Max Armstrong continues his look at the challenges facing vertical farms. Max offers insight from Henry Gordon-Smith, founder, Agritecture, a consultant on urban farming projects, who says these startups spend “crazy amounts” of investment on new technology. But the high cost of running the facilities makes it difficult to compete with field-grown lettuce brought in from California. A 2020 Cornell University Study showed that lettuce from indoor farms from Chicago or New York was more than twice as expensive to produce as lettuce grown and trucked in from California.

Max Armstrong's Farm Progress America is a daily look at key issues in agriculture. It is produced and presented by Max Armstrong, veteran farm broadcaster and host of This Week in Agribusiness.

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