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Upward Farms throws in towel ten years after founding vertical-farming business

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Re: Upward Farms throws in towel ten years after founding vertical-farming business

#91

Post by svnt »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #85
lifeonlars wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The absolute cheapest (in fuel) way to move goods, responsible for essentially every advance in living in the last century. This is a very distorted view of technological and human progress. A huge factor in improvements in global standards of human living over the last century has been improvements in health care: hygiene, vaccination, antibiotics, basic medication, birth control and health education. Far from bei…

The distribution of goods is vital to every part of that? Making it cheap enough to reach every citizen of Earth is what shipping containers have made possible.

Once a certain level of manufacturing competence is distributed throughout the world this need no longer exists. Information travels faster than freight.

Re: Upward Farms throws in towel ten years after founding vertical-farming business

#92

Post by svnt »

mikeg8 wrote: post #68
Alex3917 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cows are usually started outdoors and then finished indoors. There's no reason why farming couldn't follow a similar hybrid approach. That way you could e.g. grow tropical crops in New England, but still not have to pay for the majority of the required resources.

Explain how you create a tropical environment in New England that doesn’t require an incredible amount of resources to mimic the temperature, humidity, soil conditions, required to bear profitable products

Hear me out, first you get some cows…

Re: Upward Farms throws in towel ten years after founding vertical-farming business

#94

Post by LawTalkingGuy »

netbioserror wrote: post #39

Let me know when truly calorie-dense foods like potatoes, corn, and wheat are finally profitable to grow indoors. All I see thus far is lots of LED-fed salad.

Only the marketers are saying it's a panacea.

Vertical farming (defined as the inefficient use of indoor farming, versus greenhouses which are an efficient use of indoor farming) is not a good replacement for most sorts of food production. It's a potentially competitive way of producing the most delicate and high-value items as close to the customer as possible.

It could make it possible to sell some foods, like apricots, in the city which are otherwise impossible to ship because they have to be picked soft.

Often though, there is roof space available where high-value crops could currently be grown efficiently in greenhouses and it's not being looked at because of the VC focus on tech and growth.

Re: Upward Farms throws in towel ten years after founding vertical-farming business

#96

Post by CharlieDigital »

mikeryan wrote: post #67
CharlieDigital wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a bit odd that they picked up steam first in the U.S. for this reason My sense is that it was riding a wave of "local" and "farm to table". If you're in a city like LA or NY where there's a lack of space AND local demand for a premium priced product that can be delivered year round AND more awareness/marketability for such products (local + sustainable), the economics are different than versus growing a commodity p…

I’m all for farm to table but both NY and LA don’t need farms within city limits. All you’re saving by forcing that is a few hours of driving in a truck. If there’s an emissions concern then most farming regions are also good places for renewables like solar and wind. Electric or other carbon neutral vehicles seem like a more reasonable solution. Just a short trip outside of a city can probably get enough land for a…

If it made sense, they would still be in business and thriving. I'm only offering one conjecture.

Hindsight is 20/20, but I wouldn't make the case that it makes _zero_ sense; only that they couldn't prove the use case and find the right products and market. Definitely with a more high-value product that couldn't be sourced reasonably locally or even from the US, there may be a better economic case.

It reminds me of this couple growing yuzu lemon in NJ and selling 5-10x the price to Michelin restaurants in the area: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwTc5929U5g

Re: Upward Farms throws in towel ten years after founding vertical-farming business

#97

Post by hedora »

efields wrote: post #71

High tunnels are very efficient. Greenhouses are very efficient. I've visited https://district.farm/ and it's clearly the future (or the present if you're in Northern Europe). When I went there they were at 1/4 of grow space that they are now. Ready to expand? You just add more enclosures. You slowly recoup the capital cost of the structure. Might take a few years, but you will. Rinse and repeat. The US is not hurtin…

I call BS on their claim they cut resource usage by 95%.

Traditional greenhouses (which the one at that landing site appears to be) are extremely energy intensive. This article explains why, and describes a common, practical alternative:

https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/reinventing-the-gree...

Also, people ridiculously overestimate the percentage of food’s carbon footprint that comes food transportation:

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220429-the-climate-bene...

(Search for locally grown food to jump to the right figure).

Note that, even if the greenhouse, transport, storage and packaging all used zero resources, the percentage of food they produce that is thrown into landfills (and turns to methane) is going to be more than 5% the impact of traditionally grown food.

Re: Upward Farms throws in towel ten years after founding vertical-farming business

#98

Post by Scoundreller »

mikeryan wrote: post #67
CharlieDigital wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a bit odd that they picked up steam first in the U.S. for this reason My sense is that it was riding a wave of "local" and "farm to table". If you're in a city like LA or NY where there's a lack of space AND local demand for a premium priced product that can be delivered year round AND more awareness/marketability for such products (local + sustainable), the economics are different than versus growing a commodity p…

I’m all for farm to table but both NY and LA don’t need farms within city limits. All you’re saving by forcing that is a few hours of driving in a truck. If there’s an emissions concern then most farming regions are also good places for renewables like solar and wind. Electric or other carbon neutral vehicles seem like a more reasonable solution. Just a short trip outside of a city can probably get enough land for a…

> NY and LA don’t need farms within city limits.

And generally speaking, I don’t want my food grown where it’s the most polluted. From the middle of nowhere with minimal population density, ideally upstream of any big city, is where I want my food coming from.

(Will admit I start a garden at my mom’s in a medium sized city’s suburb, but when I run some containers on my balcony on a busy city street, the layers of dust from ??? concern me)

Maybe this will get better once we don’t have the concentration of ICE vehicles in urban centres, but until then…

Re: Upward Farms throws in towel ten years after founding vertical-farming business

#99

Post by vidarh »

Gordonjcp wrote: post #87
tivert wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> all the fancy Startup babble does conveniently ignore that you lose access to thousands of dollars worth of free services provided by nature: irrigation, fertility, pest control, sun light for crying out loud. > By this reasoning, why would we need to do anything to grow food? Why not relax and enjoy nature's bounty? The GP got a couple things wrong (e.g. nature doesn't provide free pest control), but one thing ve…

All over Scotland - which is kind of centred around 55°N, way further north than these guys with their vertical farms - potatoes grow like crazy. Some types do well in Ayrshire, some do well up here in Angus (yes, like Aberdeen-Angus cattle). Different types of soil work well for different plants. You'd need literally megawatts of power to provide the same amount of light. Where are you going to get that from? Solar…

In Norway, Potatoes are grown as far north as the Northernmost region of Finnmark, around 70°N, and Norway is able to produce more potatoes than are eaten by people (Norway still imports potatoes because the growing season is short).

Re: Upward Farms throws in towel ten years after founding vertical-farming business

#100

Post by Scoundreller »

Gordonjcp wrote: post #87
tivert wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> all the fancy Startup babble does conveniently ignore that you lose access to thousands of dollars worth of free services provided by nature: irrigation, fertility, pest control, sun light for crying out loud. > By this reasoning, why would we need to do anything to grow food? Why not relax and enjoy nature's bounty? The GP got a couple things wrong (e.g. nature doesn't provide free pest control), but one thing ve…

All over Scotland - which is kind of centred around 55°N, way further north than these guys with their vertical farms - potatoes grow like crazy. Some types do well in Ayrshire, some do well up here in Angus (yes, like Aberdeen-Angus cattle). Different types of soil work well for different plants. You'd need literally megawatts of power to provide the same amount of light. Where are you going to get that from? Solar…

> Where are you going to get that from? Solar panels...?

The usual answer is: nuclear power that is too cheap to meter. Still waiting for it…

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