Vertical farming is a space-efficient way of growing crops that overcomes the limitations of traditional agriculture. To address the food challenges of growing populations and expanding cities, vertical farms, which grow crops indoors in controlled environments, offer significant advantages in terms of productivity and efficiency, but they also face challenges in terms of upfront costs and energy consumption.
When people think of farms, they usually envision vast plains or gardens where various crops are grown or animals are raised. In the case of crop cultivation, the traditional method of growing and harvesting plants in rice paddies or fields dominates. To increase crop yields, we improve and evolve existing methods, using advanced machinery and new farming methods. However, by 2050, four out of five of the world’s growing population is expected to live in cities, and cities will continue to grow in size. Traditional farms, with increasingly insufficient space and labor, will struggle to meet the growing demand for food. Vertical farms are gaining traction to overcome these limitations. Let’s take a look at what vertical farming is, how it differs from traditional crop cultivation, and what advantages and disadvantages it has over conventional rice paddies and fields.
The main idea behind vertical farming is that crops are grown indoors, on multiple levels like an apartment, and it’s a farming technique that heavily utilizes CEA technology. CEA stands for Controlled-Environment Agriculture, which is a farming method that artificially manipulates the environment in which crops are grown to protect them and optimize their growth. CEA technology refers to the technology needed to utilize this farming method. There are three main types of vertical farms that operate with CEA: hydroponics, aeroponics, and aquaponics. Hydroponics is a method of growing plants by directing water with nutrient solutions into root channels. Aeroponics grows plants by spraying nutrient-laden water onto their roots like a sprayer. Aquaponics combines aquaculture and hydroponics, using fish waste as nutrients for the plants, and purifying the water the plants absorb and returning it to the tank.
While there are some differences between the three farming methods, the overall framework is similar and shares similar characteristics. So how do these features set vertical farms apart from conventional farms? For starters, vertical farms are much more space-efficient than conventional farming. By growing crops on multiple floors of a building instead of on a single flat piece of land, the same amount of land can be harvested hundreds of times more than traditional methods. This is the same principle that allows apartment complexes to accommodate far more residents in the same area than single-family homes. Another difference is that vertical farms are grown in a controlled environment. Traditional rice paddies and fields are heavily influenced by the natural environment. Droughts, heat waves, heavy rains, cold waves, diseases, pests, etc. can cause crops to not survive. While some environmental factors can be controlled by creating reservoirs or genetic modification, it’s difficult to manage all of them. Vertical farms, however, grow crops indoors and can control many factors, including humidity, temperature, water supply, and lighting. Not only does this eliminate many variables in crop growth, but it also creates an optimal environment for each crop, which can speed up growth. Vertical farms can also grow crops that cannot be grown traditionally because they are not suited to the climate.
Because vertical farms utilize much less space than conventional farming, they can be operated in or near cities. This breaks down the boundaries between urban and rural areas, allowing farms to be located in cities, reducing the distance crops have to be transported. For farms far from cities, there is a risk of loss of freshness during transportation, energy consumption, and environmental pollution. However, farms located in cities can solve these problems, and urban residents will have access to fresher produce. The strengths of vertical farms will become even more important in the future as urban populations grow.
As you can see, vertical farms have many advantages over traditional farming methods. However, they have yet to be fully commercialized due to the challenges that come with running a vertical farm. For starters, building a farm in a city can incur additional land taxes and construction costs, which can outweigh the economic benefits of reducing the distance that produce has to be transported. Also, while vertical farms may be spatially efficient, the technology is not yet advanced enough to use energy as efficiently as traditional farms. For example, when it comes to providing plants with the light they need for photosynthesis, in a traditional rice paddy or field, all plants have natural access to sunlight, whereas in a vertical farm, plants in the lower layers don’t get enough light. To solve this problem, artificial lighting must be used, and in the case of vertical farms that block out outside light, all light must be provided artificially. The amount of energy consumed by these lights is very large, and this can make vertical farms more inefficient than traditional farming. In fact, some studies have shown that crops grown in vertical farms emit more greenhouse gases than traditional farms.
With so many variables under human control, vertical farms require the technical skills to manipulate the situation efficiently. In the end, most of the current problems stem from the limitations of the technology. However, as technology improves, these drawbacks will be ameliorated and the benefits of vertical farming will be maximized. Recently, technologists have improved the energy efficiency of LEDs from 28% to 68%, which could cut the energy consumed by vertical farms by more than half. These new technologies can make vertical farms even more useful.
As the world’s population continues to grow, cities continue to expand, there may come a point where traditional farms alone will not be able to support humanity. Vertical farms have a high upfront cost, but if they are sufficiently advanced, they can utilize space and energy much more efficiently than traditional farms, and they can grow food reliably with little impact from the weather. With these possibilities, vertical farms are increasingly becoming an important way to address future food challenges.
