The Costs of Vertical Farms

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

Rob Laing is a farmer in New York City. That’s right: in the city itself. He’s part of a growing vertical farming movement that produces hyper local herbs and leafy greens for chefs and consumers.

Laing… “By agricultural standards, it is tiny. We have one small farm in Tribeca, which is about 1200 square foot. That's not acres, that's square feet. And we have a farm in Brooklyn, which the whole facility is about 10,000 square feet, and we've built out about a quarter of that.”

Laing is raising money for his farming company Farm.One to build more of these vertical farms which are equipped with mobile racks, vertical shelves, LED lights, hydroponics and climate control.

Laing… “We're trying to build them at relatively low cost. We have automation where it makes sense, but we don't have kind of fully automated racking systems and things like that. And so we are spending a few hundred dollars per square foot to build one of those farms. For comparison, some of the folks who are building the very large farms, which have a lot of automation. They might be spending a thousand dollars per square foot or more. And so these are quite expensive facilities to get up and running. But of course you're getting the advantage of a year round growing environment, (and) all this other things.”

Farm.One’s crowdfunding campaign can be found on the WeFunder platform and targets investors interested in the vertical farming industry.