[JoeAltmaier]

As I understand it, the whole aim of agriculture is reduced energy per unit output. The reason some US farmland lies dormant is, its slightly less productive per unit effort.

Further, any other high-tech food solution (electric boxes that grow lettuce under lights etc) is more energy-expensive. Can't bean letting Mother Nature do all the work, and just driving by later and picking up the food.

Also there is a surfeit of farmland (read: food production) in the US. Iowa produces enough calories to feed 2 United States all by itself. The feds pay to leave 10% of Iowa fallow. Not as a soil-conservation effort (though that is a result) but instead to control supply. Which is yards cheaper than trying to support prices. So that's part of it too.

[Bartweiss]

There are a bunch of complicating factors here, though.

The first is that fallowing isn't exactly equivalent to supply control. It's partially an inertial, special-interests effect, and partially an attempt to maintain high productive capacity for bad seasons - food is vital, and has a long production cycle, so funding unused capacity is a sensible hedge against bad conditions.

The second is that nature works almost as hard to kill crops as it does to keep them alive. Indoor/greenhouse farming solves the problems of insects, frost, drought, and heat at a stroke. Hydroponic farming roughly solves soil depletion (and fertilizer runoff) issues, and relocating to the northeast circumvents water shortages. That last point is particularly significant - a lot of arable land in the western US lacks the water rights needed to farm it cost-effectively.

I agree that the fundamental economics of indoor, semi-urban lettuce farming are laughable for bulk products. No one is going to outprice Iowa on corn, and I doubt lettuce - even avoiding transport costs - is cost-effective without a lot of specialty markups. My first guess is that this is "pesticide free, sustainable, locally grown lettuce" being sold out of season to people who pay extra for those traits. Even so, indoor farming does have some traits to recommend it when dealing in crops less fundamental than grain.

[rlonstein]

> Further, any other high-tech food solution (electric boxes that grow lettuce under lights etc) is more energy-expensive. Can't bean letting Mother Nature do all the work, and just driving by later and picking up the food.

I like the simplicity of that description-- which might be true for grains, where huge tractors and combines can roll through the fields-- but glosses over all the work done on a farm for other products. It also ignores that there are significant risks to letting Mother Nature take her course where as indoor farming can control light cycle and intensity, watering and humidity, CO2 level, temperature, and (probably) greatly increase density while (maybe) minimizing pest control and herbicides.

[JoeAltmaier]

Economies of scale are hard to beat. The whole point of agricultural science for a century is reducing costs per yield. One farmer and 1000 acres are going to beat any room full of indoor-farming boxes and controls, right?

Field applications are really very cheap - a few dollars 'cides per acre total. And yield 10K's of kilos of product.