{"id":29210,"date":"2018-07-02T04:00:59","date_gmt":"2018-07-02T09:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/civileats.com\/?p=29210"},"modified":"2018-07-06T10:25:39","modified_gmt":"2018-07-06T15:25:39","slug":"can-vertical-farms-reap-their-harvest-its-anyones-bet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/2018\/07\/02\/can-vertical-farms-reap-their-harvest-its-anyones-bet\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Vertical Farms Reap Their Harvest? It\u2019s Anyone\u2019s Bet."},"content":{"rendered":"

By now, the images of shelves full of perfect greens in hulking warehouses, stacked floor to ceiling in sterile environs and illuminated by high-powered LED lights, have become familiar. Food futurists and industry leaders say these high-tech vertical farming operations are the future of agriculture\u2014able to operate anywhere, virtually invincible against pests, pathogens, and poor weather, and producing local, fresh, high-quality, lower-carbon food year-round.<\/p>\n

That future seemed one step closer to reality last year when San Francisco-based indoor farming startup Plenty, which grows a variety of salad and leafy greens hydroponically (without soil) and uses artificial lighting in facilities in three locations, announced<\/a> that it had raised a whopping $200 million in funding<\/a> from the SoftBank Vision Fund, whose investors include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.<\/p>\n

Flush with cash, Plenty quickly opened<\/a> a 100,000-square-foot indoor farm outside Seattle that promised to produce 4.5 million pounds of greens annually\u2014and testing some varieties not yet grown for the masses at scale, such as strawberries and tomatoes<\/a>, at its research and development farm in Wyoming.\u00a0 To Plenty\u2019s leadership and many observers, the cash influx signaled the economic promise of growing food indoors without sunlight and with less soil and water than field farming.<\/p>\n

\"Vertical

\u201cMy reaction [to the $200 million round] was both that of validation, excitement,\u201d said Matt Barnard, Plenty\u2019s co-founder and CEO, over a manner of farming he says yields 350 times the produce per acre on one percent of the water used by dirt farming. \u201cNow we must move with speed and efficiency if we\u2019re to accomplish our mission of bringing people worldwide an experience that\u2019s healthier for them and the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not everyone is in agreement.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy first thought was, \u2018we could build a lot of greenhouses for $200 million,\u2019\u201d recalls Neil Mattson, a professor of plant science at Cornell<\/a> and one of the country\u2019s leading academic voices on indoor agriculture, who\u2019s found that high-tech greenhouses that harness sunlight are more cost- and carbon-friendly than vertical farms that use artificial light.<\/p>\n

Most vertical farmers are only hoping to claim a percentage of the conventional produce market, not replace it. To these founders and their investors, the market for lettuce and greens, especially\u2014grown primarily in California and Arizona and shipped worldwide\u2014is ripe for disruption. E. coli<\/em> outbreaks<\/a> like the one that hit Arizona-grown romaine lettuce<\/a> earlier this year, killing a handful of people and sickening hundreds, only further their case.<\/p>\n

But behind futurists\u2019 fervent predictions<\/a> about indoor agriculture, claims about product quality, and sexy technology lies a reality known by industry insiders but too often missing from media coverage: The future success of this nascent industry is still very much an open question.<\/p>\n

The astronomical capital costs associated with starting a large hydroponic farm (compared to field and greenhouse farming), its reliance on investor capital and yet-to-be-developed technology, and challenges around energy efficiency and environmental impact make vertical farming anything but a sure bet. And even if vertical farms do scale, there\u2019s no clear sense of whether brand-loyal consumers, en masse, will make the switch from field-grown produce to foods grown indoors.<\/p>\n

Tricky Economics<\/strong><\/p>\n

Walking into any supermarket will reveal a small mountain of salad greens, carrying a price tag of between $9 and $12 per pound<\/a>. They may be locally grown or organic, which will add $0.50 or $1 to the price tag. Meanwhile, a 4.5-ounce carton of Massachusetts-based FreshBox Farms\u2019 spring mix\u2014grown in the company\u2019s hydroponic farm in Massachusetts\u2014costs $3.99 for a 4-ounce box<\/a>, or $15.96 per pound. Or kale: the conventional variety will run you $1.33 per pound at Walmart; organic kale costs around $4.99 per pound at Whole Foods; and vertically farmed kale grown at Newark, New Jersey-based AeroFarms will cost you a whopping $14.18 per pound.<\/p>\n

That dramatic price gap is due to the millions of dollars currently needed to build one large indoor vertical farm\u2014and that price is not going to drop until the industry scales up. Agritecture Consulting<\/a>, whose clients include current and prospective indoor farms, estimates that a 30,000-square-foot vertical farm growing leafy greens and herbs in the tri-state area around New York City requires nearly $4 million in startup capital\u2014not<\/em> including labor.<\/p>\n

They should know: In 2016, Agritecture built farm.one<\/a> in Manhattan\u2019s TriBeCa neighborhood, which supplies hydroponic greens<\/a> and edible flowers to a number of the city\u2019s top restaurants. Chefs have been quick to catch onto the value of consistent, year-round, locally grown produce.<\/p>\n

\"A

In 2016, AeroFarms, now considered an industry leader, spent $30 million<\/a> on its flagship aeroponic farm in Newark. The majority of these costs lie in the equipment needed to grow greens without soil or sunlight\u2014heating and cooling systems, ventilation, shading, environmental controls, and lights.<\/p>\n

All of these costs add up to a hefty electricity bill: According to models compiled for Civil Eats by Agritecture, a 30,000-square-foot vertical farm in metro New York City should budget upwards of $216,000 annually for lighting and power, and another $120,000 on HVAC systems; costs will vary region to region depending on what each state charges for electricity.<\/p>\n

Energy and equipment costs are, by far, the largest drivers of expenses that can bring the price of operating a vertical farm close to $27 per square foot. By contrast, Agritecture\u2019s models show that the cost to run a 100,000-square-foot smart greenhouse is roughly a third as expensive, thanks to the use of natural sunlight and more advanced automation.<\/p>\n

Vertical farms\u2019 energy usage carries a significant carbon footprint. While vertical farm companies promise more-sustainable produce by growing it closer to consumers and using renewable energy to power their operations, the industry still\u00a0has a long row to hoe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Industry leaders acknowledge the energy challenges in the short term, yet tout continually improving lighting technology that has brought down costs. But Mattson, whose Cornell team studies the way plants respond to different lighting, predicts a plateau coming for improvements to LED technology.<\/p>\n

\"An

\u201cThe best LEDs are 40 percent more energy efficient than in 2014,\u201d Mattson says. \u201cThere continue to be improvements; however, those improvements will start to slow down over time. There\u2019s only a finite amount of light you can generate at a given wavelength, and in 2022, I\u2019m not expecting new lights to be 40 percent more efficient than the current lights now.\u201d<\/p>\n

FreshBox Farms began shipping greens from its 40,000-square-foot hydroponic facility in Millis, Massachusetts, in 2015. The warehouse farm, located 30 miles outside of Boston, runs on a combination of renewable energy and non-renewables, and CFO Dave Vosburg admits his company is \u201cnot doing any better\u201d than field-grown greens when it comes to carbon usage.<\/p>\n

When it eventually expands outside of Massachusetts, Vosberg says that by introducing a cogeneration<\/a> system\u2014technology that recycles otherwise wasted heat into new energy\u2014FreshBox Farms will eventually keep costs and carbon emissions down in expensive markets like Connecticut, where commercial users pay an average of more than 14 cents per kilowatt-hour<\/a>. But Vosburg says the company\u2019s priority is to use contextually appropriate renewable energy sources to power the farms, such as wind energy in the Midwest, hydro in the Northwest, and solar in the Southwest.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, it sounds crazy to take the sun and turn it into electricity and turn that electricity back into light. It sounds ridiculous, but that\u2019s what we\u2019ll be doing,\u201d Vosburg says. \u201cIt\u2019ll be really efficient and clean and create a better product, and it won\u2019t have the same carbon impact that we\u2019re having today.\u201d<\/p>\n

And energy isn\u2019t even a vertical farm\u2019s top ongoing expense. The companies Civil Eats spoke to say labor is actually their largest budget item. Vertical farms typically pay workers higher, more metropolitan pay rates than both dirt farms\u2014many of which rely heavily on migrant labor\u2014and the more automated smart greenhouses. The fast-food chain Wendy\u2019s announced<\/a> in June that it plans to source vine-ripened tomatoes exclusively from greenhouse farms by early 2019.<\/p>\n

Moreover, no matter how automated the indoor growing system is, vertical farmers are discovering the constant need for a human eye\u2014or several\u2014on the process. In fact, some estimate that if indoor agriculture continues to grow at the pace it has in recent years, vertical farms will have to hire 100,000 workers<\/a> over the next decade.<\/p>\n

That continued growth is not a given, however. Because of the high cost to launch, operate, and scale up a vertical farming operation, the industry is highly leveraged, with each new farm requiring tens of millions of dollars in investor capital before it can grow a single plant.\u00a0Between 2016 and 2017, investments in vertical farming skyrocketed 653 percent<\/a>, from $36 million to $271 million. The lion\u2019s share of that investment<\/a> went to Plenty, but Newark-based AeroFarms has raised $80 million in recent years and New Jersey\u2019s Bowery Farming<\/a> added another $27 million.<\/p>\n

Just last week, Manhattan-based BrightFarms announced<\/a> it had raised $55 million. Shoppers can now find produce grown indoors by more than 23 large vertical farms in more than 20 supermarket chains in nearly every major metropolitan area in the country, according to Agritecture.<\/p>\n

While industry leaders say scaling offers the best hope for profitability in this business, many vertical farms have encountered problems when they began planning to add additional production facilities. Before Atlanta-based PodPonics closed its doors in 2016, executives from the five-year-old hydroponic farm startup met with executives from supermarket chain Kroger.<\/p>\n

Kroger indicated that it was ready to purchase 25 million pounds of produce from PodPonics annually if it would build the facilities to support that kind of production, founder Matt Liotta told a crowd<\/a> at the 2017 Aglanta Conference. According to Liotta, who said PodPonics had lowered the cost to produce a pound of lettuce to $1.36, Whole Foods and Fresh Market also expressed interest in bringing PodPonics greens into their stores nationally.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was our wildest dream,\u201d Liotta said. \u201cThen we realized how much capital that was going to require, how many people we were going to have to hire. Every retailer told us the same thing: \u2018We will buy it if you will build it.\u2019 We realized we were incapable of building everything that they wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unproven Demand for Food Grown Indoors<\/strong><\/p>\n

In early 2016, researchers from the University of Illinois-Urbana set out to determine<\/a> whether consumers would spring for produce grown indoors. They asked a panel of 117 participants a series of questions about their perceptions of and willingness to pay for lettuce grown in fields, greenhouses, and in vertical farms. While vertical farming ranked fairly high in terms of produce quality and safety, the tech-heavy production method was rated less \u201cnatural\u201d than both field farming and greenhouse and ranked last in participants\u2019 willingness to purchase it.<\/p>\n

\"Vertically

For the vertical agriculture industry to eat into the profits of field-grown products\u2014a roughly $140 billion industry<\/a>\u2014Agritecture Consulting founder and managing director Henry Gordon-Smith says it will first need to prove consumers are demanding produce grown indoors. He points out that because of a lack of demand, many vertical farming operations are not yet at full production year-round\u2014despite touting the 12-month growing season as a main benefit of the industry.<\/p>\n

His sense is that indoor farms that have achieved the sales to produce continually\u2014such as Gotham Greens<\/a> has with its New York City greenhouses, for example\u2014have a customer base that\u2019s responding to strong \u201clocal\u201d branding rather than the technology behind the food. That may include vertical farms selling their produce using the USDA Certified Organic label, which the National Organic Board reaffirmed in January<\/a>, much to the dismay of many organic dirt farmers.<\/p>\n

\"Gotham

\u201cI think the automation and economics are all improving,\u201d Gordon-Smith says, adding that the question of \u201cwhether consumers are going to pay more or whether the products coming out of vertical farms are going to align with their values\u201d is still an open question.<\/p>\n

But while many of the East Coast vertical farms built their business models around replacing greens being shipped cross-country from California and Arizona, Matt Barnard of Plenty hopes to add to<\/em> the global population consuming fresh produce. A 2015 report<\/a> found that where USDA guidelines suggest each of us in the U.S. should eat up to three cups of vegetables daily, current U.S. production is only providing enough for 1.7 cups per person. Barnard extends that supply gap to the rest of the world, especially the Middle East and Asia, where a lack of water and high pollution have hampered agriculture.<\/p>\n

\"Plenty

\u201cWe believe the industry will be five times larger when there is supply to meet the demand,\u201d Barnard says. \u201cWith the field unable to deliver consistent supply, new forms of agricultural capacity like Plenty must be added to the global food system.\u201d<\/p>\n

But as vertical farming companies like Plenty go city by city attempting to dominate local markets, it may be that small farmers get hurt the most. Barnard drew the ire of Washington State dirt farmers last year when he told GeekWire<\/a> that Plenty expanded to Seattle, in part, because it was the West Coast\u2019s \u201cbest example of a large community of people who really don\u2019t have much access to any fresh fruits and vegetables grown locally.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not so, according to Sofia Gidlund, Farm Programs Manager at Tilth Alliance<\/a>, which advocates for and supports local agriculture systems in Greater Seattle.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe work with many hardworking local farmers who supply Seattle with high-quality, delicious, and nutritious food while caring deeply for our land. These farmers use sustainable farming practices, nurse the soil, create beautiful open green space and provide wildlife habitat,\u201d says Gidlund, who adds that she does not speak for all area farmers on the issue of vertical farming. \u201cMany consumers in Seattle choose to support local farmers, both urban or rural, because of this deep connection to the land. Providing that support is a point of pride for many Seattleites.\u201d<\/p>\n

Actual Data Is Coming<\/strong><\/p>\n

Peer-reviewed research into the business of vertical farming has been sparse, partly because the industry is so new. That\u2019s set to change, however, when Mattson and a team of researchers at Cornell University finish a comprehensive study into the viability of this approach.<\/p>\n

A three-year, $2.4 million research grant<\/a>, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and kicked off in January, will compare the vertical farming industry to field agriculture in a slew of categories, including energy, carbon, and water footprints, profitability, workforce development, and scalability. The study will include one of the first nutritional analyses of food grown indoors, as well as comparing the price-per-pound to deliver strawberries, lettuce, and tomatoes grown vertically and outdoors to five U.S. metropolitan areas: New York City, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Atlanta.<\/p>\n

A 2016 study<\/a> conducted by a few of Mattson\u2019s colleagues at Cornell found that the energy consumption and carbon footprint associated with a vertical farm (the study calls it a \u201cplant factory\u201d) is significantly higher than that of a greenhouse. Vertical farming leaders counter that they use significantly less water than field farms, are more space-efficient, and do not produce emissions from trucking produce across the country. Mattson says these factors were not considered in Cornell\u2019s previous research but will be included in the current grant.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Vertical farming] is not a fad,\u201d says Mattson, who wants to use data to help the industry become more sustainable over time. \u201cI\u2019m not sure to what degree it\u2019s going to scale up, but this is happening. So we need to understand the economic and environmental implications\u2014both the good and the bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Update: This article was updated to reflect the fact that Plenty is testing its strawberry and tomato crops in Wyoming, not at its facility in Washington state.<\/em><\/p>\n

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