07/05/2013

Vertical Farming Prices - Cost For Vertical Farming | What It Costs

Search

Business Fashion & Style Go Green Health Historical Hobbies Home & Garden Out There People Recreation Sports & Fitness Top Ten Travel Weddings

Home

Go Green

Cost For Vertical Farming

What It Costs For Vertical Farming

by Lisa Ellis and Vincent Zandri (4 Comments) ShareThis RSS Print

Related Articles
Residential Wind Turbine Energy Efficient Mortgage Buy Carbon Offsets Eco-Friendly Shoes

$80 million to $100 million

Energy Efficient Boiler

Adv ertisement

Suggestions
Send us your original ideas or help us improve our articles! Send

Further, growing food within cities would prevent the need to transport crops from distant farmlands to urban areas which would reduce the food transportation carbon footprint. Vertical farms would also incorporate valuable strategies to transform waste into resources. For instance, vertical farms would be designed to purify sewage into fresh water and to generate electricity using decomposed byproducts. Maximizing resources in this fashion would allow the farms to be self-sufficient and reduce their total carbon output.

Free Newsletter
Receive featured articles and more... Your email address Submit

3BHK Flats Bangalore-Bren

www.bren.com/FlatsPaddington 3BHK(1735Sqft)@ 91L on Sarjapur Rd. 300m from Total Mall. Call Now!

Adv ertisement

Potential Cost
Vertical farms may be just around the corner, literally, if you live in the city. So you may wonder what building one would cost. Thats a tricky question, since there arent any comparable projects to consider when compiling an estimate. But engineers are taking the guesswork out of the estimation process by using existing construction costs for skyscrapers to produce a viable cost estimation. The following is a basic cost estimation provided by the Columbia University think-tank that was involved in the conceptual creation of vertical farming: Sub-structure and electro-chromic glass shell - $25,000,000 1000 ton Geothermal HVAC - $2,500,000 400 ton chiller + cooling tower - $500,000 Biogas to fuel cell cogeneration facility - $11,000,000 800 kWh/day tracking photovoltaic array - $500,000 4,500 kW water-cooled lighting system - $2,000,000 Energy infrastructure and automation systems - $35,000,000 Living machine-based water recycling system - $500,000 Floating garden hydroponic system - $1,700,000 Office and laboratory facilities - $5,000,000

gogreen.whatitcosts.com/vertical-farm-pg2.htm

1/3

07/05/2013

Vertical Farming Prices - Cost For Vertical Farming | What It Costs

Total Building Cost for vertical farming is around $83.7 million Adding in the costs associated with annual operation and maintenance of a vertical farm, brings the total of this endeavor to over $100 million. While this may sound like an astronomical amount, it is could be worth the investment. Economists estimate that in about seven years, the profit in fresh produce alone could pay for the initial investment. In addition, the energy and water that a vertical farm would produce could not only sustain its own needs but also provide such important elements for others.

Final Thoughts
While the concept of building farms inside skyscrapers might today sound like a far-fetched idea, when the Earths population doubles and there is no more viable land to farm, planting vertical crops within city limits may one day become an obvious food production strategy.
ALSO ON WHAT IT COSTS AROUND THE WEB What's this?

What It Costs For A Caribbean Cruise 1 comment What It Costs For A House Swap 3 months ago What It Costs For Snow Removal 3 months ago What It Costs For Lasik Eye Surgery 3 months ago

The Average Salary of an Airline Stewardess eHow Comedian Face Off: Which One Do You Comedy Central The Hottest Gray Hair Color Trend 2013 Hair Color For Women Three Documents You Shouldn't Do Investopedia

4 comments Leave a message...

Share It ay Haz an
a year ago

13

Best

7 years? craziness. why build the uber best, when you can start with 100k$ simple invesment, and make your farm yield like 7 farms. some have yield of x13 the previous land. it's already very profitable today
3 1 bg95 Reply Share

Itay Hazan 3 months ago

first off, the whole point is for an eco friendly replacement for the current situation stupid. Its truely sad that the majority of people think like you in a capitalist way instead of trying to better the world. You and society need a reality check. We're on a crash course with nature buddy, by the way, economists predict that the global economy is doomed by 2060 due to the base on which it sits. Do aome research, the currencies of the world are exactly equal to debt owed. Soon enough all of you sheep will come to this realization that money and power aren't everything.
Reply Jonat han Cook Share
Itay Hazan 6 months ago

It's more a matter of centralization to

gogreen.whatitcosts.com/vertical-farm-pg2.htm 2/3

07/05/2013

Vertical Farming Prices - Cost For Vertical Farming | What It Costs

reduce transport cost. Vans are cheaper than freight.

Reply P et ar P os avec Share

8 months ago

Problem with society is that they are doing things 'cheap' or 'cost effective' which has 0 to do with resources or technological ability in doing something. For that matter, a 44 story, fully automated (no human labor needed) vertical farm on 1 acre, employing hydroponics, aquaponics and aeroponics would effectively produce enough food for 612480 people (over half a million). No need for soil, pesticides, chemicals, or gmo, and we can combine it with omega gardens that grow food up to 5x faster (resulting in equally more nutrient rich crops) via method of spinning the crops in a cillinder very slowly (around its own axis) - which forces them to fight against gravity. If it was done with superior synthetic materials (which we can produce in abundance) and design machinery to be upgrade-able, durable and easily recycled... we wouldn't have any issues. However... capitalism will NEVER employ such a thing. Its too efficient - therefore, 'expensive' (which again has nothing to do with resources or our ability in doing something technologically).
1 Reply Share

C o m m e n t fe e d

Su b s cri b e vi a e m a i l

Previous

| Page: 1

2 | Next

Home

Privacy Policy

Terms of Use

About Us

Contact

RSS

Copyright 2012 What It Costs, LLC. All rights reserved.

gogreen.whatitcosts.com/vertical-farm-pg2.htm

3/3