I love your work here. It's been very informative, and I have nothing but respect. However it seems that that the stat on the number of farms in 1935 and in 2020 might be misleading. While there may be less farms, if the average farm in 2020 is 4 times the size of a farm in the 1935, then we'd actually have more active farm land today. Likewise, if a modern farm with new land usage methods is 4 times more productive, then there would be more food production today then there was in the 1935. All this to say that while stats are interesting, we need to take great care when using them to justify a point.
That stat seemed essentially meaningless to me as well. A better metric would be plant calories produced per capita or something like that. Or just don't mention it at all in a 4 minute video about vertical farming moving beyond leafy greens into fruit.
Millions of acres of US farmland has gone follow in the last half decade, especially in the last 3 years, due to climate change and lack of water. So while they are bigger farms they are producing less.
@@Streghamay 💯. Soil degradation, jumping worms and other invasive species, drought and other factors negate the size or productivity of 2020 farms compared to 1935 farms...
The number of farms doesn't matter. The number of farms in the US may be a third of what it was, but those same farms are 3-4 times the acreages. Which means the same amount of land is farmed by fewer companies.
A factor could be due to population growth creating new large towns. Still agree with your statement. But also the world population reaching 10 Billion is quite a debated subject. Western countries are declining in population, so unless this company is planning to move to Asia or Africa where the population is exploding then... it's slightly misleading.
It doesnt matter if the subject is quantity but it does matter if we're talking about consuming local and organic food. Big farms with monocultures can be dangerous.
This subject is something I have been interested in for almost two decades, and to say it's the future is an understatement. This form of growing hasn't even begun to advance to the widespread scale of occurs during the enthusiastic snowballing effect of a gold rush, as it's still fairly well guarded knowledge. What I see happening in the future is the integration of other "natural systems" that can be observed throughout the world, but to the extent that they play an efficiency role within the hydroponic system. Such different aspects such as fungi and bugs to recycle "waste" into fertilizers for the plants, or even recycle air, as mycology/mushroom production has an incubation period that creates an intense amount of c02, which if dialed in to a hydroponic system will allow for the air to be recycles, as well as the heat that is carried within the air for a reduction in costs, as well as mixing spend mushroom substrate in with hydroponic substrate to reduce costs up to 50%, or even oyster mushroom's ability to filter water, particularly salt, when it passes through the substrate. I don't expect large corporations to take on these types of technologies, as they add a level of variable risk, but I assume we will see aspects integrated one company at a time until feasibility becomes predictable. The big game changer will be when GMO's are designed specifically for Hydroponics, not that I am a fan of GMO's but that will be how rice becomes a profitable crop to grow in a hydroponic system. I also thing there will eventually be a small farmer aspect to hydroponics, as many romanticize the notion of farming, but are limited to city living, or don't actually enjoy the hard work involved in actual farming. This is going to be where hydroponics takes off in the public perspective. Simple pump NFT systems that are customized through shared 3d print files, and aerobic nutrient machines to create affordable fertilizers from waste, to grow plants year round in dug out "chinese greenhouses" is essentially what the world needs to negotiate the stability of advancing our population growth. I currently grow leafy greens in this manor, as well as bush beans, and strawberries.
I live in a developing country where much of the population is poor. While I support indoor vertical farming, we need to go low tech: some crops cam grow in the dark - like mushrooms - so can be grown in low-light environs (even underground?); some crops can grow in low light so can be grown indoors; for crops that need full light & pollination I prefer rooftop or community gardening (via veggie tunnels to reduce need for pesticides?). Green roofs have additional benefits like enhancing building insulation (less heating & cooling required), rainwater harvesting, reducing the urban heat island effect & reducing stress (employees have somewhere nice to have lunch etc). Crops in cities must be grown using renewable energy sources. In my country medicinal plants are also important. Urban farming can prevent the over harvesting of wild plants.
There is plenty of room for both. I watched a video on RUclips recently about developing countries growing urban agriculture, mostly on rooftops. Can't find it in my history though.
I have a start up that can provide this level of produce with much less expense. These AI systems are ridiculous for an entry level for a niche market.
@@Greenskies321 I disagree. The cost of those robotics and AI systems will drop over time (and the capability will increase over time) until it will be crazy to not have them. However, before that happens you need perfect both the software and hardware, which is what they are doing. The scale of indoor vertical farming is pretty small right now, so this is the time to work out those systems and get them mature.
@@NinetooNine I disagree. The cost of these vertical farms is affordable because of finance because of hype and because of media pumping the hype. Vertical is 3-5 times more costly than conventional, not even counting the negative externalities of energy production that will become more apparent as we try to limit ecological footprints. Living walls look great on Instagram and where a fad 8-10 y ago, most of them went away as people realized how costly they were to maintain...
@@daciogutierrez4132 LOL. The math says your wrong. Vertical farms are 10 times more productive on the same amount of land as regular farming. So even if it was 3-5 times more expensive it would still make sense to do. That doesn't even take into account the fact you are basically eliminating shipping issues/delays (pretty relevant in today's market). The real issues are the higher upfront capital costs to build than traditional systems. Also, these systems are not as of yet producing the cash crops that these companies need to make real money. That will come with time though.
The fact that someone actually developed a robot with enough dexterity and sensitivity to actually pick strawberries is pretty amazing to me. I really have to wonder about the cost vs just employing people though.
Well, it's probably cheaper to employ undocummented immigrants exploiting them but investmens in robotics gets higher every year and cheaper to buy. agriculture automation is one of those things that will positively impact our lives in the coming decades. Organic cheap food with no exploitation and dont forget the land that is being made available. You can stack these very high.
@@harrymu148 In an ideal world, maybe. Likely though there would be ongoing costs - support/maintenance contract for one. A technician to fix them when they break down perhaps? Downtime could be expensive. Perhaps leasing might be a way to reduce upfront costs and still be worthwhile overall. Just a thought.
if you see just a business it more profitable robot but if you see necessary for human being it's another conversation 😱🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶
Selling vertical farm set-up equipment to consumer houses and people grow their food in their backyard and charging subscription per month basis can also be game changer
@Chaos is a ladder that's fine if you want to have veggies that costs 3x traditionally farmed ones. Computer and robotic automation at scale are the way the industry can drive costs down. Human labour is too expensive in such a low margin industry
@@graham1034 yeah key words "at scale". If you just want your own personal garden why would you need robot arms and computers monitoring it? That doesn't seem very efficient. And besides it's good for people to go outside and pull weeds and water the plant.
Feels more like an ad rather than focusing on vertical farms all around the USA and the world . Japan has been in the strawberry game for years now no excuse for not researching more.
I wholeheartedly support this technology. We've become too interdependent on other nations for our food supply. Imagine implanting these across a nation. Save so much on the logistics of transportation, more skilled jobs domestically, and greatly stabilize the food supply chain leading to stable prices independant of weather and other outside conditions.
What the media doesn't tell you is that this technology requires a lot of energy. The Netherlands is using it because they have abundant natural gas resources.
This technology has been proven not to work actually. Vertical greenhouse farming has been around for 100 years and the costs far outweigh the benefits. Cost of land per calorie is off the chart. Strawberries and lettuce aren't going to feed anyone for long. And strawberries don't grow in greenhouses cost effectively, and bumble bees don't pollinate strawberries well at all. Been tried 1000 times sorry.
Using the sun directly, photosynthesis is hard to beat. The silly part is the idea that this makes economic sense in cities where high rent forces the poor out and it is obvious that giving up X square feet of your living space to support your $3/week leafy greens needs would be crazy.
@@skyak4493 Just planting something in the ground and using nature to produce food is by far the most efficient method. We need to work with nature rather than try to out smart it.
The problem also is these systems are hydro, which require lots of mined minerals and are generally nutritionally poorer than rich good quality soil. I’d be curious to see how sweet strawberries chemically grown in hydro and under LED’s can actually be, I’d guess not sweet, but I could be wrong. Leafy greens are easier and lower sugar. Also just eat local seasonal berries, Jersey has amazing blueberries in season, don’t eat ones from Chile in January, or get frozen ones off season…👌
This model of farming is for cities, so getting an empty land or rooftop to create a greenhouse can be very difficult and very expensive. Though it's possible, it is very difficult to scale that. What they do is they target empty warehouses or industrial sites and reuse them for vertical farming.
A huge benefit of these is that Every stimuli these plants receive can be controlled. You can then for example replicate perfectly the 'perfect radishes of Italy 1987' or whatever. Greenhouses/natural sunlight massively reduces that. Also, makes the design no longer infinitely replicable, where you now have to make changes based on location as the weather changes
Thanks to LEDs, they can actually use less energy than greenhouses. This is because LEDs can be tuned to emit only the frequencies of light that various plants actually use, rather than the full spectrum, most of which is wasted on plants.
@@bernardfinucane2061 again you’re missing the whole vertical aspect. Plus plants don’t need sunlight they need the right spectrum of light. LED lights can drastically increase growth rates, edible mass etc
@@bernardfinucane2061 - I guess they figure that the expense of having windows to give some free sunlight to the top layer just isn't worth the benefits. Windowless buildings are much cheaper, and are also much easier to insulate. Long term I could even see much farming being taken underground to free up surface space for other uses.
this also saves water as the water used can be recycled in house and it if crossed when fetilizer is used. The waste water can be used to grow more plant as it will still have fertilizer in it
It's most likely just going to bee bees and manual picking. It's the cheapest and simplest solution. I don't think there currently is a way to automate polination for strawberries (though there are some techniques for polinating tomatos etc.), and there most certainly isn't a solution for automating strawberry picking. Am I the only one who noticed that the "strawberry picking robot" did pretty much everything wrong when picking stawberries? Picking immature berries, leaving stems on, and probably squeezing the berry in a way that would make it spoil in a day.
I got to 1:30 when you said the population was supposed to surge to 10B - if you're using that to justify what you are doing, it is not worth watching the rest - population is actually supposed to fall.
Its about square footage and led is low wattage. Believe me, vertical seafarming is also becoming a thing, below the water in vertical seaweed farms. 2 steps ahead, we started this vertical farming trend where? Its mostly started from cannabis growers, as usual ha. Wait until these green growers discover UV supplement lighting we are using now to make better plants...
Well if mankind had an intelligent economic system, then they could repurpose all the empty office buildings into farms, as office people went to working from home.
They should research more on how to grow STAPLE FOODS indoors in larger quantities like rice, wheat, barley, corn, soya these are the dominant large quantity mass consumption of humans not leafy green veggies, they are also consumed by our livestocks that provides our meat. Shifting to staple foods is more viable than “berries”
The main issue is space, volume of production and the amount of electricity required. So it is not very green and productive. Robots are great, but still lot of labour.
no, the idea behind vertical farms is the same as that of skyscrappers; you are utilising the space above (vertical space), hence, requiring less horizontal space
It may use a lot of electricity but a vertical farm in a building the size of your typical Costco is equivalent to 700,000 acres of traditional farming. I would suspect the carbon foot print would be a lot less than traditional methods.
@@Loawercs31 i work in agriculture and I am an ecologists. We done those calculations, there are different forms of farming broad acre and cultivation, market garden. Those vertical systems compete with market gardens, however those are already very intense small area farms, using hydroponics, green houses etc. Those are close to cities so the carbon footprint is lot lower for the yield. So in space and carbon savings there is very little to gain. So if you talking mega cities like Shanghai etc maybe
There are a lot of benefits, but I don't see this being that viable in the business sense unless energy gets a lot cheaper. Also the statistic about the growing population keeps being brought up with these vertical farm pitches but for first world country birth rates are plummeting and population decrease will probably be more likely.
Vertical towers >>>>> horizontal systems by ROI by a mile. Bowery and other farms of this caliber will never compete with soil ones due to their lack of ROI focus for investors. There’s better systems with less bells and whistles
This and aquaponics, for sure.. 2 steps ahead. Most of this all comes from ideas of cannabis growers who did vertical farming and LED for many years now 🕶
It is not a wrong thing to do if you want to grow as fast as possible. If you are connected to the grid your night time energy can be cheap off peak and day time can be paid for by the solar nearby. The main saving for this kind of vertical farm is the transportation cost (say flying strawberries from California to Maine or Alaska).
People's numbers increase in the future. Farmlands are gone. People need food. This is the answer. Do you want to have a lot of money in the future? Do the vertical farm now. Believe me, I come from the future. :)
Ah yes, 1/3 the farms... Is tobacco a food crop? Or even a growth segment of farming today? Did this video's editor know what stock footage they were using?
Gotta make it cheaper though to create incentetive. That should be possible since there are no pesticide cost, pest control, overall damage of yield or crops from nature's side etc
its much more expensive to produce because of the high energy costs compares to traditional farming that get free warmth and light from the sun and also the high costs of r&d. Up to now the industry didn't provide a viable business plan and relies heavily on the hype generated by the media to raise funds. That is why in 2022 and 2023 many of the promising players in the industry went bankrupt.
This could be a good way to provide fresh produce in areas that can't grow these kinds of plants locally. Especially in areas that don't get much rain, but plenty of sunshine. Mix it with solar power and you may have a winning combination. An additional thought, I hope that they are using biodegradable or reusable packaging. Otherwise the earth friendliness of this farming method goes right out the window.
This video feels like an advertisement and is rather misleading. The decrease in the amount of farms, paired with the increasing global population is misguided, as this doesn't account for the consolidation and expansion of acreage of modern farms, neither the substantial growth in agricultural technology and efficiency. Secondly, 'vertical farms are moving beyond leafy greens', how is this the case given what was shown in this video? All we saw was a company that principally uses vertical farming to grow simple and relatively easy leafy salad greens, whom have bought a couple tracts of traditional farmland (one in NY and one in Baltimore) to grow strawberries in the exact same manner in which they are currently and have always been grown by any other farmer, the difference being only in the harvesting of said strawberries by using AI instead of seasonal workers. In what way is this an expansion of vertical farming? I love the concept and I hope for this sector to grow in the coming years, but with the high costs of energy and initial investment to even start such a venture, this type of agriculture is still a long way off unfortunately. It also seems clear that this company (and others) have yet to get the cost down to reasonable and affordable levels for the average consumer, this as they keep mentioning how their product is better for the environment (despite the high energy input and building materials for the farms), and that consumers should be willing to pay a little more for such a product. If they cannot get the price down (despite growing simple salad greens) the average consumer will not pay extra no matter how eco-conscious they are, nor how interesting and different the farming method used was.
Well if we could fix our energy system then they wouldn’t. Fossil fuel prices are volatile and many are unwilling to expand our use of nuclear energy. This all makes energy prices unstable and hinders the progress of such technology
@@seankilburn7200 Amen. Europe is a specialist in this problem with all of its stupid socialist geen ideals. I'm all for them but not if technology isn't there. Instead now they have to buy natural gas from Russia
We have the abilities to make our lives amazing, but we aren't using it to the full extent. I try to give the world seemingly endless clean energy and they just keep ignoring it.
All of the food and the power is outside, that's it. Sorry humanity, you cant science your way out of this problem as easily as you scienced your way into it.
How about when humans colonize Mars or the moon? Or if a supervolcano erupts or there's nuclear fallout outside? Or heck, what if there's snow outside?
Solves a lot of problems. Deforestation for farm land Over farming land Pesticide run off Wildfires destroying crops Pests and animals Crop circles Having to contend with weather That building needs to be lined to solar panels on top. Use the sun to power lights to mimic the sun lol
Bowery, your packaging fails color contrast accessibility terribly. White text on a lime green background is extremely hard to read and doesn't stand out at all. It's probably the cheapest win you can have to change your packaging to black text...
but these farms only can use chemical fertilizers. they can't use organic fertilizers unlike planting in the soil. thus it might not taste as good as those grown on soil with organic fertilizers.
Still everything is stored in plastic containers.. why haven't more switched to plant material or something else eco friendly? Maybe because there is already so much investment in plastic and it would be to expensive to make the switch without subsidies..
Indoor farms are a long ways away from being able to compete with the size and yield volume of traditional farming. Indoor farms are measured in square feet while outdoor is measured in acres. A 100,000 square foot indoor farm sounds big, and for indoor it definitely is but that's only equilavent to 2.3 acres. Not to mention alot of the equipment that allows an outdoor farm to operate at hundred acre sizes is mostly unavailable to indoor farm. I work in controlled environment agriculture and am pushing for this to become more widely available and sustainable but at the moment we pale in comparison to a conventional farm.
Lots of vertical farming companies have gone bankrupt in the past decade. It is a very energy intensive way to grow crops (and therefore expensive) at a time when we should be reducing our carbon footprint. It makes no economic or environmental sense, but it is great click-bait on RUclips.
It can be done but; -investment is costly -more than the $400 that most households don't have for emergencies -it takes a bunch of valuable living space with good sunlight -that kills it in cities. I do it because I had to buy an oversized house anyway to be in the great neighborhood I wanted. -it takes way more time and technical skill to setup and keep running than is justifiable. -it makes environmental sense for me only because I would make an extra trip twice a month for fresh greens otherwise.
I suspect that in 10 to 20 years, when the cost of electricity has come down more due to more advances in energy science, that it will be much more price competitive with traditional farming. I see this as a long-term strategy.
![Quando Rondo - Grow Up [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/8zFnCg3BO4Q/mqdefault.jpg)
![Ice On My Teeth - ATEEZ エイティーズ 에이티즈 [Music Bank] | KBS WORLD TV 241115](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/c-n92OgbbwA/mqdefault.jpg)
I love your work here. It's been very informative, and I have nothing but respect. However it seems that that the stat on the number of farms in 1935 and in 2020 might be misleading. While there may be less farms, if the average farm in 2020 is 4 times the size of a farm in the 1935, then we'd actually have more active farm land today. Likewise, if a modern farm with new land usage methods is 4 times more productive, then there would be more food production today then there was in the 1935. All this to say that while stats are interesting, we need to take great care when using them to justify a point.
That stat seemed essentially meaningless to me as well. A better metric would be plant calories produced per capita or something like that. Or just don't mention it at all in a 4 minute video about vertical farming moving beyond leafy greens into fruit.
Millions of acres of US farmland has gone follow in the last half decade, especially in the last 3 years, due to climate change and lack of water. So while they are bigger farms they are producing less.
@@Streghamay 💯. Soil degradation, jumping worms and other invasive species, drought and other factors negate the size or productivity of 2020 farms compared to 1935 farms...
The number of farms doesn't matter. The number of farms in the US may be a third of what it was, but those same farms are 3-4 times the acreages. Which means the same amount of land is farmed by fewer companies.
A factor could be due to population growth creating new large towns. Still agree with your statement. But also the world population reaching 10 Billion is quite a debated subject.
Western countries are declining in population, so unless this company is planning to move to Asia or Africa where the population is exploding then... it's slightly misleading.
@Free Energy 5 head think moment
It doesnt matter if the subject is quantity but it does matter if we're talking about consuming local and organic food. Big farms with monocultures can be dangerous.
and ten times the yield
This subject is something I have been interested in for almost two decades, and to say it's the future is an understatement. This form of growing hasn't even begun to advance to the widespread scale of occurs during the enthusiastic snowballing effect of a gold rush, as it's still fairly well guarded knowledge. What I see happening in the future is the integration of other "natural systems" that can be observed throughout the world, but to the extent that they play an efficiency role within the hydroponic system. Such different aspects such as fungi and bugs to recycle "waste" into fertilizers for the plants, or even recycle air, as mycology/mushroom production has an incubation period that creates an intense amount of c02, which if dialed in to a hydroponic system will allow for the air to be recycles, as well as the heat that is carried within the air for a reduction in costs, as well as mixing spend mushroom substrate in with hydroponic substrate to reduce costs up to 50%, or even oyster mushroom's ability to filter water, particularly salt, when it passes through the substrate. I don't expect large corporations to take on these types of technologies, as they add a level of variable risk, but I assume we will see aspects integrated one company at a time until feasibility becomes predictable. The big game changer will be when GMO's are designed specifically for Hydroponics, not that I am a fan of GMO's but that will be how rice becomes a profitable crop to grow in a hydroponic system.
I also thing there will eventually be a small farmer aspect to hydroponics, as many romanticize the notion of farming, but are limited to city living, or don't actually enjoy the hard work involved in actual farming. This is going to be where hydroponics takes off in the public perspective. Simple pump NFT systems that are customized through shared 3d print files, and aerobic nutrient machines to create affordable fertilizers from waste, to grow plants year round in dug out "chinese greenhouses" is essentially what the world needs to negotiate the stability of advancing our population growth. I currently grow leafy greens in this manor, as well as bush beans, and strawberries.
This was great to read. Thanks for sharing your clear time spent thinking about this, I'm feeling the excitement now too :)
I live in a developing country where much of the population is poor. While I support indoor vertical farming, we need to go low tech: some crops cam grow in the dark - like mushrooms - so can be grown in low-light environs (even underground?); some crops can grow in low light so can be grown indoors; for crops that need full light & pollination I prefer rooftop or community gardening (via veggie tunnels to reduce need for pesticides?). Green roofs have additional benefits like enhancing building insulation (less heating & cooling required), rainwater harvesting, reducing the urban heat island effect & reducing stress (employees have somewhere nice to have lunch etc). Crops in cities must be grown using renewable energy sources.
In my country medicinal plants are also important. Urban farming can prevent the over harvesting of wild plants.
There is plenty of room for both. I watched a video on RUclips recently about developing countries growing urban agriculture, mostly on rooftops. Can't find it in my history though.
I have a start up that can provide this level of produce with much less expense. These AI systems are ridiculous for an entry level for a niche market.
@@Greenskies321 I disagree. The cost of those robotics and AI systems will drop over time (and the capability will increase over time) until it will be crazy to not have them. However, before that happens you need perfect both the software and hardware, which is what they are doing. The scale of indoor vertical farming is pretty small right now, so this is the time to work out those systems and get them mature.
@@NinetooNine I disagree. The cost of these vertical farms is affordable because of finance because of hype and because of media pumping the hype. Vertical is 3-5 times more costly than conventional, not even counting the negative externalities of energy production that will become more apparent as we try to limit ecological footprints. Living walls look great on Instagram and where a fad 8-10 y ago, most of them went away as people realized how costly they were to maintain...
@@daciogutierrez4132 LOL. The math says your wrong. Vertical farms are 10 times more productive on the same amount of land as regular farming. So even if it was 3-5 times more expensive it would still make sense to do. That doesn't even take into account the fact you are basically eliminating shipping issues/delays (pretty relevant in today's market). The real issues are the higher upfront capital costs to build than traditional systems. Also, these systems are not as of yet producing the cash crops that these companies need to make real money. That will come with time though.
The fact that someone actually developed a robot with enough dexterity and sensitivity to actually pick strawberries is pretty amazing to me. I really have to wonder about the cost vs just employing people though.
Well, it's probably cheaper to employ undocummented immigrants exploiting them but investmens in robotics gets higher every year and cheaper to buy. agriculture automation is one of those things that will positively impact our lives in the coming decades. Organic cheap food with no exploitation and dont forget the land that is being made available. You can stack these very high.
the upfront cost is massive but the upkeep is just having a cabinet of spare parts, and the electricity bill. that's it.
@@harrymu148 In an ideal world, maybe. Likely though there would be ongoing costs - support/maintenance contract for one. A technician to fix them when they break down perhaps? Downtime could be expensive. Perhaps leasing might be a way to reduce upfront costs and still be worthwhile overall. Just a thought.
if you see just a business it more profitable robot but if you see necessary for human being it's another conversation 😱🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶
Selling vertical farm set-up equipment to consumer houses and people grow their food in their backyard and charging subscription per month basis can also be game changer
I doubt this will be possible any time soon as the capital cost wouldn't scale down enough for such a small use case.
Just grow the stuff yourself. You don't need a Robot to watch it all day for you.
@Chaos is a ladder that's fine if you want to have veggies that costs 3x traditionally farmed ones. Computer and robotic automation at scale are the way the industry can drive costs down. Human labour is too expensive in such a low margin industry
@@graham1034 yeah key words "at scale". If you just want your own personal garden why would you need robot arms and computers monitoring it? That doesn't seem very efficient. And besides it's good for people to go outside and pull weeds and water the plant.
Or people could just plant traditional gardens…with soil and the sun…like our ancestors have been doing for centuries lol
Telling us there’s less farms doesn’t mean much without telling us the acreage difference
Journalists aren't very bright and rely on playbooks of factoid formats they don't really understand to sound sophisticated and informed.
The acreage has barely changed. The difference is in consolidation of those farms into larger farms or run by a company.
Feels more like an ad rather than focusing on vertical farms all around the USA and the world . Japan has been in the strawberry game for years now no excuse for not researching more.
That's CNBC, most of their 'articles' are paid for.
This technology could help people everywhere.
I wholeheartedly support this technology. We've become too interdependent on other nations for our food supply. Imagine implanting these across a nation. Save so much on the logistics of transportation, more skilled jobs domestically, and greatly stabilize the food supply chain leading to stable prices independant of weather and other outside conditions.
What the media doesn't tell you is that this technology requires a lot of energy. The Netherlands is using it because they have abundant natural gas resources.
This technology has been proven not to work actually. Vertical greenhouse farming has been around for 100 years and the costs far outweigh the benefits. Cost of land per calorie is off the chart. Strawberries and lettuce aren't going to feed anyone for long. And strawberries don't grow in greenhouses cost effectively, and bumble bees don't pollinate strawberries well at all. Been tried 1000 times sorry.
@@encarsia9 This technology can be used if there is a lot of energy available. But most countries do not have sufficient oil and gas.
Using the sun directly, photosynthesis is hard to beat. The silly part is the idea that this makes economic sense in cities where high rent forces the poor out and it is obvious that giving up X square feet of your living space to support your $3/week leafy greens needs would be crazy.
@@skyak4493 Just planting something in the ground and using nature to produce food is by far the most efficient method. We need to work with nature rather than try to out smart it.
My neighbor has been doing something similar in his garage for decades, but with a different cultivar :)
The problem also is these systems are hydro, which require lots of mined minerals and are generally nutritionally poorer than rich good quality soil. I’d be curious to see how sweet strawberries chemically grown in hydro and under LED’s can actually be, I’d guess not sweet, but I could be wrong. Leafy greens are easier and lower sugar. Also just eat local seasonal berries, Jersey has amazing blueberries in season, don’t eat ones from Chile in January, or get frozen ones off season…👌
Why don't they make these vertical farms into Greenhouses? I would assume the sunlight help tremendously with the energy bill
This model of farming is for cities, so getting an empty land or rooftop to create a greenhouse can be very difficult and very expensive. Though it's possible, it is very difficult to scale that. What they do is they target empty warehouses or industrial sites and reuse them for vertical farming.
A huge benefit of these is that Every stimuli these plants receive can be controlled. You can then for example replicate perfectly the 'perfect radishes of Italy 1987' or whatever. Greenhouses/natural sunlight massively reduces that. Also, makes the design no longer infinitely replicable, where you now have to make changes based on location as the weather changes
It's weird they don't use greenhouses. Spain and Holland already have massive greenhouse strawberry industries.
That's why it's called 'vertical'. You can't stack greenhouses on top of one another, the top one will block the sunlight.
Thanks to LEDs, they can actually use less energy than greenhouses. This is because LEDs can be tuned to emit only the frequencies of light that various plants actually use, rather than the full spectrum, most of which is wasted on plants.
@@alanlight7740 Greenhouses commonly use sunlight, and sometimes LEDs.
@@bernardfinucane2061 again you’re missing the whole vertical aspect. Plus plants don’t need sunlight they need the right spectrum of light. LED lights can drastically increase growth rates, edible mass etc
@@bernardfinucane2061 - I guess they figure that the expense of having windows to give some free sunlight to the top layer just isn't worth the benefits.
Windowless buildings are much cheaper, and are also much easier to insulate. Long term I could even see much farming being taken underground to free up surface space for other uses.
this also saves water as the water used can be recycled in house and it if crossed when fetilizer is used. The waste water can be used to grow more plant as it will still have fertilizer in it
all year strawberry is such a dream for me
This is the future.
Should have been doing this is mass a long time ago
What if each individual living-space could have its own automated Garden?
You can’t possible grow enough of everything you need in your house
Waste of energy and electronics. Every suburban house should have a normal garden
Bad economy of scale. They can be cheaper if each city has one but not each home.
climate control would be a challenge
You don’t want to grow product in your house the lights and humidity alone are going to be a bad time
What the video failed to mention is that the 8oz clan of strawberries retails for $15. A traditional 16 oz clam is usually around $5 lll
vertical farming is known to be more expensive than traditional farming
Some people will pay for freshness.
@@koharumi1 Freshly grown strawberries that have never seen the light of the sun. Yeah, I'm a pass on paying more for that.
or the fact that hydroponics strawberries aren't something new, that has been done elsewhere.
This is the future
28 hour day?!!?!?!?!?!?!?! gimme some of that
2:06 "We could make a 28 hour day for our plants..." How? lmao
.. Have the lights on for 28 hours at a time, then off for a period. These plants never see the sun, which is the clock by which our days are set
Once water is actually priced the. Way it should be for the lower basis, open air farming won’t be able to compete ever.
That was a great report, could you do more on the aeroponics systems also.
I'm curious to see how they manage to grow the strawberries vertically with or without bees... especially if they can automate the process without. 😃
He'll probably create some robotic equivalent that can pollinate
Or create new variety
@@maltedmilk6888 I'm going to hack the robot bees and send them up peoples noses.
They will definitely just use bee’s in a enclosed space
It's most likely just going to bee bees and manual picking. It's the cheapest and simplest solution. I don't think there currently is a way to automate polination for strawberries (though there are some techniques for polinating tomatos etc.), and there most certainly isn't a solution for automating strawberry picking. Am I the only one who noticed that the "strawberry picking robot" did pretty much everything wrong when picking stawberries? Picking immature berries, leaving stems on, and probably squeezing the berry in a way that would make it spoil in a day.
This solution could be a big player in a successful Mars colony someday.
They need to solve their energy consumption issues and high costs
I got to 1:30 when you said the population was supposed to surge to 10B - if you're using that to justify what you are doing, it is not worth watching the rest - population is actually supposed to fall.
A good investment especially if droughts worsen.
Great video but please fix the audio it's way too low. Gotta crank up the volume on phone!
......awesome....not bad.....not obviously necessarily pricing......but quality.....inspiring....driving
This is a great Innovative idea. It must come down dramatically with consumer cost though while keeping premium quality
It seems vertical farms use tons and tons of energy. How is that efficient?
Solar/Wind + Battery Storage
It's not. It's SPACEWISE efficient, because it needs less space and you can use electricity Made Out of anything.
You could literally make a small vertical farm in your house backyard with only aquarium water pump that cost you electricity
Its about square footage and led is low wattage.
Believe me, vertical seafarming is also becoming a thing, below the water in vertical seaweed farms.
2 steps ahead, we started this vertical farming trend where? Its mostly started from cannabis growers, as usual ha. Wait until these green growers discover UV supplement lighting we are using now to make better plants...
@@multatuli1 Yep, Aquaponics also is the future along with vertical farming.. said this on my youtube for about 5 years now heh. (proved it too)
I love this topic.
Well if mankind had an intelligent economic system, then they could repurpose all the empty office buildings into farms, as office people went to working from home.
They should research more on how to grow STAPLE FOODS indoors in larger quantities like rice, wheat, barley, corn, soya these are the dominant large quantity mass consumption of humans not leafy green veggies, they are also consumed by our livestocks that provides our meat. Shifting to staple foods is more viable than “berries”
I'm sure they're trying but it seems they haven't figured it out yet.
So, how are the strawberries pollinated?
Hope this takes off big time
អរគុណសម្រាប់ការចែករំលែក thank for sharing
The main issue is space, volume of production and the amount of electricity required. So it is not very green and productive. Robots are great, but still lot of labour.
no, the idea behind vertical farms is the same as that of skyscrappers; you are utilising the space above (vertical space), hence, requiring less horizontal space
@@stormchaser0898 well we still have huge agricultural space, a good greenhouse system can increase productivity by 10 fault. See Netherlands
It may use a lot of electricity but a vertical farm in a building the size of your typical Costco is equivalent to 700,000 acres of traditional farming. I would suspect the carbon foot print would be a lot less than traditional methods.
@@Loawercs31 i work in agriculture and I am an ecologists. We done those calculations, there are different forms of farming broad acre and cultivation, market garden. Those vertical systems compete with market gardens, however those are already very intense small area farms, using hydroponics, green houses etc. Those are close to cities so the carbon footprint is lot lower for the yield. So in space and carbon savings there is very little to gain. So if you talking mega cities like Shanghai etc maybe
Lived this, in the cannabis industry we've been doing this for almost 10 years now ha.
Only because the fuzz would find you fast if you had 200 acres of devil's lettuce. Plus, extremely high margin.
There are a lot of benefits, but I don't see this being that viable in the business sense unless energy gets a lot cheaper. Also the statistic about the growing population keeps being brought up with these vertical farm pitches but for first world country birth rates are plummeting and population decrease will probably be more likely.
Vertical farms, way to go. 👏👏🌞
I work in Kearny. I had no idea 😂
Appharvest is also a great example.
I’m not familiar with dirty dozen, but I do know about Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen.
Good job . Congratulations 🎉🎉🎉
Vertical towers >>>>> horizontal systems by ROI by a mile.
Bowery and other farms of this caliber will never compete with soil ones due to their lack of ROI focus for investors.
There’s better systems with less bells and whistles
Vertical strawberry towers for the win
Farming of the future! 👌. .... Could have made a longer video though.
This and aquaponics, for sure.. 2 steps ahead.
Most of this all comes from ideas of cannabis growers who did vertical farming and LED for many years now 🕶
2:05 "we could make a 28 hour day for our plants"
You work an 8-hour day...
Interesting how the world may eventually use solar panels to produce electricity to then light up indoor vertical farms.
Or a glass greenhouse instead of a warehouse.
It is not a wrong thing to do if you want to grow as fast as possible. If you are connected to the grid your night time energy can be cheap off peak and day time can be paid for by the solar nearby. The main saving for this kind of vertical farm is the transportation cost (say flying strawberries from California to Maine or Alaska).
People's numbers increase in the future. Farmlands are gone.
People need food. This is the answer.
Do you want to have a lot of money in the future? Do the vertical farm now.
Believe me, I come from the future. :)
@@frostsmaker8966 Population has been declining in 1st world, farm output has been increasing due to genetic modification and breeding advances.
Qulity Volume doesn't matter , matter is price and how much energy consum to produce products.
Ah yes, 1/3 the farms...
Is tobacco a food crop? Or even a growth segment of farming today?
Did this video's editor know what stock footage they were using?
90% less water, what about 90% less plastic packaging ??.
Did she just say 28 hour day?
Love the idea, but why plastic packaging. One thing thst we have not be able to improve on.
Gotta make it cheaper though to create incentetive. That should be possible since there are no pesticide cost, pest control, overall damage of yield or crops from nature's side etc
its much more expensive to produce because of the high energy costs compares to traditional farming that get free warmth and light from the sun and also the high costs of r&d.
Up to now the industry didn't provide a viable business plan and relies heavily on the hype generated by the media to raise funds. That is why in 2022 and 2023 many of the promising players in the industry went bankrupt.
Just imagine this might be our only source of non radioactive produce in a few days…
Nice video.
What I wouldn't pay for one great strawberry right now!
This could be a good way to provide fresh produce in areas that can't grow these kinds of plants locally. Especially in areas that don't get much rain, but plenty of sunshine. Mix it with solar power and you may have a winning combination. An additional thought, I hope that they are using biodegradable or reusable packaging. Otherwise the earth friendliness of this farming method goes right out the window.
Cannabis.
Universal Basic Income for all.
This video feels like an advertisement and is rather misleading. The decrease in the amount of farms, paired with the increasing global population is misguided, as this doesn't account for the consolidation and expansion of acreage of modern farms, neither the substantial growth in agricultural technology and efficiency. Secondly, 'vertical farms are moving beyond leafy greens', how is this the case given what was shown in this video? All we saw was a company that principally uses vertical farming to grow simple and relatively easy leafy salad greens, whom have bought a couple tracts of traditional farmland (one in NY and one in Baltimore) to grow strawberries in the exact same manner in which they are currently and have always been grown by any other farmer, the difference being only in the harvesting of said strawberries by using AI instead of seasonal workers. In what way is this an expansion of vertical farming?
I love the concept and I hope for this sector to grow in the coming years, but with the high costs of energy and initial investment to even start such a venture, this type of agriculture is still a long way off unfortunately. It also seems clear that this company (and others) have yet to get the cost down to reasonable and affordable levels for the average consumer, this as they keep mentioning how their product is better for the environment (despite the high energy input and building materials for the farms), and that consumers should be willing to pay a little more for such a product. If they cannot get the price down (despite growing simple salad greens) the average consumer will not pay extra no matter how eco-conscious they are, nor how interesting and different the farming method used was.
can we grow trees indoors? 🌳
I grow hydroponic strawberries
As long as these things don’t cost more to consumers…
Well if we could fix our energy system then they wouldn’t. Fossil fuel prices are volatile and many are unwilling to expand our use of nuclear energy. This all makes energy prices unstable and hinders the progress of such technology
@@seankilburn7200 Amen. Europe is a specialist in this problem with all of its stupid socialist geen ideals. I'm all for them but not if technology isn't there. Instead now they have to buy natural gas from Russia
We have the abilities to make our lives amazing, but we aren't using it to the full extent. I try to give the world seemingly endless clean energy and they just keep ignoring it.
How does the lack of microorganisms in the soil affect our immune system tho?
All of the food and the power is outside, that's it. Sorry humanity, you cant science your way out of this problem as easily as you scienced your way into it.
How about when humans colonize Mars or the moon? Or if a supervolcano erupts or there's nuclear fallout outside? Or heck, what if there's snow outside?
@@SayAhh uhhh....is that one question or multiple or a joke? Lol
This makes me incredibly nervous….
Loosing so many opportunities
Do they pollinate the Strawberrys by hand in the vertical farms ?
Solves a lot of problems.
Deforestation for farm land
Over farming land
Pesticide run off
Wildfires destroying crops
Pests and animals
Crop circles
Having to contend with weather
That building needs to be lined to solar panels on top. Use the sun to power lights to mimic the sun lol
Vertical farming has so much potential, it's such a wasted opportunity
really how ??
It's more of a useful future technology. Sunlight is free. It's hard to compete with that.
@@dansands8140 sunlight is nearly unlimited, farming land isn't. Solar + Vertical Farming is key.
@@thisismarkbro Limited space for horizontal farming without deforestation. The sky's the limit.
Ohh so now bowery girl (Katie) is now famous 😂
City governments need to make these facilities cost free and subsidized. Rent should not make or break these businesses
Strawberries from LED? How that taste
6 million and 2 million don't tell the whole story because of the fact that well get out that crop efficiency has gotten much higher
We need more vertical Farms less land farms we need more free graze cattle and chickens
Is vertical farming organic? Do they use gmo, fertilizer and chemicals?
This is really cool to see! I'm in the beginning stage of starting a farm like this. :)
I literally eat Bowery every single day,I was just telling my Wife how I would Invest in this company.
Why don't these guys start exporting to Australia and other parts of the country it will probably ease the affordability a little bit
1:40 “Keerny” NJ
Bowery, your packaging fails color contrast accessibility terribly. White text on a lime green background is extremely hard to read and doesn't stand out at all. It's probably the cheapest win you can have to change your packaging to black text...
but these farms only can use chemical fertilizers. they can't use organic fertilizers unlike planting in the soil. thus it might not taste as good as those grown on soil with organic fertilizers.
Still everything is stored in plastic containers.. why haven't more switched to plant material or something else eco friendly? Maybe because there is already so much investment in plastic and it would be to expensive to make the switch without subsidies..
He's the type of guy to lick his fingers when turning a page while reading on his iPad
Too bad they aren't a public company. Make it public and provide a dividend and i am ALL IN on it.
They are not same as soil based plants....everyone need to Savesoil
Energy cost solar panels
agree
This narrator's voice sounds very familiar, but can't place who it is.
Greedy corporation will make this farm similar with modern chicken farms.
By offering a predatory contracts with the farmers.
that's so funny - most of the strawberries in california where I live come from mexico.
20 Dollars per Pound of lettuce is pretty good.
How much more do you want?
$APPH has a diverse crop mix starting with tomatoes with greens and strawberries coming online this year.
They should expand to dairy, grains and proteins. This will also effect immigration
Farms are going to need more automation to stay competitive with vertical farmers.
Indoor farms are a long ways away from being able to compete with the size and yield volume of traditional farming. Indoor farms are measured in square feet while outdoor is measured in acres. A 100,000 square foot indoor farm sounds big, and for indoor it definitely is but that's only equilavent to 2.3 acres. Not to mention alot of the equipment that allows an outdoor farm to operate at hundred acre sizes is mostly unavailable to indoor farm. I work in controlled environment agriculture and am pushing for this to become more widely available and sustainable but at the moment we pale in comparison to a conventional farm.
Lots of vertical farming companies have gone bankrupt in the past decade. It is a very energy intensive way to grow crops (and therefore expensive) at a time when we should be reducing our carbon footprint. It makes no economic or environmental sense, but it is great click-bait on RUclips.
It can be done but;
-investment is costly -more than the $400 that most households don't have for emergencies
-it takes a bunch of valuable living space with good sunlight -that kills it in cities. I do it because I had to buy an oversized house anyway to be in the great neighborhood I wanted.
-it takes way more time and technical skill to setup and keep running than is justifiable.
-it makes environmental sense for me only because I would make an extra trip twice a month for fresh greens otherwise.
I suspect that in 10 to 20 years, when the cost of electricity has come down more due to more advances in energy science, that it will be much more price competitive with traditional farming. I see this as a long-term strategy.
This has a lot to offer