[wil421]

Someone claimed a while back most of these vertical farms would switch to growing weed once it became legal in the state(s) they have farms.

I’m not sure if any other crop beside weed would turn a significant profit. You might be able to get a government contract to grow some other controlled substance and turn a small profit.

The only other way it would work would be if it was a co-op owned by residents or subsidized by the local government.

[dumbfoundded]

The only pressure to grow weed inside is quality but premium flower is losing market share quickly. Every extracted product (vapes, edibles, drinks, topicals) is created from biomass which is best grown outdoors for the cheapest price.

There also isn't really that much weed needed as people think. Outdoors you can get roughly ~1,500lbs per acre of dried flower. In Colorado 2017, roughly 20,000lbs of cannabis was consumed per month. If you project based on population, the whole USA only needs about 7,000 acres harvested, annually. Maybe they'll be some loss so let's say 15,000 acres would safely cover it. In the USA, there's over 90,000,000 acres of corn grown a year. Cannabis is actually a very small market from the farming side and the indoor grows will very much be a niche market.

As for the general economics, vertical farming will never make sense until either the underlying economics of farming change (maybe from climate change) or energy becomes free.

[throwaway201103]

Presumably the demand for weed is already being met (legally or not). Is there evidence that legalization prompts a large increase in demand? Just thinking about myself, I did not use weed when it was illegal, and legalization has not changed that.