Vertical Farming Overview and Latest Projects by DecisionDatabases.com

Food is an  indispensable prerequisite of growing life, juxtaposing the jeopardy posed by concretization and urbanization which would eventually, in few decades, lead to a scarcity of soil and land to grow food; the situation needs specific attention and solution. And hence, with the advent of sophistication in urban agriculture, it seems vertical farming is no more a thing of the future; it has come up as a feasible solution to fight the food scarcity and drought of lands in future.

What is Vertical Farming?

Vertical farming is a part of urban agriculture where plants and food are grown in vertical slots in artificial conditions that do not necessarily need natural light, rain and air. The interesting bit is that these vertical slots could be anything from a normal shelf in your personal vineyard, or a giant tall skyscraper. Various technologies are used to grow plants and food in vertical farming like greenhouse, LED lights as source of light energy, hydroponics (where growth is ensured just in water without soil), aeroponics (where agriculture is done using only air and mist, without soil), among others.

Pros and Cons of Vertical Farming
 

Pros	Cons
Healthy option to fight normal agriculture which is in danger Crops are grown near the market and that reduces transportation expenses Controlled climate Significantly less land usage Needs less water, which can be recycled later Almost no soil requirement No need of fertilizers and pesticides	Expensive cost of construction for large scale set up. Urban land is far more expensive than farm land. Fails if required technology isn’t available High electricity bills as artificial light is a significant source of energy for crops to grow effectively on 24*7 bases. Pollination which is very important has to be done manually.

 

Existence and Projects

• Vertical farms are becoming prominent in affluent countries only, as of now,  due to their high technological and production cost. North American regions and countries like Netherlands, Korea, Japan, and Singapore have operational vertical farms projects.
• Sky Greens Farms constructed the world's first, three stories high, commercial vertical farm in Singapore in 2012.
• Recently in July, AeroFarms, the  company founded in 2004, , took its first steps and started the construction of the world's largest vertical farm, harboured in an area that was once a steel mill. The 69,000 square foot area is propounded to generate 2 million pounds of leafy greens every year, without sunlight and natural environment, all in artificial settings.
• In San Francisco, vertical indoor cropping is done in a farm by the name of Ecopia Farms. It spans an area of 8,000-square-foot. The farmers here grow organic lettuce in vertical soils. It’s done on wooden racks placed on top of each other.
• Agricultural company, Whole Foods, recently invested in Chicago based vertical farm called FarmedHere that uses the aquaponics technology to grow and raise tilapia, an edible fish. 
• Japan based electronic giant Panasonic recently moved into this sector. It’s helping Singapore based indoor vertical farms by providing electronic equipment required to run artificial farming without the aid of nature.
• Recently the vertical farming sector has seen a boom in Netherlands, Scandinavia, Germany, Korea, Japan, Abu Dhabi and Singapore, among other global places.

 
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