Vertical Farmings Growing Potential
Connor’s Note
If you read my most recent article about NFTs, you may think this topic is a bit out of left field. You’d be right. The only thing linking NFTs and Vertical farming is that I find both concepts interesting and important for the future of our society (that is not to say that all NFTs are important). Although a loose connection, this is the entire reason I write these articles. I truly enjoy learning about new innovations that have the potential to change the way we live, and I feel that it is a useful exercise to consolidate my thoughts afterward.
Vertical farming (VF) is something I’ve been interested in for about a year now. I have done quite a bit of reading on the subject during the process and figured this would be a good way to put all of that effort to use. I hope you enjoy the article!
The Background
Right now, roughly 40% of all habitable land on the planet is used for agriculture and food production. This number was roughly 7% in 1700. This increase shouldn’t come as a surprise — as the population increases, demand for more food must as well. But the other issue is that this insatiable hunger (pun intended) for farmable land often displaces what used to be forests and the ecosystems therein. Roughly 80% of deforestation is caused by increasing agricultural landmass. This deforestation is doubly impactful as we are increasing our greenhouse gas emitting footprint as well as decreasing carbon-capturing biomass. Forests can capture somewhere around 70 to 80 tons of carbon per acre while something like corn captures less than 1 ton per acre. While the exact percentage is controversial, somewhere between 20–30% of human-caused greenhouse gas emission comes from agriculture today. That number comes from everything from fertilizer production, transportation, and storage.
As if this environmental problem was not enough, somewhere between 60 and 70% of all drinkable water is used for agriculture. Even in our modern society, roughly 1 billion people lack access to clean drinking water. And as climate change decimates ecosystems, wetlands disappear, and population increases, this problem is only going to get worse.
Even after all of these problems caused by our agriculture industry, we are still not feeding our population effectively. This current system is not only destroying our environment, but it’s also just not working. Over 30% of the world and 10% of the US population lacked year-round access to adequate food this year (known as “food -insecure”).
Additionally, as we move towards a more urbanized environment, food is being grown farther away from its ultimate destination than ever before, leading to issues of freshness, cost, and more greenhouse gases. Today, 55% of the world’s population lives in urban environments, and that figure is expected to increase to 70% by 2050.
The Promise Of VF
The modern version of VF came about after Dickson Despommier, a professor at Columbia University gave his students a challenge to see how much food could be grown on New York City rooftops. After the results were much lower than he had hoped, he designed a system growing plants indoors instead, on multiple layers vertically that he believed could feed many more people. (up to 50x more.)
While the techniques and technology used have drastically changed since then, the general idea remains the same. The goal of VF is to maximize crop output per square foot, and as a library does with books, stacking vertically is far more efficient than spacing horizontally, i.e., on the ground.
Land Utilization
The increased efficiency of VF means that for some vegetable crops (e.g lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber), VF can produce food at 10x the rate of a traditional farm of the same size. Additionally, because it is done indoors, it can be done year-round, day and night. This aspect makes it particularly attractive for urban areas with long winters, because VF can be placed in pretty much any building (assuming it has an adequate space and energy supply). It also grows the food where the people are, cutting down on transportation costs (both economic and environmental) and delivering high nutrition crops to neighborhoods with little access to fresh food.
Light
VFs are indoors; they must use LED lights to reproduce the nutrients that the plants would normally get from the sun. While there are disadvantages to this which we will explore later, there are also advantages. For one, you decide when the lights are on or off, unlike a normal farm environment. This means that you can use the perfect lighting times for each plant to optimize growth. Additionally, you can tweak the wavelength combination of the light to produce different plant characteristics. For instance, one researcher found that by increasing the amount of blue wavelength light, you could make Kale taste much sweeter. This type of experimentation is just beginning, and there is no telling what flavors, appearances, or sizes may be produced through adjusting the conditions in which plants are grown. This control of light within the growth cycle is more efficient and leads to better produce.
Weather and Water
As I mentioned before, water usage from agriculture takes up roughly 70% of all drinkable water yearly. However, VF uses up to 95% less water than traditional farming. For starters, because all VFs are closed systems, you don’t lose nearly as much water to evaporation. A large portion of the water needed for traditional farms does not end up going to the intended crop but is evaporated into the air. Additionally, VF recycles its water, meaning any water not used by the plants gets used again in the next batch. There are many new methods of soil-less plant growing that use even less water as the water is absorbed more efficiently by the roots instead of much of it going into a soil medium. There are even some VFs that employ the use of fish to re-enrich the water with the necessary nutrients for plant growth, much as happens in nature.
The Downsides
At this point, you may be asking why you don’t see these all over the place. And while you can buy vegetables grown in a VF in many grocery stores, they aren’t very prominent, and generally cost more. There are a few reasons for this.
High Upfront Costs
Due to the massive amount of LED lighting, water recycling systems, autonomous planting tech, and other sophisticated tooling, it can cost upwards of tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars to set one up, even if the buildings are retrofitted warehouses. This paired with the fact that many VFs are built in cities with high per-square-foot costs, makes it cost-prohibitive for all but the deepest pockets.
High Energy Usage
VFs need to produce all the sunlight their plants need to grow. This means they use a lot of energy. And I mean a LOT. Growing one square meter of lettuce is estimated to use 3500 kWh per year in a VF compared to 250 kWh in a traditional heated greenhouse. This is the biggest reason why the jury is still out on VFs. The problem with this high energy usage is that it makes it extremely difficult to turn a profit. What’s more, this energy demand quickly eliminates any advantage VF has over traditional agriculture in terms of CO2 the process requires. While green energies continue to grow, much of the energy grid continues to come from the burning of fossil fuels (around 60% in the US). As long as this continues, VF doesn’t have any net positive effect on the environment. According to many experts, current energy consumption makes VF no better for the environment (in terms of greenhouse gas emissions) than traditional farming.
Lack of options
The technology used for mass scale VF is nowhere near mature. As a result, there are only a few crops that can even conceivably produce in a VF. Most of these are leafy greens such as arugula and kale due to their higher revenue density. Other crops are either too unprofitable or too large to grow right now. It does not make economic sense to make potatoes in a vertical farm because they could not turn a profit by selling them, and larger crops such as corn limit the ability to stack things vertically in any standard building.
Silver Lining
All of these downsides are very real. They help explain why most of us don’t eat salad grown in the warehouse down the street. The costs are just still too high, both economically and environmentally. But this is changing. More and more VF companies are entering the space as the economics become more viable. Plenty has raised almost a billion dollars, and VF startups are popping up all over (shoutout to Wilder Fields here in Chicago). There are multiple technologies underpinning VF that are developing quickly. LEDs are predicted to be 4X as efficient in 2030 as they were in 2010. This, paired with the transition to greener energy sources like solar, wind, and nuclear means that soon, high energy usage may not have as large of an environmental impact as it does now.
This technology is in its infancy, and there are many challenges to overcome before it is a widespread practice. But I would argue that this is an inevitability for a few reasons:
- technology will make this option ever more economically viable.
- Humanity cannot continue to increase its land usage for agriculture while increasing its population without some alternative means of production. We simply don’t have more land on which to grow crops. We must find alternatives.
- Lastly, A lot of good work in the VF space is being done by NASA. Astronauts on the moon and Mars will have to produce some of their food, and VF is one way for them to achieve this. If we ever want to leave Earth for any extended period of time, we will need to be able to produce food efficiently and sustainably and VF is the first step towards this.
But even if I am wrong about all of these points, there may come a time that due to lack of usable land and freshwater we are forced to develop ways to feed ourselves even if the costs are high. Personally, I hope VF comes about because we solve these problems instead of it being a last and perhaps even desperate resort.
