Cutting Edge Technology in Agriculture
Vertical farms, an upcoming and underrated advancement in agriculture, has the potential to revolutionize our food systems, helping increase food production as the world’s population continues to exponentially increase. Vertical farms are a great way to harvest locally grown produce through environmentally sustainable means. Investing in and developing vertical farms has the potential to combat growing concerns about food insecurity, lack of farmable land, and less fresh water, climate change.
What Is Vertical Farming?
While all of the aforementioned attributes sound good, what exactly is vertical farming and how does it help mitigate growing climate change concerns? Vertical farming is an agricultural practice that relies on growing food in a vertical structure rather than a horizontal levelo while traditional farming requires large acres of land, vertical farms utilize vertical stacked planting structures to grow crops. This structural design means that less horizontal spaces are needed to grow more food. This allows vertical farms to be integrated into urban structures like shipping containers, warehouses, abandoned buildings, or even underground tunnels and mine shafts.
Vertical farms produce many different kinds of produce. Farmbox Greens, Seattle’s first indoor vertical farm, sells micro greens like cilantro, peas, basil, radish, and broccoli. Plenty, a , sells lettuce, baby arugula, baby kale, and a bok choi and mizen mix. While leafy greens the vertical farm space, there have been strides to grow other vegetables like mushrooms and fruits strawberries and tomatoes.
Technology within Vertical Farms
Vertical farms also use a technology based approach to agriculture called the Controlled-Environment Agriculture (CEA). CEA allows optimal farming conditions to be set artificially through the technology within the vertical farms. This means that air, temperature, light, and water conditions can be artificially adjusted unlike in traditional farming, which is reliant on Mother Nature more than anything.
While vertical farms are all commonly set up in vertical fashion, there is much diversity in the way plants are grown in these farms. There are three main techniques of vertical farming: hydroponics, aquaponics, and less commonly known, areoponics. The most common method is hydroponics, which is the process of growing plants in a water solution that contains nutrients without using soil. Aquaponics is similar to the hydroponics system as it is also a water and soil-less farming system; however, there is an additional implementation of fish and other aquatic creatures into the system. The fish produce waste that acts as a fertilizer for the plants, and the plants purify water for the fish. This system is meant to simulate a natural ecosystem as it develops a symbiotic relationship between the plants and aquatic animals. The last technique is aeroponics, which nourish plants using a nutrient-rich mist without using any growing medium like soil or water, leaving roots to hang in the air and be exposed to the air.
Advantages of Vertical Farming
As discussed earlier there are numerous advantages to implementing vertical farms. They solve the problem of the lack of farmable space by farming in vertical spaces. Their efficient use of space allows for more food to be produced per acre, increasing produce yield. Because they are not exposed to the natural environment, optimal farming conditions can be created and can allow plants to thrive; the lack of adverse weather also allows plants to be grown consistently year round. In conjunction with this benefit is the lack of bugs and rodents that often feed on outdoor plants, eliminating the need for pesticides, which pose an environmental and public health issue. Vertical farms also use significantly less water (sometimes up 90% less water) and are energy efficient. Because vertical farms are based in urban centers, it reduces food transportation costs because food is grown closer to consumers.
Farming in a City of Skyscrapers
The need for vertical farming has been seen specifically in Singapore. Singapore relies heavily on exports for the country’s food, with 90% of food consumed in Singapore coming from abroad. However, COVID-19 has disrupted international trade as countries have closed their borders to contain the spread of the virus. This is problematic for Singapore, because of their reliance on globalization for food production and their limited land space, which is taken up by urban centers. Without the large land space for agriculture, Singapore has started to invest in vertical farming for the country’s food production. As a primarily urban city-state Singapore has plenty of space to develop indoor vertical farms, and is a example of a country that is heavily utilizing its infrastructure to accomplish their vertical farming goals. By 2030 the Singaporean government plans to have 30% of their food produced domestically, up from 10%, and has created tens of millions of grant money for high-tech vertical farms.
With numerous advantages of vertical farming and a growing need among other countries, I firmly believe that vertical farming is an initiative that should be more widely adopted across the US and the rest of the world.
