[jayventura]

I work in the agtech space and the way we look at indoor farms are that for now they are only a solution for expensive speciality crops (leafy vegetables). There's a lot of value in improving the production of leafy greens near urban centers (where tech workers will pay $15 for a salad), and that's why all the VC money is pouring in.

But, indoor farming is not well suited for calorie-rich foods (think grains, corn, potatoes, etc). Many of those crops are not suited for hydroponics. They need soil and lots of sunlight. Corn roots grow down to almost 7 feet in the soil. Attempting to grow these crops out of soil and sunlight is incredibly inefficient and expensive.

In order for indoor farms to feed the majority of the world, we believe there needs to be more than one breakthrough than just the indoor farm system itself, including a breakthrough in the production of energy (enough to replace all the solar energy provided by the nuclear reactor in the sky that we use in agriculture today), a breakthrough in the production or collection of water that irrigates the millions of acres of land by rain clouds, and the biological breakthrough of high calorie foods that are adapted to grow hydroponically.

We also believe that the same money spent developing indoor farm systems is better spent developing better adapted crops and researching more efficient and sustainable agriculture practices.

[bamboozled]

Thanks for a level headed and informative response.