Indoor Vertical Farming - Farming of the Future

 

This blog post summarises the key points from a TED talk on Vertical Farming.

The Benefits

Personally I think that vertical farming in highly populated developed countries would drastically reduce the rate at which climate change is occurring. This is because it can produce 80% more crops per unit of area than the traditional means of farming and production. This would mean that in countries where land prices are high and very little land is available crops could still be produced naturally and grown close to where they would be consumed. As a result less preservatives need to be used. It also reduces carbon emissions in travel because large vans no longer need to carry the produce from rural to urban areas and food miles are reduced.

It can produce 80% more crops per unit of area than traditional means of farming and production.

Traditional farming also emits ¼ of the world's greenhouse gasses. This is a scarily high statistic that could be resolved by use of indoor vertical farming. Although vertical farming emits much less greenhouse gases it does consume a large amount of energy for things such as large LED growing lights that replace the natural source of light plants would have in traditional farming settings (the sun).

The Compromise

Vertical farming, however, has very high upfront costs. This is due to the high-tech equipment required to ensure that growth and crop yield is optimal. It also has very high labour costs. This is due to the specific conditions that these plants require. They also require a lot of attention as the wrong set up could lead to a pest outbreak and lead to destruction of all the crops currently being grown.

Even though it requires a lot of time and effort to grow crops in this manner, I think it is still more efficient than growing them traditionally as almost all traditionally farmed crops require pesticides and protection from animals. If you were to vertical farm instead this issue is immediately resolved as no animals can enter the growth environment therefore food is a lot more naturally grown and organic. This produce is much healthier for both humans and animals due to the lack of unnatural additives.

Vertical farming would also mean that lots of people in the primary working sector would lose their livelihoods as they do not possess the knowledge and skill required to grow crops in a lab setting. To resolve this maybe these primary workers could be trained in the workings of indoor vertical farming so that they can keep their jobs and also help to progress this more environmentally friendly growth.