The world is building up. We gaze up in awe as we look at buildings like the Burj Khalifa and the Eiffel Tower. Humans have explored almost all land on Earth and have used most of it for infrastructure. However, we are running out of it. The amount of land required to meet the requirements of humanity is growing alongside the rise in population. One of these requirements is food and the growing population has started to take a toll on food availability. Having reached the limit of building out a few years ago, the only way left was to build up. Agriculture can take the same route of development and with that we get Vertical Farming.
What is it?
So what exactly is Vertical Farming? According to the Cambridge Dictionary, Vertical farming is “the activity of growing crops in many layers, one above the other, inside a building or outside, often in a specially controlled environment”. Vertical farming innovates where we can grow food. Instead of requiring large swaths of land to grow food, we can instead move it within crowded places like cities. There are so many useful aspects of this kind of farming and it holds promising prospects.
Promising Prospects
One of them is the space-conserving properties of vertical farms. Building up instead of out saves a lot of space which means that more food can be grown for the same amount of space required in traditional agriculture. This high-food-yield to low-land-requirement is a huge bonus for agriculture. Secondly, urban areas can host their own farms to grow food. This has the added benefit of reduced shipping requirement. This restricts pollution created by having to ship food across long distances. There is also the perk of being able to grow whatever, whenever. In an article by Farmer’s Pick, they discuss how Vertical farming can overcome the restrictions caused by seasonal crops. As vertical farming has a controlled environment, it allows people to grow foods other than the seasonal varieties.
Another perk of vertical farming, since it goes up instead of out, is that it severely reduces the environmental impact that farming has. Agriculture contributes heavily towards global warming. Dr Mengyu Lin from the University of Sydney says that “global food systems, due to transport, production, and land use change, contribute about 30 percent of total human-produced greenhouse gas emissions.” and “Food transport emissions add up to nearly half of direct emissions from road vehicles.”. By utilizing vertical farming, we can reduce the environmental impact that agriculture has on the planet by quite a lot.
The final perk that I will mention is the insane water efficiency. Gulfood Green describes the world’s largest vertical farm in the world called Bustanica in Dubai, UAE. The article describes the farm’s method of maximizing water efficiency. “The farm’s closed-loop system is designed to circulate water through the plants to maximize water usage and efficiency. When the water vaporises, it is recovered and recycled into the system, saving 250mn litres of water annually compared to traditional outdoor farming for the same output.” This type of water efficiency cannot be created in traditional agriculture making vertical farming the prime contender as the primary farming method of the future.
Shortcomings
Despite all the positives of vertical farming, it does have its shortcomings. One of them that deters a lot of people is the high investment cost of setting up a vertical farm. Vertical farming gains its benefits from how technology is used to maximize output for the very little input required. However, this technology isn’t cheap and setting up a vertical farm can cost quite an arm and a leg. An article by Urban Vertical Project stated that a vertical farm costed around 9000 USD to run for a full year with the startup cost being 7600 USD. The high initial setup cost can deter people from investing in vertical farming.
Another downside is the high energy cost to maintain the farm. While vertical farming can increase efficiency in water and land usage, the one thing it lacks is power efficiency. The technology that makes vertical farming possible requires a lot of power to keep running. Greenforges states that it takes 38.8 kWh per kg of produce in a vertical farm compared to that of a greenhouse which only requires 5.4 kWh per kg of produce. Since most of that energy comes from fossil fuels at the moment, this can lead to increased pollution and global warming.
The final downside to talk about is that it interrupts the natural flow in which plants grow. A major factor in how well plants grow is the pollination process. In the open world, bees and a variety of insects categorized as pollinators go around and spread the pollen of one plant to another. This is crucial in the reproduction of plants and the beginning of fruit production. However, vertical farming occurs within an enclosed environment which means there are no bees to help pollinate the crops. This means that artificial pollination will be required which will further scale up the already expensive operational costs of vertical farming.
Conclusion
Farming is a profession that has existed for almost as long as humans have. The art of growing crops has changed with time, population growth and the advent of technology. Humanity has come a long way from using just hoes and scythes to harvest and grow food. Issues such as water conservation and land shortage are problems that have arisen over time and humans have worked solutions around them. Vertical farming isn’t perfect and since most of our energy comes from fossil fuels, the good things of vertical farming may be outweighed by the bad. But vertical farming is still a developing concept and is quite young. It holds immense potential to revolutionize the way we grow crops and can benefit humanity greatly if its issues can be resolved. As vertical farming is the future, we can only wait and see what that future holds for this futuristic endeavour.
Writer : Ethan
Grade : 12 (Year 2024)
Place : Sydney, Australia
