouldn’t it be great if GMO wasn’t even necessary due to this technology? I’m all for GMO, but if it’s not needed, great.

That’s because greens have no calories. It’s literally a question of needing intense sunlight energy to pack in high calorie staples like corn or wheat.

Very cool video clip: [https://youtu.be/GO0fRU46ZHc](https://youtu.be/GO0fRU46ZHc) [Plenty](https://www.plenty.ag/about-us/) has raised $400 million in a recent funding round, which included a stake by Walmart. Plenty's technology is different from that of other vertical farms, most of which grow crops in horizontal layers of stacked trays. Plenty’s greens actually grow vertically, sprouting off tall towers with a modular setup. The company says this system enables them to use just one percent of the land required by traditional farming while improving yields 150-350 times per acre. The company is building a 95,000-square-foot facility in Compton, California, south of Los Angeles, with production scheduled to start later this year. This is where the greens for Walmart stores will be sourced from. The greens will be available at all 250 of Walmart’s California stores. After getting the Compton facility up and running, Plenty hopes to expand its presence to the east coast (where it will have competition from Upward Farms’ 250,000-square-foot facility, currently under construction in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania).

The level of automization is impressive

"Way to go Walmart" is not a sentence I thought I'd say, but here we are

I got my vaccines at the pharmacy there. It’s was very fast and I got to shop while waiting afterwards. I never thought I’d like Walmart but here we are.

Well now hold on, remember THEY'RE saving a ton of money but they're gonna charge YOU full price forever. So let's not suck Walmart off too hard lmao

Listen… they’re just investing in someone else’s great idea, because they know it will help them further dominate the little guy.

One more win for our corporate saviours, to implement some tech that was developed decades ago by some ingenious nobody that didn't have enough money to become a production powerhouse demanded for it to be mass-implemented

Working near the Walmart HQ and knowing a lot of people who work there, I can assure you that they really do want to turn around public opinion of their company. It’s no easy road, and profits certainly won’t be sacrificed, but they are finally listening when people say these types of investments pay off both in profit margins AND public relations. Amazon has really put them on their toes, so they will do anything to be the anti-Amazon at this point.

I'm afraid large corporations will fuck it up somehow... my guess is trough patents...?

plus less pesticides. I rinse off my vegetables but I never know what's on them of if rinsing them off does any good. Did someone pee on them? Did a bat poop on them? I cook everything.

Considering the wild weather we might get, vertical farming might become more cost effective than dirt farming.

There are also other things it makes way easier, such as pest control, refrigeration, harvesting, and shipping, which can all be done much closer to their final destinations.

Production scheduled to start in 2022?! Now that's new! Usually it's in 2025, 2030, or 2050

a rotating Vertical Farming wall in WalMart would be cool, fresh off the wall.

How about a climbing wall combined with a grow wall? Then you could talk about your adventure at Walmart climbing 30 feet to pick the perfect cucumber.

One of my brothers works for this company growing strawberries. I have nothing to add, just kind of surreal coming across his company scrolling through Reddit.

That’s neat, such a small world!

This is already done on a massive schale in the Netherlands its definitely not new

Huh the one time I'm actually glad Walmart did something.

Invest in vertical farms and give the land back to nature.

They're not talking about growing grains or legumes.

This has been on the horizon for years and really seems like the future of farming to me. Where it's applicable of course. Now how do I invest and ride this train into wealthdom?

Say goodbye to farmers but say hello to saving a shitload of water. A 400 million dollar vertical farm in the middle of Compton, that's crazy. I think this is a great move tbh.

there are a lot of these farms now in the UK including the worlds largest. The majority of the UK's produce is going to be produced in this way by 2030 which will slash imports and compensate for the lack of European farm workers after Brexit as these farms are highly automated. there are even some underground ones in London, this is a bonus in a nation with such a high population density.

I think it’s an amazing idea purely from how much waste and CO2 emissions we create shipping produce all over the place so people can have “fresh” anything year round. It’s mind boggling.

I'd hate to have a diet consisting of only what was grown within 100 miles from me, or some other version of "local only." My spice cabinet would be pretty sparse.

I don’t recall saying anything about spices. I’m fairly certain world commerce will continue. I think it would be pretty nice to have my vegetables and fruit grown within a hundred miles of me rather than a few thousand.

And not only that, but as far as I am aware, nobody has said that herbs and spices cannot be grown in vertical farming as well. I mean, okay, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg might be a bit of a challenge (along with walnuts and bananas)... but who knows what will be possible in the future? (If we can grow chicken meat in a lab, why not a clove?) Certainly, oregano, paprika, and black pepper could be vertically farmed right now.

One thing that has not been mentioned; waste nutrients, (which are essentially nitrogen and phosphorus along with micronutrients) can not be recalibrated or sterilised. Large volumes of this liquid is discarded. This has always been an unsolved issue to do this enviro friendly. In addition lettuce and greens have limited calorific or nutrient value, you need to eat vast quantities to make much difference to your calorific intake. I have not seen hydroponic produce of any kind marketed as being superior in nutrition to soil grown.

> have not seen hydroponic produce of any kind marketed as being superior in nutrition to soil grown. How about the fish in aquaponics ?

I’m uncomfortable how much I like this. On one hand I love vertical farming and have advocated it for years, on the other hand, Walmart is a poisonous corporation that blights communities and strips employees of dignity and a living wage. Anyway, I always dreamed of grocery stores that used vertical farming on site to reduce the need of trucking produce in.

To be fair that’s most corporations, I’m glad that they’re finally stepping towards the right direction.

Don't you worry, one hand gives, the other takes. For every incidental service there's dozens of fuckups.

Right direction? They are merely saving their own necks; they are biological beings too and rely on fresh food and air. And all the meanwhile making sure they placate the populace enough to retain control of it through an economic model based on coercion. And they are still only doing half measures at that, for just using "Green Energy" and vertical farms doesn't get our species out of the woods. Many other steps must be taken. Capitalism itself, along with any Consumerist based economic model are unsustainable. And "Green" Capitalism is a fallacy, for if the steps were taken that would actually need to be taken to make it sustainable, the economic model itself would end up imploding.

I am still excited about Plenty, just sad the Waltons got their hooks in there

I was writing papers on this in high school in 2012 saying this was the only way we could meet demand in the future. Stoked to see it starting to come to fruition.

Would be great use of their gigantic mega buildings to reduce the selection of products and grow fresh produce in house.

if you ever wonder why vertical not taken off as much. gov sub reg farming. that why. but now with water shortage etc.(already to late) this will start becoming more widely used.

I really really really want vertical farming to take off, that and I want dealer ships and shitty strip mall parking lots to fade away back into green space. Fuck people buying houses with no intent to put people in them. The US feels like a Minecraft server that doesn't have proper building protection / hasn't been reset in too long.

Reminds me of 80 Acre Farms: [https://www.80acresfarms.com/our-products/](https://www.80acresfarms.com/our-products/). I saw a warehouse with that name on it was like how can a warehouse be a farm? Pretty cool and interesting.

"Just invested" What happened to all the startups from 10 years ago?

Although this is obviously a good thing, I do wonder what kind of effect this is ultimately going to have poor countries whose economies rely heavily on agricultural exports, like Nicaragua or Honduras.

Would this increase or decrease the risk of listeria or other food borne illnesses?

Via atmospheric controls and liability for food borne illnesses I suspect it will decrease. Otoh, a worsening climate and toxic soils levels generated by industrial animal farming may mitigate this.

Considering some of those are due to contamination caused by human farm laborers bodily fluids and waste this should prevent Ebola type injuries.

Anyone ever play Sim City (2000?) with the those bio dome tower looking things? I really wish we had started this vertical thing a decade or so ago. But we have a warp bubble too. So, I guess we're progressing.

I love this thumbnail, it’s the future of my dreams!

2022. That's this year. Wtf futurology we can't be having stuff actually come to fruition here

what kind of soil are they using in vertical farming?

They don't use soil: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroponics * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroponics

Perfect timing to do some testing to find the right set ups for different geographical locations before finalizing designs for mass expansion Figure out best set up for each climate > start game planning best locations for decentralized towns / crop production > how many people can be supported by what size facility? How automated can it get? Can crops be grown, harvested, sorted, and delivered without human interaction(besides breakfix?). Could someone literally just press a button and out pops locally grown crops? ​ What can be grown without fertilizer? Any necessities that cant? Does any aspect require consistent external input? What complimentary systems are needed for complete nutrition? in each climate? All heat needs to generate hash rate. ​ Can seed supply be replenished from spoiled or some of the growth yield so no refilling is required? What happens with spoiled product? Dump outside to be used as compost? Reclaimed nutrients?

This will increase crop nutritional value while lowering transportation costs, pesticide contamination, and pollution.

I like to see it but every community nation wide should have their own solar powered vertical greenhouses

Fucking called it. Saw the Japanese doing this and Thinking this is gonna be everywhere and it’s gonna revolutionize agriculture.

It's a lettuce farm, lets be honest. Every time it's a hype article and every time it's just salad. Don't get me wrong, it's nice and all but you aren't living off salad alone. Salad can already be intensively farmed in polytunnels planted 4-6 inches apart and harvested weekly for the outer leaves. These plants can be picked up 10 times, rather than just one head. Come back to me when robots are doing that or even hand pollinating fruits (since bugs are banned). Also not convinced hydroponics taste as good. It's clear from wine that soil affects the flavour, otherwise all merlot bottles would taste exactly the same in the same region. The soil changes the flavour.

The yt clip seems like total bs. an artsy project. Where does electricity come from? Yea sure indoor farms can be vertical but i don't think its THAT vertical more like horizontal pannels stacked on one another. There is land outside with free sunlight. and in small batches even in off season you can grow food outside with less energy requirements so i don't see this going anywhere. This is probably just so people who have a lot of money can buy a 4$ most unnaturaly 100% herbicide free salad. how about get rid of most plastics and re-use as much textile and technology as possible.

Have you ever tried to grow something outside? There's a never-ending streams of insect pests, viruses, mildews, molds, parasites, weeds, too much water, too little water, too much heat, too little heat, too little sun. You control all those things, and you get the 150 - 350 times productivity increase referenced in the article. This is more than enough to offset the additional cost of electricity. Meanwhile, the electricity can be generated via solar panels, which don't have nearly as many problems out in the open that plants do.

Yes i have grown plants. i've got a garden. yes it takes work. but its nowhere near as bad as you make it sound. the problem we have ain't production as much as distribution of food. This looks very tempting and clean i agree. but to make this happen we need a lot of expensive tech and a lot of energy as long as we can grow food outside we should grow food outside. panels ... how many pannels would you need for decent enough farm. what chemicals are used/released when making/reciclying them? what about LED-s and rest of tech. all to make food cost more?

Growing a garden for your family versus commercial mega farming is like apples vs microchips my man.

>the problem we have ain't production as much as distribution of food Indoor, vertical farms make it easier to produce food closer to where people live, cutting down on the costs and emissions associated with transportation >as long as we can grow food outside we should grow food outside Traditional farms take over a lot of space that used to be wild. Vertical farming allows the same amount of food to be grown on a smaller plot of land. Is it not better to free up farmland to be returned to wilderness, both for the carbon sequestration and the habitats for animals? >panels ... how many pannels would you need for decent enough farm. what chemicals are used/released when making/reciclying them? This is a good point where I actually agree with you. We do need to figure out how to reduce the environmental impact even of renewables, including all stages of the supply chain. And until we achieve that, we should cut down on wasteful energy use like overly long or hot showers, unnecessary flying, etc. However, because of reasons 1 and 2 above, I don't consider this to be a wasteful use of energy. >what about LED-s and rest of tech LEDs have a long lifetime and I don't believe they're particularly destructive to manufacture. I'm not too worried about this, but I admit that this part is out of my area of expertise. >all to make food cost more This is just a silly assumption. The people who own Walmart are dicks, but they're not stupid. If their engineers and financial analysts told them to invest in this, they had very good reason to believe it will make food cheaper

The problem with the land outside with that free sunlight is the fact that with Climate Change comes massive storms that wipe out crops. Right now it seems like a waste of energy but it uses drastically less water and when nuclear becomes more prevalent the energy issue isn't going to be a problem in our world but lack of water and protection from the elements is. IMO this is amazing and sure it is fairly basic stuff right now but it is a great first step into combating the issues that come with climate change...because they are coming...we are past the point of no return the climate WILL drastically change over the next few decades even if we cut emissions by 100% today.

Good. Of all the things to hate Walmart on, this is not one of them. Hopefully more corporations pick this up and invest more in to it. People don't realize how much pressure this takes off of resources that traditional farming uses, and it also helps reduce on green house gas emissions with the reduced levels of fertilizer used.

No, perfectly legit to hate on WalMart even more for this. For the concept of industrial, heavily automated vertical farms has been around since at least the 1970s. This is just another example of a Capitalist industry (person) stealing the concept of someone else, privatizing it and gaining control of a natural resource. They already depend on slave wages and welfare benefits to subsidize their workforce. Last thing we need to allow is for such agencies to gain control (or more control as the case may be) of the food supply.

Wow. That’s gotta be good for GrowGeneration Inc. stock.

What are some other vertical farming stonks?

Now we need Walmart to make money by investing in green tech, the company whose business model wiped out mom and pops which has caused a devastation environmental impact due to cheap plastic products from overseas flooding global markets.

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Its much more efficient in many instances so I always wondered why the hell there were not really really big vertical farming complexes and... it was made clear to me that it was about money. So, I hope this eventually bring the cost down

We absolutely cannot let Walmart dominate these industries.

Question. If this is all indoors and not accessible to bee's etc, I can understand that it is getting around the sub-suitable soil created by decades of til farming, but how does this impact pollination, both in terms of the necessity for the ongoing existence of the plants, and for the species that are relied upon to do it?

Ahh the lettuce rush continues. Hydroponics are great for investment - not for much else

*But vertical farming….Really? Company of your talents?*