Our farm shares many characteristics with vertical farms bar one produce variety. We employ red and blue light, we add CO2 to our high tunnels and we heat them. However, the biggest difference is in the type of vegetable we produce, we do everything from courgette to eggplants to some types of cabbages, what we do not produce are herbs and salads, the margins are too thin, and the competition too intense, and guess what that is 80% of what is produced in vertical farms. There's a clue there.
90% of our vegetable and fruit production are heirlooms, more difficult to transport but far more flavour. Our tomatoes are a perfect example, they taste as good in February as they do in July, but they are expensive (we don't produce tomatoes in the late summer).
The conversation came about because my visitors Bernard and Peter who are here for the weekend, were visiting our high tunnels and telling me about all these vertical farms going bankrupt.
I only know what they produce in vertical farms, but nothing much else about them. We are relatively labour-intensive, but if you go in July or August to any fruit or vegetable farm, you will find a lot of labour around. They also produce 80% of their total production in less than 2 months, we produce all year round. This is our big advantage, our tomato plants produce 11 months of the year. The same for peas or any other vegetable (we don't do potatoes). We focus on high-value fruits and vegetables only. This means that our profits are higher, most people would be shocked at the price of our tomatoes, but then the restaurants that serve them prepare these amazing tomato salads...
Today, at lunch we had two quiches, a vegetarian pie, and two meat pies, from our pie subsidiary. The meat pie was a first, still a prototype since they had not begun commercializing them, we were the test subjects. They were all delicious (they are large at 12 inches). Our guests were shocked by the prices but wanted the website to order some after we finished lunch. £29.69 for meat pie is a lot, but it was outstanding compared well with the competition. We also showed them that 100% of the ingredients were natural, with no preservatives, so the pies don't keep for more than a month.
Currently, 80% of the ingredients of our cheese and vegetarian pies are sourced from our farm, with the meat pie it will be a bit lower, because of our limited porc production. I explained to our guests that this is how we moved up the value-added chain and where most of the profits are located in the food industry.
All this to explain the difference between our high tunnel farm and the vertical farms...
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