World's largest vertical strawberry farm opens in Jersey City:
Damn, that's sweet: Controlled environment agriculture company Oishii has opened the world's largest vertical strawberry farm at the old Anheuser-Busch factory in Jersey City, growing strawberries five rows deep in the retrofitted 74,000-square-foot facility.
The expanded growing capacity will allow the company to decrease the sticker shock on its berries, which until May 18 sold for $50 per 11-pack of medium berries at high-end grocery stores like Van Hook Cheese & Grocery in Jersey City and Montclair. As of May 19, the 11-pack price has dropped to $20, with six-berry trays at $11 and three-berry trays at $6 also available.
Making the berries more affordable was "the whole purpose" of expanding operations and focusing on efficiencies, Oishii co-founder and CEO Hiroki Koga said.
[...] "Now, it's just a matter of how quickly can we deploy these farms across the world," said Koga.
[...] The new facility won't fulfill demand for Oishii's products, and Koga said both New York metro-area farms and farms in other cities are coming down the pike. New produce is on its way, too, specifically tomatoes and melons.
Do you think this scales well and can eventually supply produce at a reasonable price, or will this always serve the niche $2/berry crowd?
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday May 27 2022, @06:21PM (9 children)
> Do you think this scales well and can eventually supply produce at a reasonable price, or will this always serve the niche $2/berry crowd?
Needs a lot more scaling. This is ridiculously overpriced. For two or three of their strawberries I get like 0,5-1,0kg of normal strawberries, depending on season etc. With their claim of how much water and energy is saved it's hard to know what is so expensive here. Also considering they should be able to create optimal growing conditions their yields should be massive, plentiful and often and there should rarely if ever be any bad berries.
Something is costing way to much or they set their profit margin very high as their intended customers are food-hipster-idiots with more money then brains.
I wonder if they are, or taste, like those grotesque oversized "blueberries" that taste nothing like actual blueberries.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @07:08PM (5 children)
I'd wager that a lot of the cost comes from the building. But, some of it is probably because they can.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday May 27 2022, @07:19PM (4 children)
I assume a used factory building in New Jersey etc still go for a pretty penny. But they seem to have that part down as they have their own team that goes around building or setting up the factories, or so I gather from the article, instead of using more independent contractors to drag things along and make them more expensive. Still the building probably does cost and staff does to. Yet they need to scale more, grow more or whatever they do cause I don't think anyone really wants to pay $2 per berry.
That said I'm not sure about NYC (and the area around there) prices, perhaps $2 for a strawberry is considering to be ok and a bit of a bargain, but I somehow doubt it.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 27 2022, @07:57PM (3 children)
Space. Building or no building, space is costly anywhere near NYC. You can buy a 1000 acre ranch in much of the US for less than you can buy a vacant lot within 50 to 100 miles of Manhattan. Entire subdivisions can be built and sold for less than a storefront in the city.
These people could probably go across the Delaware, into Pennsylvania, buy however many acres they can afford, and erect the same structure for a small fraction of the cost of space in New Jersey. Or, they could go further, to Missouri, or Arkansas, or Texas and pay much less than they would pay in Penna.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday May 27 2022, @08:18PM (2 children)
No doubt about that. But that sort of removes their point I think. Isn't the idea that they want to be close to the market where it is sold to cut down on transport and such and keeping it "fresh". So moving out in the country and then transporting things into the big cities is the "old way". But that said if they can't make it more cheap or better then this one could wonder how viable that idea or premise really is. Perhaps strawberries is more of a "luxury" item to and they still need (or want) $2 per berry. What are they going to sell standard produce for. I doubt people will pay similar prices for lettuce, cucumbers, tomato, onions, carrots etc. So if they can't scale the heck out of this then this seems somewhat dead on arrival or more of a growing curiosity.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 27 2022, @08:33PM (1 child)
Can't argue that. But, shipping produce from the Poconos to NYC is much cheaper than shipping produce from Mexico to NYC. Shipping from Mexico takes about 5 days by truck, shipping from the Poconos is overnight.
I posted below - yes, I think it can be made to scale. But, I don't think it will scale. More than anything, it needs the right people, with the capital, to get involved for the right reasons. The right reasons includes profit, but profit can't be the prime mover, or it never will be made to scale.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @10:32PM
It's funny how that works, focusing on profits to the exclusion of all else resulting in lower profits. It's almost like greed encourages mismanagement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @07:39PM
i doubt eating one of these 'em berries will yield the same amount of energy as half a gallon of petrol.
bon appetite.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @09:21PM
I think in this particular case, they are growing "heirloom" Japanese strawberries that have been picked up by the NYC Michelin chefs (for their wonderful texture and taste), so I think that sets their price point as much as anything practical. The article says they’re moving on to "the sweetest" tomatoes and melons, so I’m thinking that is going for the same crowd. I wonder what the price would be if they were going after the regular consumer?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday May 28 2022, @02:19AM
>it's hard to know what is so expensive here
Start with the real estate. Farms are ploughed dirt, not concrete and steel. Water and even electricity are cheaper than industrial buildings.
Right now they are test marketing their product, seeing if they can get differentiated pricing from dirt grown berries. Remember when kiwi fruit was test marketed at $2 each? The higher price they can get from the mass market the faster they can build new farm capacity. LED grow lights are cheap, but not free, and they will run out of cheap abandoned real estate very quickly if they are successful.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 27 2022, @08:27PM (3 children)
Yes, and no. Gardens in the city will never feed a city, of that I am certain. But, if a city can produce thousands of tons of produce, it can put a small dent in the cost of buying produce from thousands of miles away. A very small dent, to be sure, but a penny saved, is a penny earned.
Getting away from the big cities, small towns and cities can use the same technology. Imagine if every town and city in the country had a warehouse producing fruits and veggies. It is conceivable that they could supply their schools with all the fruits and veggies that the students can eat, saving a ton of money for education. And, fresh produce is far more nutritious than the junk food mostly made available in the cafeterias.
Even better - all those 'food deserts' across the US. Start an operation right in the middle of the desert. It would be great to put fresh produce right where it is needed most.
Again, just imagine what could be done, with a little determination, and coordination.
Ultimately, though, I don't see it happening. It requires capital, and the poeple who need the foor most have little capital to work with.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/urban-garden-rio-feeds-hundreds-families-former-crackland-2021-12-05/ [reuters.com]
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27 2022, @10:28PM
How about picking one thing and sourcing it all from within vertical farms within the city? Like lettuce or mushrooms.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday May 28 2022, @02:22AM
>all those 'food deserts' across the US
That's by design. Just don't be poor, own and drive a car to get to a grocery store. /S
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @02:35PM
It means we can keep building cities everywhere.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @07:11AM (1 child)
I saw a video of a guy in Japan selling ridiculously pricey strawberries. Each berry came in its own little box, and some particular ones were even 10X more than the already pricey "regular" ones. The interviewer got to sample them and came away feeling like the price of even the most expensive one was justified. It was like 3-star Michelin stuff; the kind of thing you want to try just once but you probably won't because money.
So when I noticed they were Japanese I figured it might tie in to this. It doesn't need scaling because that's what they're already doing--taking the obscenely overpriced but also allegedly oh-so-delicious Japanese berry market just a bit more mass-market so that more people can enjoy it.
It's going to end up like wasabi in America though--just green died horseradish, not the real thing. I'm not saying they're not close to the original. Maybe they are on this iteration; but that's where it always ends up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 30 2022, @05:18PM
Had melons just as good that were far cheaper. Of course they weren't all as consistently good.
So if you're that rich just pay poor people to eat melons for you and give you the best tasting ones. You'd feed the poor, spend the same amount of money and get good tasting melons ;)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Ingar on Saturday May 28 2022, @07:39AM
Every time I eat some strawberries from the garden, it reminds me how these industrially grown foods are mostly bags of water and taste accordingly.