Why isn't vertical farming more widespread by now?

[Lord Shrek]

I helped my roommate with a college project where we built a vertical hydroponics system using a 2023 ZipGrow setup. We managed to grow kale, basil and butter lettuce pretty consistently but anything beyond leafy greens was a struggle. Tomatoes needed more light and space than we expected and the energy costs added up fast.

If vertical farming is supposed to be the future, why are we still limited to a handful of crops?

 

[RegUser]

Leafy greens are low-maintenance and fit tight vertical setups. Once you go into fruiting crops, you need more light, space, and sometimes hand pollination, which isn’t easy to automate.

 

[Lord Shrek]

Leafy greens are low-maintenance and fit tight vertical setups. Once you go into fruiting crops, you need more light, space, and sometimes hand pollination, which isn’t easy to automate.

Great point about the leap to fruiting crops and the need for hand pollination. It makes me wonder about the economics, because even within the easy category of leafy greens, we had challenges. Arugula was a bust for us, while basil and lettuce thrived. Is the real barrier that every crop, even similar ones, needs its own perfectly optimized system to be profitable?