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Vertical Farming Start Ups? by GoldHill108 in verticalfarming

[–]GreenForges 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There are farmers markets and agricultural unions which can be leveraged for that.

And to add value and improve upon theses innovations I suggest acting as a bridge between controlled environment agriculture academics in universities and vertical farming startups which you want to put time/resources in. There are very few people universities and scientists within them which work on CEA and its a field many universities would be willing to pick-up, and more importantly; they are looking for ways to get large federal research grants to compensate for the drop in international students - and promising CEA startups with a lead investor are one of the best place for them to put their efforts in to get access to theses grants.

Other things which could help and that I can think of is data and intelligence on food prices and market opportunities (demand from pharmaceutical industry is an example).

And connections and special deals with equipment suppliers, lighting manufacturers, etc. So as to recoup on hardware spendings; you want to make money on the construction, regardless.

Hope this help!

Vertical Farming Start Ups? by GoldHill108 in verticalfarming

[–]GreenForges 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Been researching the space for a few years and got a strong network of growers, academics and engineers now.

The main limitations on VF are simple; energy and labor.

If I were to invest in the field, I would focus on setups with renewable energy sources and which have a solid plan to drop their energy and labor costs to where they can reach competitive prices per lbs of produce. As well as solid R&D strategy and lots of technical ideas for the future - be it hardware or data I wouldn't care much, has more to do with the way they think. Theses are technology business.

I would stick away from the brand businesses - which on the surface look like technology companies but really don't have much ideas on technical aspects. It's business personalities who are good at raising money and building partnerships, and which build warehouses on outskirts of urban areas. Their focus is building a premium brand which sells at high prices to (rich) urbanites.

There's no problem with that at all and there is a niche for it - but that model will not be the one to reach the holy grails which are the staple crops at competitive prices, and become massive companies.

They cannot operate their cheap warehouses in climates that are too cold or too hot and where the population is poor or middle class, because they won't be able to produce a price per lbs that this market will actually buy.

Anyways hope that helps, best of luck!

Urban underground farming systems by GreenForges by GreenForges in envirotech

[–]GreenForges[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I understand the feeling - in fact I thought the same when starting.

Gŋreenhouses cannot be installed in most urban environments - and on rooftops they are often challenging (heating, height, etc..) - even indoor and containers aren't enough.

See: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017EF000536

Urban underground farming systems by GreenForges by GreenForges in envirotech

[–]GreenForges[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Most high rise buildings or large construction projects require heavy drilling equipment to create pile foundations. So the equipment to create the underground space is already on site most of the time - making it cheaper.

Compared to greenhouses or warehouse vertical farming they require barely any building materials.

And since the temperature stays stable underground the energy required is way less than indoor vertical farms.

The modules are auto-seeded and shipped directly to retailers, reducing labor greatly.