Advice provided by: Sarah Gudeman, LEED AP, EIT, Morrissey Engineering, Inc.

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Jimmy asks: How much would it cost to build a complete green Vertical Farm? One that could feed 50,000 people and supply fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy, fish, and poultry all in the same building, but separate chambers. All while using solar, hydro, and wind power to supply electric. The use of all types of ponic farming can be used, but no soil (dirt) should be used. Thanks again.

Answer: Jimmy, this is 180 degrees from a question I deal with on a day to day basis, so while I’m happy to give it a shot you’ll have to bear with me. Because, despite the fact that I live in Nebraska, I’ve never grown a plant for food on my own (with the exception of some kitchen countertop hydroponic lettuce and herbs) and the extent of my exposure to farming is when I visit friend’s farms and buy food from our local coop (http://nebraskafood.org/). Add to this level of inexperience the fact that vertical farming is still mostly conceptual in nature (with the exception of the Valcent Paignton Zoo Environmental Park project), and this is shaping up to be a very interesting answer…

First, I think it’s prudent to start out with how much space we’ll need (i.e. food we’d need to be growing) for 50,000 people. For the answer, I turned to Columbia University professor Dr. Dickson Despommier’s Vertical Farm classroom project (http://www.verticalfarm.com) in which he tasked his students to determine the answer to this very question. Their findings estimated a 30 story building, with a footprint of a full city block (about 5 acres). So, for a 5-acre footprint building with 30 stories, we’d be looking at a 6,534,000 square foot building. For an office building in New York City, cost per sf for an Office Building over 10 stories would be about $200 in construction costs alone, according to data from R.S. Means. That means, if this were just an office building the cost range could be $1.3 billion. Taking into account the advanced systems that would need to be included in the building design to accommodate plant and animal life, as well as the renewable energy you mentioned, the cost might be an additional $100/sf, totaling in excess of $1.9 billion.

Obviously these are just order of magnitude type numbers, and doesn’t take into account the specific costs for each type of chamber that would be required (fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy, fish, and poultry), and design concerns for adding structural support for wind turbines, or enhanced animal management filtration systems that would be required (similar to a zoo environment, I’d assume). For that specific of an answer I’d assume that it would take a team of estimators approximately a week’s worth of work to come up with conceptual designs and ideas then associate costs with them, which could incur an additional cost of something like $64,000 in design costs.

Finally, once that estimate is complete, a detailed cost analysis including operation, transportation, fertilization, crop success rates, renewable energy, and employment benefits would be required to determine the cost effectiveness of vertical farming compared to traditional farming to determine if the project is feasible from a cost-effective standpoint. Sorry this answer isn’t more specific, but hopefully it’s a start.