[lightedman]

"Imagine, though, a time when the automation reaches a stage where all weeding and most insect killing can be done mechanically with a robot instead of chemically with pesticides. "

Why bother with that when we already have controlled facilities where pests simply can't gain a foot hold in the first place, making that labor totally unnecessary?

[njarboe]

Greenhouse the entire mid-west? With big enough structures to run tractors? Not sure the ROI is going to work out.

[lightedman]

I don't think you understand how indoor vertical farming works. In 1/8 of an acre you can produce an entire acre of crops, utilizing upwards of 99% less resources.

To boot, you don't even need tractors to harvest. You can just pull the entire tray yourself once the NFT solution's drained from the channel.

I can take 1/8th of an acre of land, and produce a full acre of wheatgrass in two weeks and harvest it myself with no mechanical methods required in less than a couple of hours.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZTikdxj8AI

I was doing this 20 years ago in high school horticultural science class.