b'When it comes to indoor farming, Stein says its important to keep your eye on metrics to develop the best possible practices.PHOTO: ERIC STEINoffer price stability on long-term contractsciency for production, Pennington says. the size of the farm, Stein says.because they are resilient to climate changeUnfold sees value in traits such as uni- Sustainability is also important, as well and water supply issues, Stein says. form stem length, which can help auto- as the right kind of financial base. mate harvests. We can commit to using renew-Evolving Economics and SustainableAnd Stein believes there is a lot ofable energy, but renewable energy is not Investments room for improvement with the systemsalways less expensive, Nothmann says. Success is based on unit economics andas well. Stein says there were a lot of Silicon efficiency. Yield per kilowatt hour is theDesign is really critical. I dont think aValley-type promises in the early days, but big number vertical growers are focusedlot of indoor vertical farms are designedthats just not going to be a reality. on, but Stein says many growers keepcorrectly to really minimize those costs,You arent going to become a bil-their operations proprietary making ithe says.lionaire doing vertical farming, but when hard to develop industry best practices.Lighting efficiency continues todone correctly, they can produce healthy Metrics, metrics, metrics, he says. Ifimprove, but costs are still significant.15-20% return, he says.we want to meet these challenges, weThe reality is that you have to createStein expects the next few years to see need more collaboration and shared infor- an indoor facility using artificial lightingmore industry shakeout. Some investors mation around water per pound, energyand that requires a fair amount of capitalwho have been involved are getting inpa-per pound and kilowatt hours per pound. expenditure, Nothmann says.tient so I think well see some consolida-Efficiency also relies on the right plants.LEDs are very efficient but you still needtion and more closures, he says. As growers move to products thata lot of them. You cant fool plants. WereHowever, there is still a lot of potential. have better disease resistances and bettertalking tens or hundreds of thousands ofThere are huge opportunities in cities yields, this will help to create more effi- dollars a year in energy costs depending onlike Philadelphia and Detroit where we can 42/ SEEDWORLD.COMFEBRUARY 2023'