Actually Sun-life, Gov't do have some abilities to sole source and get specific equipment and vendors. For example, if a City uses one brand of lift pump for their sewage lift stations, it wouldnt make sense to always buy the cheapest pump everytime they upgrade, as it would make maintenance and serviceability a huge headache, and actually cost more. Therefore by sole sourcing a specific brand or type, they can keep extra parts on hand for repairs and service so that they arent paying huge amounts of money to have 5 different types of pump parts ready to go, or having to pay huge amounts to have something over nighted from Toronto. Or having people not flush their toilets for 2 weeks. This is the same for military jeep purchases or police car purchases, though these are usually done on a large tender scale, on smaller scales many of these may be sole source in special circumstances.
Moreso, when dealing with specialized technologies or services, where there is no other substitute, gov't also have the ability to sole source to a specific company. The fact that they are receiving money, instead of paying money to a company sort of changes the tables. This time the City is receiving money and fresh produce from a company. And, Alterrus is the only vertical farming (in terms of their own technology) technology that would be able to utilize such a small space. You can check out Chicago's The Plant, and see that they needed an entire unused factory for their "vertical farm".
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