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[Eagleon]

If you consider the amount of money an average city spends on importing produce (meaning each supermarket, each restaurant, and every food processing facility), the building might start paying for itself based on fuel costs alone, at some point. Factor in the actual profit from selling food to the supermarkets and restaurants - every single one, ideally, and there's no reason they wouldn't want to buy from you if your crops are always competitively priced and in season - and it starts looking a lot more attractive to investors.

There obviously has to be a lot of testing for yield, maintenance costs, logistics, etc. But I think that if you can find a supermarket in a downtown or close-to area (as in my home city), a building like this might be worth looking into. On the other hand, I think we'll see a shift back towards urban living as the suburban bubble shrinks, meaning farmland is going to become a lot cheaper. I don't think it will never happen, but I also don't think it will happen soon.

[Flare]

If you consider the amount of money an average city spends on importing produce (meaning each supermarket, each restaurant, and every food processing facility), the building might start paying for itself based on fuel costs alone, at some point.

That is a problem that isn't specific to the outdoor farms alone, arguably most farms ship their produce off to other parts of the world where the price is competitive, while ignoring the local demand simply because it isn't offering enough. This is likely going to happen with the vertical farms as well. Unless it's run with an altruistic motive, it's unlikely that they'll behave differently from normal farms.

Factor in the actual profit from selling food to the supermarkets and restaurants - every single one, ideally, and there's no reason they wouldn't want to buy from you if your crops are always competitively priced and in season - and it starts looking a lot more attractive to investors.

When a farm or farming group takes on investors it isn't likely that the farms would stick by the locals all that much afterward. There will always be businesses and markets abroad that will provide much more profit to a farm if they produce their desired raw materials. In fact, they may not always pay as much as the average supermarket or the restaurant, but they are seen as stable and sometimes even more lucrative markets than the local ones, even with transportation costs factored in. This is a very big reason why most farms export their produce elsewhere and only marginal amount stays within the same local area.

There obviously has to be a lot of testing for yield, maintenance costs, logistics, etc. But I think that if you can find a supermarket in a downtown or close-to area (as in my home city), a building like this might be worth looking into. On the other hand, I think we'll see a shift back towards urban living as the suburban bubble shrinks, meaning farmland is going to become a lot cheaper. I don't think it will never happen, but I also don't think it will happen soon.

Depending on how much transportation will cost in the future when oil is on the decline, this may be a good reason. Assuming present levels of freight cost, it doesn't seem to be that much of a incentive to do so though. Unless this wasn't run as a business, it's unlikely that the farms will supply the majority of its produce to local markets rather than shipping them abroad or to corporations.

[Eagleon]

Another very big reason why farms export their produce is seasonal shifts. Hydroponics avoids that issue at the expense of whatever is required to maintain a suitable climate for the produce. If that can be made cheap enough, the incentive shifts towards providing a larger variety of foods to regional market, rather than the heavy specialization we see now.

Of course, the other thing we could see from this is a temporary slash in "labor costs" in foreign plantations (not that they aren't already abysmal to work in), bringing down the price of imported produce. Not nice to think about, but they're going to hold on with tooth, nail, and whip if they have to.

[PTTG??]

"Conventional" farming uses absurd amounts of energy, generally from oil derivatives. The farmlands that are worked by this are extremely sensitive to disease and parasites, unlike small farms where biodiversity means that only a small locality will suffer from a blight. In animal farms, the huge quantity of antibiotics drives the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Not to mention the quantity of hormones, including ones that can effect humans.

The solution is not to throw away modern technology, but to take the parts of classical or traditional farming that work.

For one thing, farms need to be more distributed. They need to have more varied crops. Crop rotation has become a lost art, replaced with tons of petroleum fertilizers. We need smaller, more independent farms. Farm subsidies need to be annihilated.

[Sowelu]

Farm subsidies need to be annihilated.

So we agree!  But...it has to be done in good time, once we've got systems phased in to keep the price of food from rising too high.

Even in our modern economy, not that many people go hungry simply because food is too expensive.  You might have to eat quite poorly, but it's not completely unavailable to the poor or anything.  It can be rough but doable.  Double or triple the price of staple foods and...well, yeah.

[Nadaka]

One of the problems with just eliminating farm subsidies is that it is an automatic loosing condition for everyone that isn't a non crop rotating, over fertilizing, hormone induced growth, monsanto genetically engineered, fragile monoculture, industrialized farming corporate conglomerate.

If you want to end subsidies in a way that doesn't utterly destroy natural local smaller scale farming, you have to heavily regulate or break up the big farm corporations first.

[Sowelu]

Farm economics are pretty complicated.

Remember, they pay some farmers NOT to grow food.  This is because if they did grow food, the prices would plummet, and other farmers would go out of business.  Then abundance drops, food returns to the original price, but now you have less abundance and more vulnerability...

So there's a lot of systems that need to be fixed there.  You need to increase abundance without devaluing the food.  Subsidies are how we do that right now:  The government says "We think that food is important, so even though you don't make enough money to make a living selling it, we want you to keep doing it anyway; here's cash".

In a way, it's kind of like social security for everyone.  If the government wasn't subsidizing farms, the price would be higher, so it's a lot like giving everyone food stamps in a way; prices are artificially deflated because it would suck if they weren't.

So maybe ending subsidies isn't the way to go after all.

[PTTG??]

Perhaps I overstated myself. I wouldn't mind comfortable subsidies for healthy food, but on the other hand, the US has a serious glut of cheese- you may have heard of government cheese giveaways- because cheese subsidies are so high. If cheese subsidies dropped, the demand for milk would also fall, particularly for bulk milk and milk products, unevenly effecting the factory farms more than organic ones.

You have changed my mind, though. Now that you put it that way, some subsidies are necessary.

[Levi]

I was reading my local newspaper today at lunch and found this article:  http://www.metronews.ca/vancouver/local/article/1048919--urban-gardening-on-a-grand-scale

Its not quite technically vertical farming, but its getting closer!   They are expecting to grow 92 tonnes of Lettuce per year, and because it is local there will be a lot less pollution from transportation.  Pretty neat. 

If this succeeds I wouldn't be surprised if these start cropping up all over the place. 

[10ebbor10]

Fun fact:  In some cases, biological farms are more dangerous to the environnement than industry farms. A correct managed industrial farm needs far less ground to produce the same of food(But you do get monoculture problems).
Vertical farming looks promising. You can also use it for other things like muchroom farms or aquaria. There have been tests(non vertical) were they watered/ fed tomatoe plants with a build in aquarium. That was in a greenhouse though. Also, you could use this for algae to (Biofuels).
Vertical farming has these benefits:
-Waterfriendly
-Not much transport needed
- Energy friendly( Harvesting is easy, no need for spraying to much pesticides,no lightning  if you plant the right plants/ use aquariums on the lower levels to filter the water)
-Safer(No weather damage)

On the rooftops things:
Mostly irrelevant but studies have shown that in warm areas(like Texas and stuff) painting the roof white and upgrading the isolation can decrease power use (in the summer) with 60%. Painting most of the house white(or some kind of superreflective paint) can reduce temperatures with 1 to 2.5 Kelvin.

[PTTG??]

Instead of building farms up, why don't we just build all our normal structures underground instead?

Then we can have a bunch of farmland or parks or whatever!

And we are DF fans, after all, right?

I'd love this, but I think in most places its really expensive to dig big holes.

The price per cubic foot of underground space is actually quite close to aboveground space. When you add that temperature regulation becomes quite easy, then you realize that it's mainly a psychological thing.

I'd like to see a large mall with a downward spiral that is juuust imperceptible over short distances. The inside of the spiral would be open, making the place airy despite being underground.

[PyroDesu]

Instead of building farms up, why don't we just build all our normal structures underground instead?

Then we can have a bunch of farmland or parks or whatever!

And we are DF fans, after all, right?

I'd love this, but I think in most places its really expensive to dig big holes.

The price per cubic foot of underground space is actually quite close to aboveground space. When you add that temperature regulation becomes quite easy, then you realize that it's mainly a psychological thing.

I'd like to see a large mall with a downward spiral that is juuust imperceptible over short distances. The inside of the spiral would be open, making the place airy despite being underground.

I do remember one place in DC, where there was a part of a building below ground, all open and airy. It was actually quite nice.

Also, hydroponic lettuce: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shh1cqVv5A8

[Trapezohedron]

Nice idea, but if it's going to be done this way, there should be a lot of space, since soil needs to rest after a while of being used.

[EveryZig]

Farm economics are pretty complicated.

Remember, they pay some farmers NOT to grow food.  This is because if they did grow food, the prices would plummet, and other farmers would go out of business.  Then abundance drops, food returns to the original price, but now you have less abundance and more vulnerability...

Farmers are being payed not to grow food in a world where starvation is still a major issue.
...Yet there are legitimate economic reasons as to why you can't just do the seemingly obvious thing.

Things like that are why I loathe economic systems.

[optimumtact]

One of the problems with just eliminating farm subsidies is that it is an automatic loosing condition for everyone that isn't a non crop rotating, over fertilizing, hormone induced growth, monsanto genetically engineered, fragile monoculture, industrialized farming corporate conglomerate.

If you want to end subsidies in a way that doesn't utterly destroy natural local smaller scale farming, you have to heavily regulate or break up the big farm corporations first.

I don't think this is an entirely accurate assumption, there is evidence that a radical cut in subsidies can work, it was done in New Zealand which has a far higher reliance on farming than America (economically speaking).

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/02/business/worldbusiness/02farm.html
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3411

Of course the situation is different, but I still think the lessons are relevant. I think the biggest difference comes from the reliance on Grain you guys have, due to not being able to grass feed all year round. Which is definitely going to be one of the biggest hurdles to cross.