Indoor Growing now Profitable?

AJ Drew

AJ Drew

I am sure a great many readers remember that the DEA once said there is no profitable indoor crop that is legal.  I am sure they were talking about the expense of lighting the grow room.  I do start indoors and it is profitable, but have had a hard time believing you could grow anything from start to finish under lights and turn a profit.  Well, it seems it is now profitable.

From what I can tell from this article, the grow is entirely indoors and looks to be under lights.  They have eliminated labor expense by going to a fully robotic system.  Although not up and running, I gotta figure they have thought it out and believe the indoor grow can be profitable even though they are growing a very low dollar crop of lettuce.

It seems like indoor growing is becoming more viable all the time.  I wonder where the business of food production will take us next.

http://gardengatewin.com/tech2.html
 
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Justosmo said:
Indoor multilevel farming is the future.
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no it isnt.
 
every time i see this hallucinatory collectivist agrarian fantasy on blogs and fucking the discovery channel, i want to crush a hamster with a brick.
we are all supposed to move back from the suburbs into the city centers and feed our selves with "locally" sourced food and ride high speed trains instead of airplanes and cars. how idiotic is this stupid shit. 
 
the whole skyscraper greenhouse thing is a moronic masturbatory city planners  fantasy.  so are green roofs. do you know how much the detailing alone is for a "green" roof? were talking about like an additional 5 bucks a square foot over a traditional bitimun roofing system.
 
why in the fuck would you ever convert the most expensive land( inner city buisness districts) into something that makes FAR less money? because it "feels" good. nothing more.
 
there is no reason why you cant transport food from agricultural centers, into distribution centers, and then out to retail centers. it makes 0 sense to do this inside a city where land costs and opportunity costs are so high.
 
you cant build these thigns away from cities either because that makes even less sense when land costs drop.
 
tall steel buildings are some of the most expensive and difficult things to build. the glass alone is ball shatteringly expensive. the geotechnical work  is insane. the concrete and steel required is insane. a single building integrated elvator system is going to be a few million dollars alone, and the heating and cooling costs are going to be outrageous. 
 
the ONLY REASON tall steel buildings like skyscrapers exist... THE ONLY REASON... is because commercial office space is so valuable.
 
i fucking hate so many architects and the cityscape architects and the urban development  bike lane and "green space" people. they can all fuck them selves, they know nothing about the day to day requirements and logistics of dense population centers. if you poll 100 interior city dwellers, 99 of them will bitch about parking and traffic issues, not whether or not they have a good place close by for their dogs to piss.  living inside a dense city is all about hustling and making money. if you want to raise a family and have nice activities and walking trails to move to the fucking suburbs.
 
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indoor growing will never happen. there is SO MUCH slack in the existing agricultural methods that can be taken up before that ever happens. there is alot of  land that is available for agricultural uses. there is a fucking shit load of good famable land that is being used for beef atm that could be put under the plow. there is even a larger amount of farm land being used to grow food to feed the cattle.
 
fuck man alot of farmers are not even irrigating. they are just throwing hay seed or some winter rye or alfalfa down and seeing what happens.  alot of orchards and vinyards are not even on drip irrigation yet.
 
GMO agriculture is in its infancy still.
 
remote sensing equipment is JUST getting started... drones, remote lysimeters, soil water tension meters(tensiometers), fertigation systems, etc. there is SO much more slack in our agricultural methods than anyone ever imagines. its just not worth doing for the most part because food is still cheap, and costs are still low. 
 
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queequeg152 said:
no it isnt.
 
every time i see this hallucinatory collectivist agrarian fantasy on blogs and f**king the discovery channel, i want to crush a hamster with a brick.
we are all supposed to move back from the suburbs into the city centers and feed our selves with "locally" sourced food and ride high speed trains instead of airplanes and cars. how idiotic is this stupid shit. 
 
the whole skyscraper greenhouse thing is a moronic masturbatory city planners  fantasy.  so are green roofs. do you know how much the detailing alone is for a "green" roof? were talking about like an additional 5 bucks a square foot over a traditional bitimun roofing system.
 
why in the f**k would you ever convert the most expensive land( inner city buisness districts) into something that makes FAR less money? because it "feels" good. nothing more.
 
there is no reason why you cant transport food from agricultural centers, into distribution centers, and then out to retail centers. it makes 0 sense to do this inside a city where land costs and opportunity costs are so high.
 
you cant build these thigns away from cities either because that makes even less sense when land costs drop.
 
tall steel buildings are some of the most expensive and difficult things to build. the glass alone is ball shatteringly expensive. the geotechnical work  is insane. the concrete and steel required is insane. a single building integrated elvator system is going to be a few million dollars alone, and the heating and cooling costs are going to be outrageous. 
 
the ONLY REASON tall steel buildings like skyscrapers exist... THE ONLY REASON... is because commercial office space is so valuable.
 
i f**king hate so many architects and the cityscape architects and the urban development  bike lane and "green space" people. they can all f**k them selves, they know nothing about the day to day requirements and logistics of dense population centers. if you poll 100 interior city dwellers, 99 of them will bitch about parking and traffic issues, not whether or not they have a good place close by for their dogs to piss.  living inside a dense city is all about hustling and making money. if you want to raise a family and have nice activities and walking trails to move to the f**king suburbs.
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Future as in five years on earth? No. Future as in 40 years when we are on Mars. Yes sir.
 
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Quee, I am not saying indoor growing is the future of agriculture but it certainly is not the impossible thing that many portray it as.  Like I said and linked to, there is a Japanese company that plants to be producing 50K head of lettuce in the next couple years and it looks like they are indoor hydroponic and robots.  

My guess is being indoors lets them control and maintain the robotics easier.  The only thing I do not understand is why not have a glass or plastic roof.  I can not really tell from the pictures, just kind of looks like it is under lights.

Here is a commercial effort in the UK that is 100% artificial lights.  It is in a former bomb shelter left over from WWII. I do not know if it is economically possible, but people seem to think so enough to put their money into it.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2548589/Subterranean-kitchen-garden-created-WW2-bomb-shelter-Northern-Line.html
 
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well, I was gonna post that it is profitable to indoor grow certain crops in WA and CO....  but never mind~
 
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even cannabis will go out doors... its inevetable. growing indoors is an artifact of its illegality, nothing more.

granted i dont know what the breeding situation is right now for outdoor cannabis... but i can tell you that indoor grown simply will not be able to compete with something grown outdoors in a heated greenhouse for 1/3rd the cost.
 
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The only growing indoors I do is starting seeds. I overwinter root stock and bulbs but that's more of a dormant state than growing. There might be a profit with lettuce because of its fast maturity rate and that all parts are edible(no waste) but most crops are not like that. No matter how effective indoor growing get I dought it will ever become profitable to grow watermelon or corn.

Sorry Salsalady if i got a little off topic
 
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Washington Sun Grown cannabis (full outdoor grow) is claiming top tier prices.  They are positioning themselves as niche wine makers have in the past.  I'm not a grower or partaker of the cannabis crop, merely an observer.  But there are also full indoor grows that are raking in bucks.  They can grow 12 months, no season, for the additional costs of the artificial environment.  Or...work with nature and harvest 10' tall plants 2x a year (depending on the location...) 
 
This does not help with the prospect of growin lettuce indoors. 
 
Growing indoors can be profitable, if it's the right crop.  At some point the person has to call it and say It's not worth it.
 
 
 
Edit-:lol:  robbyjoe, we're all a littel off topics here.  :)  
 
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Looking at huge commercial green houses, many do supplement lighting.  Makes me wonder why the indoor efforts do not have plastic roofs and do much the same.

queequeg152 said:
granted i dont know what the breeding situation is right now for outdoor cannabis... but i can tell you that indoor grown simply will not be able to compete with something grown outdoors in a heated greenhouse for 1/3rd the cost.
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So like me, you think it is likely cheaper to provide the heat than the sun?  Hoping to go that route next spring for starts.  Not scrap indoor, but do both and compare.  I am just now moving things outdoors and my electric is over $600.00 / month.  Has to be a better way.
 
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robbyjoe01 said:
Also not only natural gas is cheaper that electric but i believe gas puts off CO2 thus an added benefit for plants.
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yea it does, but its not as straight forward as co2 = higher yields or more growth. you kinda have to control the whole environment for co2 to make sens.e
 
i think you need warmer temps in general, and more nutrients available for uptake. the co2 may not make any difference in his greenhouse.
 
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