which now comes with Nebula for free when you  sign up using the link in the description.

In the outskirts of Newark, New Jersey,  tucked between a packaging manufacturer  

and an aquatics center lies a farm. Except  if you're driving down the nearby highway  

you probably wouldn't be able to tell  that this particular farm is churning out  

thousands of pounds of greens each year. In  fact, all you'll see is a bunch of buildings,  

because this is a vertical farming operation  called AeroFarms which grows all their food  

in a warehouse. Like the owners of AeroFarms,  tech enthusiasts across the world have embraced  

the dream of vertical farming, exclaiming that  their operations are the answer to feeding a  

growing global population, combating climate  change, and eradicating food deserts. So,  

today we're going to look under the hood of these  vertical farms in order to answer three questions.  

Do they work? Are they sustainable? And are they  a viable alternative to growing food outdoors?

How Does Vertical Farming Work? 

The many-shelved farming operation that  is AeroFarms is just one of many companies  

that uses vertical space to grow vegetables.  What sets AeroFarms apart, however, is that  

it grows in a fine mist filled with nutrients  instead of a typical growing environment like  

rockwool and nutrient-rich water. But AeroFarms  is an outlier in the vertical farming space. The  

typical vertical farm looks a lot more like  that at Bowery, a company that uses a more  

traditional hydroponics system to grow their  produce. Essentially, Bowery grows greens and  

other veggies in a nutrient-rich tray of water,  which is consistently recycled in a closed-loop  

system. This system is then replicated  en masse and expanded not horizontally,  

but vertically to maximize space. But because all  these plants are stacked on top of each other,  

access to light becomes a big obstacle, which  means that each shelf is equipped with LED lights  

to act as artificial sunlight. Some operations  like Plenty go even further by shining only  

the beneficial colors in the light spectrum  for growth. While some of these large-scale  

vertical farms can quickly become laden with  advanced technologies like robotic arms and AI  

monitoring systems, at their most basic, vertical  farms use a combination of artificial sunlight  

and vertical space to maximize the amount of yield  per acre. These food factories seem promising,  

but they also seem like a lot of work.  So why are people so excited about them?

The Benefits of Vertical Farming The typical American farm is 444 acres,  

and, if you're a lettuce farmer, on average you  can pull around 36200 lbs per acre from your field  

every year. Vertical farming, however, boasts much  higher yields per square foot, with some companies  

like San Francisco-based Plenty claiming they can  produce 400x times the yield of a conventional  

farm. This is where the benefits of a vertical  farm begin, but it's certainly not where they end.  

Vertical farming proponents point to disease and  pest prevention, water-saving, season extension  

and exacting control as some of the many  benefits of growing vertically. In a sealed,  

indoor environment disease and pests are rare,  meaning that pesticide and herbicide use is at  

its minimum. Hydro or aquaponics systems which  are common in vertical farming, recycle water  

in a closed loop system and can conserve up 95% of  the water used. While artificial lights means that  

plants can grow regardless of the season and  location. You could theoretically grow plants  

right next to a supermarket. And this farming  method can do all this without depleting the  

soil. All this sounds amazing. Who wouldn't want  a pesticide-free operation that uses less water,  

less land, and is closer to urban centers?  Well, unfortunately, there's a cost.

The Problem with Vertical Farming 

The vertical farming space seems to be inundated  with Silicon Valley tech investors dead set  

on finding a solution for growing food that will  catapult us into an era of sustainably grown  

produce. Their warehouses are full of AI driven  robots, software that monitors plant growth,  

and spaceship-like white columns that all seem  right out of a sci-fi movie. All these futuristic  

devices couldn't possibly have a downside, right?  Wrong. The technology-ridden vertical farm comes  

at a high cost, both in terms of money and  the environment. In order to start-up just  

one of these food factories, costs could be  as high as $39 million, which is prohibitively  

expensive even for an already costly industry,  which might require as much as $5 million just  

to start a grain farming operation in Iowa.  Even vertical farming in shipping containers,  

which have a small startup cost compared to  big warehouse farms like AeroFarms or Plenty,  

is expensive. Sometimes this is to the tune  of 10 times the cost to grow produce than a  

regular dirt farm. In part, this has to do with  the expense of retrofitting a shipping container,  

but it can also be tied back to the  energy required for lights, heating,  

ventilation, and cooling. According  to research conducted by Civil Eats,  

a 30,000 sq ft New York City vertical farm might  pay $216,000 annually just for lighting and power,  

and another $120,000 for air conditioning systems.  These costs can differ drastically depending on  

the location of these vertical farms but on the  whole the costs of most vertical farms lead to  

higher prices on the consumer side. Agriculture  consultant Peter Tasgal estimates that lettuce  

from vertical farms costs roughly 5 times more  per pound than when it's conventionally grown.

Alongside their high monetary cost, these systems  also generate a larger carbon footprint than  

field farmed produce. A number of papers have  studied the lifecycle impact of a kilogram of  

lettuce in a vertical farm and, depending on  the context, they found that vertical farms can  

emit anywhere from .156 to 4 kilograms of carbon  dioxide equivalent for every kilogram of lettuce  

grown. While one Washington Post reporter writes  that in places with heavy fossil fuel use,  

vertical farms could generate as much as 7 to 20  times more greenhouse gases than outdoor farms.  

Yes, vertical farms do cut down on the need for  transportation, but Paul West, lead scientist at  

the Global Landscapes Initiative at the University  of Minnesota, asserts that 80% of a farm's carbon  

emissions are created on the farm, so food miles  are negligible. I also think the key thing to keep  

in mind here is that vertical farms can really  only grow a small range of veggies, like lettuce  

greens and kale, efficiently and profitably.  And when grown outdoors these crops already tend  

to have low emissions footprints. Essentially,  vertical farming is tinkering at the edges when  

it comes to agriculture's carbon footprint. If  we truly want to drastically reduce agricultural  

emissions we should instead use our resources to  address the biggest emitter in the industry: meat.

Is Vertical Farming a Viable Solution  to Food Scarcity and Climate Change? 

Food production facilities like AeroFarms  easily cling to the imaginative areas of  

our brains. They're big, futuristic, shiny,  new, and exciting. But vertical farms are not  

a sustainable silver-bullet solution to solving  world hunger. While there certainly is use for  

them in some contexts, like in the cold seasons,  or in water-deprived areas like California  

or cities like Abu Dhabi, they provide a different  service than small and large traditional farms.  

And in terms of feeding the world, our problem  is not a lack of food, it's a lack of appropriate  

infrastructure to distribute the food we have to  those in need. For instance, globally we waste  

⅓ of the food we produce. So, investing hundreds  of millions of dollars into vertical farms feels  

similar to trying to colonize Mars to escape a  changing climate. It's a prohibitively expensive  

and technology ridden solution to a problem that  has other, more just, and less expensive answers.  

There are many appropriate technologies and  methods on conventional farms that have been  

proven to increase yields on extremely small  plots, all without AI, white columns, or smart  

cameras. And if we genuinely want to address  climate change through agriculture our first step  

should not be to fiddle with greens, it should be  to address the huge impact that beef has on our  

land, water, and greenhouse gases. Techno-fixes  like vertical farming are alluring, and when  

used in appropriate contexts, beneficial, but  looking ahead towards 2030 and onwards to 2050,  

we'll need a hell of a lot more than technology to  fix the societal problem that is climate change.

After being on YouTube for over four  years, I still find it really hard to  

create climate-oriented videos that perform well.  The truth is that the algorithm tends not to like  

politically charged videos, like the ones I made  about the Green New Deal and Ecofeminism, and they  

end up doing poorly or even get demonetized. Which  is why a bunch of creator friends and I teamed  

up to create a platform where we can make content  without having to worry about pleasing the YouTube  

algorithm. It's called Nebula and we're thrilled  to be partnering with Curiosity Stream. Nebula  

is an ad-free video streaming platform that allows  creators to create without worrying about views or  

sponsorships. With exclusive content from a wide  range of educational YouTubers like Polymatter,  

Tom Scott, and T1J, Nebula is the perfect place  to consume ad-free educational content. I've  

recently been watching Evan from Polymatter's  Nebula original series called A Hill To Die On,  

and like his videos on his YouTube channel, Evan  effortlessly blends education with entertainment!

But what does this have to do with Curiosity  Stream? Well as the go to streaming platform for  

thousands of top tier documentaries, Curiosity  Stream loves supporting educational creators.  

So we worked out a deal where if you sign up  with link below, not only do you get access to  

Curiosity Stream, but you'll also get Nebula for  FREE. And this is not a trial, you'll have Nebula  

as long as you're a Curiosity Stream member.  And for a limited time, Curiosity Strean is  

offering 41% off their annual plan - that's less  than $12.00 a year for BOTH Curiosity Stream and  

Nebula. If you liked this video, then definitely  check out the episode of Cities of Tomorrow  

all about Vertical Farms. It goes way more in  depth about their possibilities and downfalls.

So if you want to support both Our Changing  Climate and hundreds of other educational  

content creators go to CuriosityStream.com/OCC or  click the link in the description and sign up for  

Curiosity Stream and Nebula for  just $12 per year, that's 41% off.

Hey everyone, Charlie here. Thanks so  much for watching all the way to the  

end! If you've already signed up for Curiosity  Stream here are two quick things that you can  

do if you want to support this channel. Share  this video on reddit, facebook, or twitter,  

and consider supporting me financially  on patreon. Even a dollar a month helps  

this channel thrive. Again, thanks for  watching and i'll see you in two weeks.