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by shagie 1477 days ago
https://agfundernews.com/the-economics-of-local-vertical-and...

For greens, an conventional farm is $0.65/lb and a greenhouse is $2.33/lb.

> Assuming a 40-45% gross margin for a typical supermarket produce department, retail prices for greens would need to be approximately $1 a pound for conventional, $4 a pound for greenhouse, $5 a pound for vertical, and $12 a pound for container-grown. A typical head of bibb or butter lettuce weighs less than half a pound. Therefore, the lettuce can be grown in a greenhouse or vertical farm and sold at retail for $2 to $3 per head.

> Although greenhouse or vertical farming is three to five times more expensive than growing on a conventional outdoor farm, it still allows for competitive pricing to the consumer with other vegetables and sides.

The yield can go up, but the cost per unit goes up too.
1 comments
onlyrealcuzzo 1477 days ago
What are the biggest factors that contribute to the cost? Is it mostly increased labor?
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cogman10 1477 days ago
Labor and machinery.

You can't run a harvesting tractor through a greenhouse. So, a lot of produce from greenhouses or vertical farms (etc) ends up with a manual harvesting step.

This is why you pretty much see greenhouses exclusively used for foods which would require that manual step anyways.

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DarylZero 1477 days ago
>You can't run a harvesting tractor through a greenhouse.

Sure you can. Just needs to be big enough.

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cupofpython 1477 days ago
we have AI based dancing robots now, maybe they can figure something out for this
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shagie 1477 days ago
Its an area of active development and research - https://youtu.be/5chk9Sory88

Note that this is an area that is rather specialized - a pepper picking robot isn't good for tomato picking or lettuce picking ( https://youtu.be/EFC3OvkVKaQ ). Compare that to the incredibly versatile human ( https://youtu.be/oxbJVqfIK1U ).

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cogman10 1477 days ago
I think it's possible the whole system could be automated. The problem really ends up being one of cost.

It's similar to the "burger flipper robot" problem. Possibility solvable, but also gonna be costly and buggy for v1 of the robot.

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