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Page added on January 16, 2014
Vertical farms sprouting all over the world
URBAN warehouses, derelict buildings and high-rises are the last places you’d expect to find the seeds of a green revolution. But from Singapore to Scranton, Pennsylvania, “vertical farms” are promising a new, environmentally friendly way to feed the rapidly swelling populations of cities worldwide.
In March, the world’s largest vertical farm is set to open up shop in Scranton. Built by Green Spirit Farms (GSF) of New Buffalo, Michigan, it will only be a single storey covering 3.25 hectares, but with racks stacked six high it will house 17 million plants. And it is just one of a growing number.
Vertical farms aim to avoid the problems inherent in growing food crops in drought-and-disease-prone fields many hundreds of kilometres from the population centres in which they will be consumed. Instead, Dickson Despommier – an ecologist at Columbia University in New York City who has championed vertical farms since 1999 – suggests that food should be grown year-round in high-rise urban buildings, reducing the need for the carbon-emitting transport of fruit and vegetables.
The plant racks in a vertical farm can be fed nutrients by water-conserving, soil-free hydroponic systems and lit by LEDs that mimic sunlight. And they need not be difficult to manage: control software can choreograph rotating racks of plants so each gets the same amount of light, and direct water pumps to ensure nutrients are evenly distributed.
The whole apparatus can be monitored from a farmer’s smartphone (see “Farming from afar“), says GSF’s R&D manager, Daniel Kluko. He says the new farm in Scranton will grow 14 lettuce crops per year, as well as spinach, kale, tomatoes, peppers, basil and strawberries. Its output will be almost 10 times greater than the firm’s first vertical farm, which opened in New Buffalo in 2011.
Proponents see vertical farming as a way to feed a global population that is urbanising fast: 86 per cent of the people in the developed world will live in cities by 2050, the United Nations predicts. It could make food supplies more secure as well, because production can continue even when extreme weather strikes. And as long as farmers are careful to protect their indoor “fields” from pests, vertical farming needs no herbicides or insecticides. They also conserve water far better than earthbound farming.
GSF’s first farm was inspired by the long-term drought that has been afflicting many parts of the US. “Water is a big issue,” says Kluko. “We have designed our vertical farms to recycle it, and they use 98 per cent less water per item of produce than traditional farming.” That’s done in part by scavenging water from the grow room’s atmosphere with a dehumidifier. It’s a machine with a dual role, as excess humidity can lead to problems like leaf mould.
Most vertical farms rely on natural light as much as possible. In sunny, near-equatorial Singapore, entrepreneur Jack Ng’s SkyGreens vertical farm needs no artificial lighting to promote growth. Instead, his four-storey glass-sided farm contains mobile racks of Chinese cabbage and lettuce that rotate slowly up to the sunnier heights of the building on a low-power elevator.
Conversely, in Japan, Kyoto-based Nuvege (pronounced “new veggie”) runs a windowless indoor farm. In a cavernous facility reminiscent of an aircraft hangar, Nuvege’s LED lighting is tuned to two types of chlorophyll, one preferring red light and the other blue. “Tuned to these spectra, you can grow a plant no matter where it is,” Despommier notes. Indeed, Nuvege produces 6 million lettuces a year in this way, for customers including Subway and Disneyland Tokyo.
In such arrangements, the electricity bills can add up quickly. Today’s LEDs are only about 28 per cent efficient, which keeps the cost of produce high and prevents vertical farms from competing in regions where cheap vegetables are abundant. However, lighting engineers at Philips in the Netherlands have demonstrated LEDs with 68 per cent efficiency, which could dramatically cut costs.
And the latest research shows that plants do not need always-on artificial sunlight, Despommier says: they can experience light that varies in intensity through the day – moving from an artificial dawn through to noon and dusk. Mimicking these changes will save energy too. Such tricks already play a small part at GSF: infrared LEDs mimic 5 minutes of a fading sunset at the end of each day. “It puts peppers and tomatoes into their flowering period quicker,” says Kluko.
Advances in vertical farms could trickle through from other sources, too. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is using an 18-storey vertical farm in College Station, Texas, to produce genetically modified plants that make proteins useful in vaccines. Adversity also plays its part: the tsunami-sparked nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan, in 2011 is leading to innovation in vertical farming because much of the region’s irradiated farmland can no longer be used.
“Fukushima has had a riveting effect on this field,” says Despommier. “People were taking their food to the Geiger counter before the checkout counter.”
This article appeared in print under the headline “Legume with a view”
Farming from afar
With software to handle much of the day-to-day tending of crops, vertical farmers will probably look after multiple farms remotely, claims Daniel Kluko of Green Spirit Farms.
The app he and his colleagues are developing will allow farm managers to tweak nutrient levels and soil pH balance from a smartphone or tablet, and sound alarms if, say, a water pump fails on a vertical-growing system. “So if I’m over in London, where we’re looking for a future vertical farm site to serve restaurants, I’ll still be able to adjust the process in Michigan or Pennsylvania,” says Kluko.
This will help drive down the labour costs of vertical farms, he says, so that they can compete with conventional ones.
17 Comments on "Vertical farms sprouting all over the world"
robertinget on Thu, 16th Jan 2014 9:12 pm
Take that biotech fans!
We can be sure every tomato will be labeled “organic”.
Betcha the few hundred thousand American farmers feeding the world in fly-over
are burning with jealousy. Immagine, to find out how ‘the crop’ is coming along
just switch the old iPhone from gaming mode to farming, it’s that simple.
Never mind, when pot gets legalized
those indoor ‘vertical farms’ will
become profitable. WE all love centralized power positioning, don’t we?
The fact is giant greenhouses have been around since the invention of translucent plastic sheeting.
Being a dumb farmer I was unaware of
how energy intensive, pest control difficult, raising high value food crops in a greenhouse can be.. Before anyone
tries this at home, do your HOME work.
Arthur on Thu, 16th Jan 2014 9:44 pm
Let’s hope the tomatoes are acrophobia-resistent.
J-Gav on Thu, 16th Jan 2014 10:31 pm
Apps to the rescue! Yee-ha!
Euh, don’t see any mention of costs here however …
Feemer on Fri, 17th Jan 2014 12:04 am
I mean…This uses a lot of electricity.
Makati1 on Fri, 17th Jan 2014 1:14 am
This is another techie dream that will NEVER come true. A few trial plants means nothing when trying to feed 7+ billion people. Do they have a nuclear reactor in every building to power it? ^_^
Less than twenty hectors (the above growing area building) = ~50 acres. There is currently 1.2 billion acres of farmable land in the US.(World Bank statistics)
So, all they need is about 24,610,000 more of these techie miracles just to replace the US farms. How many billion more to feed the world?
Perspective … always perspective.
Twin Performance on Fri, 17th Jan 2014 1:24 am
You are correct Feemer, to do this type of agriculture requires a higher leveraged EROEI. In a world when we are peering down the EROEI slope, increasing our complexity is not a good idea.
Still, being indoors and allowing efficient use of feed allows a far reduced consumption of feed.(Fertiliser) Also this removes the issue of topsoil loss and climate impacts as I assume its temperature controlled. It reduces agricultural impact substantially (For the crops grown) and finally allows pest and disease control to the max. Its a fantastic invention.
HOWEVER as it requires A: Constant supply of electricity (Which renewables do not provide) and B: Currently requires burning more fossil fuels it, climatically speaking is a bad idea.
The main reason however is more to do with what you can grow, veg=yes grains=no.
If humanity gave up meat and cereal crops its most certainly a “silver bullet’ to agriculture.
Assuming, again we all decide to do this (unlikely)
And build the infrastructure (unlikely)
And someone pays (Not going to happen)
Perhaps instead of collapse the future of humanity lies in Orwellian Domed cities as the rest of the earth is a desert. (Where this tech comes in handy)
Arthur on Fri, 17th Jan 2014 2:27 am
The weak point obviously of this concept is that many layers of plants need to share the same limited amount of light, leading to the application of artificial light. Here a birdseye view of the Glazen Stad (Glastown) in the Westland area between Rotterdam and The Hague, 100 km2 glasshouses:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Westland-glazenstad.jpg
Single layer of plants only, but still the advantage of short supply lines. Fascinating viewfrom the air at night, approaching Rotterdam airport when all these glasshouses are lit.
Don on Fri, 17th Jan 2014 4:57 am
Factory farming for the vegetable kingdom. Lets hope it doesn’t generate problems like livestock factory farming has. At this stage it looks suitable for the crops mentioned, but how about root crops and fruit trees?
Preston Sturges on Fri, 17th Jan 2014 5:43 am
Rich people will invest in this because what’s a posh doomsday bunker without a daily supply of fresh herbs and salad greens?
rollin on Fri, 17th Jan 2014 6:39 pm
I can’t wait until robots are raising my food. Little nanobots spewing out of the motherbot, crawling all over the plants removing aphids, scale, treating fungus. Injecting small amounts of fertilizer and minerals. Constantly monitoring the plants and then harvesting them. Soilbots aerating and cleaning the soil of disease.
Untouched by human hands. The future by Google.
GregT on Fri, 17th Jan 2014 7:17 pm
“and lit by LEDs that mimic sunlight.”
There is absolutely no reason to ‘mimic’ natural systems. They have been here for a very long time before us humans existed, and they will be here for a very long time after we are all gone. It is time for us to ‘grow up’, and to learn how to live within the natural environment, instead of constantly attempting to alter it, and continually trying to adapt to the consequences.
We are not in control here, the sooner we figure this out, the longer our species will have any hope of survival.
Ghung on Fri, 17th Jan 2014 8:34 pm
Still needs chemical fertilizer; tons of it, electricity; megawatts, water; millions of liters which is difficult to recycle. I’ve done the hydrponic thing.
I’m still considering aquaponics; crayfish and veggies, but it’ll be solar pumped, solar lighting, and naturally fed. Crayfish will eat almost anything.
byron bishop on Fri, 17th Jan 2014 9:17 pm
My neighbour is an agricultural researcher and professor, and he tells me of instances of sophisticated and mechanised greenhouse operations that are suddenly struck by a virus or disease. The crop loss is usually 100%.
There is no genetic diversity, the plants are not particularly robust, and the uniform environmental conditions that enable rapid growth and fruiting also enable rapid spread of disease.
I doubt that the stacked farms are able to match wheat yields in our fields. I have yet to taste bread made from hydroponic lettuce.
DC on Fri, 17th Jan 2014 9:59 pm
What is the concept of v-farming but a symptom of the real root problem. Too many people, too little land. If this world had a manageable population, say 2-3 billion range(max), there would little need for concepts like this. But, since ‘we’ are absolutely committed to unlimited population growth AND the equally rational notion of expanding food output along with it…..
Too many absurd ideas are being floating around right now. Robo-cars, automated highways, lab-grown burgers (yumm), geo-engineering, space solar-sats, fusion power, the list goes on and on. Every single idea, including vert-farms is not designed to ‘resolve’ any of the core issues, but simply to accommodate ever more growth.
Lets consider a thought experiment. Lets assume V-farms could be viable operations(bear with me). Who thinks that even if V-farms were a runaway success it would take one acre of ‘conventional’ agricultural land out of production and see it revert back to nature?
It wouldnt. No more than NG plants or Hydro-power, or nuclear even, stopped the construction of ever more coal plants. Same idea, different field.
GregT on Fri, 17th Jan 2014 11:58 pm
@ghung,
I have dabbled a bit with growing leaf vegetables in my koi pond using a raft type system. Works great. I am using a 220v pump though, which draws a considerable amount of power. The koi also eat a ton of expensive manufactured food.
My future plan is to grow tilapia, as they do not require animal protein in their diets. They are also tolerant of poor water conditions, and do not require high water flow or large filtration systems. Perfect for solar. The pond will need to be heated somehow in the winter as they don’t do well below around 10 degrees C. I have read of people that keep crayfish with tilapia, and keep ducks in a pen with a screened floor above the pond. The ducks also add nutrients to the system. The vegetables can be grown in inert media, using a drip system that is allowed to flow back into the pond.
PrestonSturges on Sat, 18th Jan 2014 4:01 am
Greenhouses use lots and lots of nasty pesticides. The insect pests like the sheltered conditions just like the plants.
J.R. on Sat, 18th Jan 2014 4:25 am
Hopium bullshit. Always has been.