Readit NewsGenerally tomatoes and maybe peppers have enough margin and volume to be justify indoor settings.
Things like nuts are a no-go or any sort of wheat/cotton/maize/soybean operation (even specialty applications like edamame have severe uphill battles to profitability)
When you say "indoor" are you describing large greenhouses? Or growing crops using artificial light?
So that when you hit the float pond for a 12-16 grow cycle, there's marginal loss.
Sun == free, rain == free
How does indoor ag plan on scaling up for anything other than super high margin vegetables and spices when their competitor (outdoor ag) has no cost associated with sun or rain? Not even to mention soil.
edit: I like indoor/vertical ag a lot (when applied correctly) When people try to propose producing things that have no chance of succeeding in our current Kardashev scale, it makes me think they are arguing in bad faith or with a fundamental lack of understanding of the problems faced in food production.
Vertical as it is today is an excellent nursery solution to feed growable plants into float ponds with little to no loss. As an independent production method, vertical isn't mathematically sustainable.
40% of fresh food is lost before it makes it to the end user (USDA data). The loss comes from a combo of unpredictable weather, timing issues where market prices dip below production costs at harvest time, and supply chain issues.
So it's a complicated math problem but it's important to consider in the suite of food security tools we look to.
Absent regen, we're likely to decimate soils over generations. If we flip totally to regen, we won't have enough land.
So a host of solutions is required.
That said it is not necessarily better to produce all crops in low density, high volatility, season dependent environments. Some material % of crops can move to more intelligent indoor settings where yields are higher, weather isn't a factor, and production yields can be scheduled without risk of weather impact. I'm actually a partner in one of these high volume operations in Montana (randomly). Uses less water, has zero soil impact, requires little to no chemical agents and is predictable.
What I hope will continue is crops that are capable of producing profitable and predictable yields in indoor environments will move more and more in that direction. This could serve to reduce soil stress and leave soil for crops that need more space (e.g. tubers) and livestock to aid in improving soil longevity.
Note this is not a plug for vertical farming. That's an entirely different mirage of financial engineering.
Proposals like these, while admirable, usually miss the mark and have little to no impact on housing availability because they fail to accept that housing development isn't just about zoning.
Impact fees, planning regs (traffic, parking, etc), planning delays, NIMBY fights, labor costs...these are all inputs into the question of whether a multifamily development makes economic sense for a developer.
There is a formula under which you can build market-rate and/or affordable housing (sometimes the same) and when that formula checks out, you see lots of development.
All of that has to work out to a cost per door and that cost has to be recouped in rents that pay for opex and debt. The fourplex in the article would cost $562,500/door. A very basic calc of the necessary rents would be $4,950.
California, particularly San Francisco, has pressures at every step of that formula. So if the Bay Area wants more housing, it has to be willing to look at the problem holistically.
- What role do planning review delays play in increasing the costs and perceived risk of acquiring a parcel and going through the process?
- What % of potential building sites are classified as historical properties?
- What are the parking, traffic impact and roadway requirements that multifamily traffic counts will have to mitigate/build for?
- What power do unions have to dictate building programs?
- Who can object to proposals?
This is a significant distinction. While I'm generally opposed to the majority of occupational licensing requirements but I can understand the function of regulating professional offerings.
So in both this case and the referenced Oregon case from another comment, the "charge" by the licensure body is that the individuals are using the term engineer while doing things that aren't "rendering the service of engineering for payment."
I am a reasonably decent electrician and feel confident fiddling with my own outlets. The electrician's body does not have the right to regulate that activity. Nor can it regulate my saying I'm a decent electrician.
It does, however, have the right to regulate my rendering those services to the public for payment (with some legal gray area around rendering it for free).
This is what makes this a first amendment case that seems justified.
EDIT: I do understand by using electrician as an example, I invite comments about how I might be breaking fire code or my home insurance covenants. That's correct but it's a different externalities problem.
Possibly related is that EU grocery margins are amongst the lowest in the world.
So, even if we had our own competing labels for some products, the manufacturers would never be left in the cold with unsold stock (if for example we chose to drop one brand or run a promotion for our own).
Most large grocers:
- Sell shelf location slots to the highest bidder.
- Include a consignment clause in their vendor agreements requiring vendors to take back spoiled, customer-damaged, and unsold inventory at X point or on-demand.
- Require merchandisers to keep inventory in-stock for as many products as they can get vendors to manage (e.g. the coke delivery person is in-store several days a week.)
The modern grocery store is effectively managed like a flea market and is allowed to do so because the chains have so much leverage.
So while we can take issue with Amazon’s practices, we have to remember that most of large-scale retail operates in ways that if written about to the level of Amazon, we’d also be griping about.
Each captured sales data and built private label alternatives to key brands on a regular basis. Small differentiator in the case of Costco is that they have a practice (though not a policy) of offering the leading vendor the opportunity to produce the private label before doing it themselves. But that’s a small detail.
Besides the fact that headlines about this get traction, there is a differentiator with Amazon in that they actively market themselves as a marketplace for small businesses in the way we’ve come to view Shopify. Costco and Walmart were always very clearly retailers...they buy stuff and sell stuff at a margin.
So while I think a lot of the blowup about this is overdone, there is a legitimate argument about the difference between how Amazon markets itself and what it does. But, frankly, for anyone with any level of experience with retailers or, frankly, tech platforms, this kind of capture behavior should be expected.
I'm mulling whether we have enough land (at 100% regen practices). I almost think we do.
From a system-level, we're over saturated because of ethanol and other things that realistically could disappear and society would be better off. Just need to recalibrate our acres a bit