Posted on 08/25/2019 9:39:20 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Indoor farming projects have been touted for their environmental benefits, but a lack of scalability and profitability have caused smart farm startups to fail all over the world.
However, Seoul-based automatic indoor farming startup n.thing is betting on a modular approach for success. The company found that shipping containers are appealing as scalable indoor vertical farming units, especially in countries that are short of fertile land.
The key to its flagship Planty Cube farming facility is a cluster of multiple 12-meter cargo containers, Kim Hye-yeon, CEO and co-founder of n.thing, said in an interview with The Investor.
“A stand-alone, single-unit shipping container is not suitable for farmers to do business,” the 34-year-old said. “The scheme to allow multiple shipping containers to be connected appealed to clients when they wanted to see how much space to use for indoor farming before their decision to buy.”
Farm owners may customize production volume and optimize green-growing environments simply by adding or removing cargo containers, making it easier to reflect the needs of farm owners with high flexibility.
Moreover, shipping containers are easy to find anywhere in the world, and they conform to international standards in size and quality, allowing the quality of produce to be consistent regardless of location.
(Excerpt) Read more at theinvestor.co.kr ...
I assume the advantage is that you can or subtract cargo cases as the need adjusts to meet the marketplace, but a warehouse is a higher risk because of greater costs with no guarantee of a market.
I think indoor farming is potentially a great thing because you can always move in an upward direction and have the equivalent of many acres per acre of ground.
A brother bought a property 30 years ago that had been used as an alfalfa sprout farm.
They used semi truck trailers with refrigeration units backed into a raised barn, 12 trailers.
It was a huge mess to clean up, took years.
I got to live there for 5 years, up in the hillside of the Santa Clara valley.
Then It all burned to the ground, rats.
On a positive note all that stuff I prized so much was no longer a millstone around my neck.
[ I think indoor farming is potentially a great thing because you can always move in an upward direction and have the equivalent of many acres per acre of ground. ]
No weeds, no pests, no herbicides needed, no pesticides needed, can be automated easily via robotics, no illegal alien feces on your lettuce.
Sign me up!
I had a bunch of stuff stored in my brother’s Barn up in Redwood Valley this last year when the fires swept through the area, and it all burned. I can definitely relate to the aspect of having all that crud removed from your life. A lot of decisions got Made For Me by that fire.
"Everything you own, ends up owning you." - Tyler Durden, Fight Club
I ‘lost’ 5 kayaks, 37 fishing rods.
Crazy the stuff you keep around.
I can only talk about farming/ranching in the US. And my father owned a packing house using iced railroad cars for shipment in the early 50’s.
The large scale benefits of warehouse farms come with certain drawbacks. To reach economies of scale and production levels able to fund the venture or pay back investors, a warehouse growing operation must overcome some high cost and infrastructure hurdles. Even with cheap underused real estate near target markets, the initial capital needed to retrofit a warehouse to be farm-ready is enormous when compared to the more modest margins of the food business. First, the designing fees alone for a 5,000 ft2 warehouse farm system start at $300-500k, and that is before construction and perfecting of the farming system. Many warehouse farms essentially need to invent their own growing system. Next, the high cost of farm and automation equipment inflate initial capital inputs to levels that almost guarantee the need for outside investors. Then, a larger space means a larger environment to control and therefore a lot more energy to maintain perfect growing conditions. These high utility costs, combined with a very high start-up capital requirement end up drawing out the return on investment to a very unattractive length of time. Investors will go back into hiding.
rwood
what about light?
They normally use artificial light in indoor farming.
Storage container or warehouse, you’re still using electricity.
yup
Keto/carnivore, who needs vegetables. :)
Just finished a pan seared T-Bone. I de-boned it first, then cooked the filet for my wife and the New York strip for me.
The fact that each plant must be moved to a new container after each growth stage sounds very inefficient.
That’s a completely manual job with significant risk for plant damage.
What do they do in winter time?
You would flood each container with cold air every time you opened the doors to bring in or take out plants.
Living in a farming region, knowing the square footage required to raise common high demand grains makes the cost of vertical farming a loony lefty idea.
An acre of farm land is roughly a thousand dollars in my region, I’m guessing Iowa could be double that. This acre of land is for the most part naturally watered and lit by the sun. How much would one acre of indoor vertical space would be required to produce the same yield as an acre of real land? What would the cost of that structure be?
What about the cost of equipment needed to duplicate the required temperature and sun lighting? With conventional farming that is free.
What about the cost of the growing medium? What about the harvesting procedure, designing special equipment or human labor?
The left does not consider meat, which many of the worlds people do eat. Imagine vertical ranching.
This idea is about as dumb as that 8000 foot blimp some Euro whacko came up with inflated with hydrogen to haul freight.
...common high demand grains...
________________________________
Can grains (wheat/corn/barley/rye)be raised indoors?
I ask, because I have played around with home hydroponics units. I could successfully grow herbs, baby/micro greens/cherry tomatoes. It took electricity, fertilizers, a lot of work monitoring the liquid medium and changing it out regularly (made more so by my local hard water and the need to use distilled water). The largest units could accommodate plants about 12” high. The yields were low. Taste varied; the greens were acceptable, the tomatoes were meh.
I also spent a winter raising tomatoes in soil within a grow closet with multi-colored LED grow lights. Not that great, mainly because I have an old, cold house and needed supplemental heat.
Greens are fine, but lettuces, etc does not provide many calories or nutrients.
I agree: it’s far-fetched.
Good, productive crop land where I live (WI)is $4/k an acre.
I have done research at Iowa State University in biofuels. The ag researchers there told me corn could theoretically yield 1200! bushels per acre with enough nitrogen and CO2, such as could be done in a sealed environment. Amazing!
“Can grains (wheat/corn/barley/rye)be raised indoors?”
I’d say yes, but not as economically as done with conventional farming.
But the special needs you mentioned for your hobby farming would make it less than cost effective. Your indoor hobby farming is a great past time.
But lefties look at it like a plan to save the world, simply because they are not deep thinkers and always think needed monies will just crop up from tax revenue. A good case in point are the inefficient windmills cluttering our landscape.
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