<story><title>Infarm wants to put a farm in every grocery store</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/26/infarm/?ncid=rss&amp;utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nom</author><text>I had to blink twice after reading &amp;quot;heads of lettuce for $3&amp;quot;, then I googled &amp;quot;US fresh produce price&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Wow. Indoor farming actually makes sense in the US market.&lt;p&gt;Edit: yes, I&amp;#x27;m from Europe, obviously. And now I&amp;#x27;m sad :&amp;#x2F;</text></item><item><author>condiment</author><text>Real estate is cheap, power is cheap, personnel are cheap, equipment is cheap.&lt;p&gt;A few years ago I was pursuing aquaponics as a hobby over the summer. It was clear then that economies of scale were rapidly driving down the costs of indoor horticulture. My aquaponics project failed, but the basic economics of grocery-attached farms make a lot of sense. I built a business model to determine the economics of running a farm in a shipping container that could be deployed to an underutilized Whole Foods parking lot.&lt;p&gt;The model accounted for a 81m3 shipping container being filled top-to-bottom with fruiting plants, like tomatoes, but it&amp;#x27;s easily adjustable to other plants, like lettuces. The model is pretty sensitive to things like the productive life of the plant, lead time to productivity, and sale price.&lt;p&gt;Selling heads of lettuce for $3 each yields around $6000&amp;#x2F;yr in gross revenue per container per year.&lt;p&gt;This was $17k net less $720 in labor, $6k in equipment, $3k in real estate and $1k in electricity. Lots of room for optimizations that could push this business over the $1B mark.&lt;p&gt;The model, in case anyone&amp;#x27;s interested:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;docs.google.com&amp;#x2F;spreadsheets&amp;#x2F;d&amp;#x2F;1DkjOIs7hXyxIiN_iWXK0M21Rjd4L0lTCTHaolR8LwTs&amp;#x2F;edit?usp=sharing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;docs.google.com&amp;#x2F;spreadsheets&amp;#x2F;d&amp;#x2F;1DkjOIs7hXyxIiN_iWXK0...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>peterjlee</author><text>This may work for a few Whole Foods customers who pay $5 for a bottle of herb infused water but I wonder if the cost is going to be reasonable enough for most people. Real estate cost alone may trump every other cost savings. Even if that &amp;quot;farm&amp;quot; can produce 10x more per square foot from vertical farming, the real estate cost of a grocery store in a city is a lot more expensive than a farmland in the middle of no where.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gabrielcsapo</author><text>In America we are not locally self sufficient. California is a large producer of fruit and vegetables for most of the year. We used to be focused on small towns that could be self sufficient now we just accept getting packaged garbage and the price we pay for it.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s why we have people eating mcdonalds everyday.</text></comment>
<story><title>Infarm wants to put a farm in every grocery store</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/26/infarm/?ncid=rss&amp;utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nom</author><text>I had to blink twice after reading &amp;quot;heads of lettuce for $3&amp;quot;, then I googled &amp;quot;US fresh produce price&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Wow. Indoor farming actually makes sense in the US market.&lt;p&gt;Edit: yes, I&amp;#x27;m from Europe, obviously. And now I&amp;#x27;m sad :&amp;#x2F;</text></item><item><author>condiment</author><text>Real estate is cheap, power is cheap, personnel are cheap, equipment is cheap.&lt;p&gt;A few years ago I was pursuing aquaponics as a hobby over the summer. It was clear then that economies of scale were rapidly driving down the costs of indoor horticulture. My aquaponics project failed, but the basic economics of grocery-attached farms make a lot of sense. I built a business model to determine the economics of running a farm in a shipping container that could be deployed to an underutilized Whole Foods parking lot.&lt;p&gt;The model accounted for a 81m3 shipping container being filled top-to-bottom with fruiting plants, like tomatoes, but it&amp;#x27;s easily adjustable to other plants, like lettuces. The model is pretty sensitive to things like the productive life of the plant, lead time to productivity, and sale price.&lt;p&gt;Selling heads of lettuce for $3 each yields around $6000&amp;#x2F;yr in gross revenue per container per year.&lt;p&gt;This was $17k net less $720 in labor, $6k in equipment, $3k in real estate and $1k in electricity. Lots of room for optimizations that could push this business over the $1B mark.&lt;p&gt;The model, in case anyone&amp;#x27;s interested:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;docs.google.com&amp;#x2F;spreadsheets&amp;#x2F;d&amp;#x2F;1DkjOIs7hXyxIiN_iWXK0M21Rjd4L0lTCTHaolR8LwTs&amp;#x2F;edit?usp=sharing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;docs.google.com&amp;#x2F;spreadsheets&amp;#x2F;d&amp;#x2F;1DkjOIs7hXyxIiN_iWXK0...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>peterjlee</author><text>This may work for a few Whole Foods customers who pay $5 for a bottle of herb infused water but I wonder if the cost is going to be reasonable enough for most people. Real estate cost alone may trump every other cost savings. Even if that &amp;quot;farm&amp;quot; can produce 10x more per square foot from vertical farming, the real estate cost of a grocery store in a city is a lot more expensive than a farmland in the middle of no where.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>slackingoff2017</author><text>Not sure where you got that price, a head of lettuce is less that a dollar here in the Midwest US</text></comment>