7 Biggest DISADVANTAGES of Vertical Farming

In this video you will learn about the biggest DISADVANTAGES of vertical farming.

Vertical farming is a subcategory of hydroponic farming where plants are not only grown without any soil but more importantly, where plants are grown upwards using vertical growth layers. While vertical farming has shown a lot of promise as the next revolution in sustainable food production, it is still far from being perfect. Thus, in this video you will learn about the 7 biggest disadvantages of vertical farming.

The 7 biggest disadvantages of vertical farming:
0:00 High startup costs
1:15 Limited number of plants
2:58 Unsuitable for tall field crops
4:23 Highly reliant on technology
6:18 High energy consumption
7:37 Need for a highly educated workforce
8:51 Lack of people with prior experience in the field

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#hydroponics #verticalfarming #arcticfarming

[connorferguson]

many of these disadvantages seem more like challenges we've yet to make trivial, it is always good to know what limits the tech is currently experiencing

[NirvanaFan]

Good thing is that most of those disadvantages will be reduced over time: experienced workers, reliable and robust systems, and esp energy costs. That said, I didn't realize just how much farmland is used for wheat and corn and how it totally dwarfs almost every other type of produce. I do expect that corn farming will be reduced over time as more people use fake-meat products (a HUGE percentage of our corn is used for animal feed), but not sure how much of a dent that would make. However, to whatever extent we can grow other veggies vertically, that frees up farmland for wheat and such. Also, I expect that we'll genetically tweak our produce to make it easier to grow in vertical setups. Whether we'll be able to grow corn etc vertically, on an economically feasible scale, remains to be seen - though I did see that china/japan? did an experiment with growing rice in sorta-vertical system.

[huaweiphone]

Thanks for doing this video. You covered areas that others are shy to talk about.

[yearofthegarden]

I've been following hydroponics for over two decades, and we are closer than ever to it being wide spread. I don't believe it is going to take off on large scale companies, but it will be most suited for small home operations, and will be come into it's true light when research is done to recycle waste flows through bugs and fungi, to turn waste into liquid fertilizer and back into plants. Also GMO's are going to be a huge game changer for hydroponics, the same way Golden Rice helped feed the world, I think Golden Rice V2 is going to allow for viable hydroponic productions.

Subscribed to your channel, I've been farming for over a decade and have seen the trends come, from kale, to mushrooms, and now it's hydroponic's turn.

[MistyBlueMoon]

This was the channel I have been searching for . Really want to know as much as about vertical farming.

[dannyslea]

I was expecting this video to be made by some green technology hater and I was surprised that these disadvantages all make sense and it was made by someone with a lot of knowledge in the field. good video

[alexrossouw]

It's rare to find a healthy skepticism of vertical farming on the internet.

[DarkOracleOfDeath]

I think tall crops like wheat will become viable relatively soon. I suppose the reason it evolved to be tall is to be closer to the sun, but in a controlled environment it can have all the light it needs and also having tools as CRISPR available to us it's a matter of time before we'll have short wheat.

[joeae]

Most of these disadvantages are linked pr tied to the geographical location of the vertical farm. In mild /tropical climate regions like African cities you can have an "outdoor vertical farm" and achieve a good yield, and eliminate most of the energy expenditure..

[huubjoanfranssen]

The points you give are valid. But would add a few more points.

1. Competition from “regular” glass greenhouses. They apply many of the same technologies, but on a economic scale. Beside that they have proven to be reliable producers.
2. There are very few city centers that are not within 2 to 3 hour drive of farmland. Where it is cheaper to produce.
3. Transport, even do you reduce the transport time/cost to the user. You have a increased time/cost of transport of employees and/or living cost.
4. Housing cost. When old factories/inner city buildings are being used, the adaption cost are high. In many cases it is best to build a custom facility. The building is part of the overall farm system (same as with glass greenhouses).

I believe it has a future, but the hurdles are still very big.

To often people compare it with regular farming while the modern Horticulture has moved into glass greenhouses. Kg/m2 per crop is already very high.

When it comes to technology, to many Vertical farms seem to be trying to reinvent the wheel.

There are many suppliers whom are already active. Priva, Hoogendoorn, Certhon, Kubo, Fluence, Hortilux, etc etc.

[CasperLabuschagne]

The largest obstacle to vertical farming is the considerable capital outlay necessitating a price that will deliver a return on investment. I am experimenting with a fodder-production system in a 6m x 3m tunnel using trays placed on an elevated platform using natural light as an alternate to a massively expensive system. After germinating the fodder trays in a dark cabinet they are placed in rows on either side of the tunnel fitting seven or eight trays to a side. Every day a new tray is added to either side while the eighth and most mature tray is removed as fodder. This produces two trays of fodder per day using a single tunnel which is perfect for a hobby-farm where the fodder is a supplemental feed. There is also an automatic sprinkler system keeping the trays moist. The downside is that there is a three to four month period in winter when growth is slowed down due to lower temperatures.

[peterlane]

You can grow ANYTHING using vertical farming methods, from micro greens to trees, fish to sheep and cattle, whether it is economically viable is another matter and what might not work in one place might work in another.
Every project is different and you can not compare a VF set up in New York to a VF in Delhi or Timbuctoo.
Different costs, revenues, and resource availability.

[limbodog]

So. We need a big campaign of breeding wheat/corn/soy etc. to be micro-sized. We need vertical-farms to have water towers with gravity feed if the power cuts. And ideally, you'd build a vertical farm on the sunny side of a building which would have mixed use (say, an office) so you can take advantage of the sunlight.

[The_Eno]

What an absolute gem of a channel. Does the main speaker in these videos answer the questions or is it a marketing manager?

[OMEGA_Hydroponics_]

This channel will be another of the multiples others I will view for sustainable farming.

[mrgmrg]

Good information bro, nice channel, subed

[shijotg]

What’s your thought on the dehumidification. Doesn’t the HVAC use more power for the dehumidification.

[newlandmediasevicesaustral]

Built in some system redundancy, invest in solar power and battery storage system as an initial CAPEX investment ... these wont be issues but something needs to be optimised

[jonwebb]

Curious if geothermal greenhouses can improve the energy cost and sustainability aspect of vertical charming.

[iamrightyouarewrong]

Dude, you mentioned like 2 or 3 minor problems which in my opinion arent even real problems but rather stages of a growing industry. So more than half of the "problems" being addressed in the video are related to economics, some might as well would have just easily summarized it as one "problem" and not repeated themselves over and over again. The other "problem" was about the high consumption and vulnerability of the technology used by those vertical farms. In todays world this of course is a problem, not just in vertical farming, but all around the world and I wouldnt even say autonomic technology always needs to be part of something like this. Agricultural machines for the indoors could be developed, so that in case the automatic system fails you can manually water, ligth and harvest plants. After a few years experienced personel wont be an issue no more, time will solve this. And you also said big crops or else couldnt be grown in such a limited space, but there are multiple approaches to farming vertically and not just growing something on the wall or layered, on top of each other. Maybe the video could've been a comparison to usual farming, in order to show how bad or good this is and why vertical farming would be better in this case but wouldnt work well compared to normal farming here, because blabla