Farms without Sunlight or Soil? Hydroponic Farms Stir Traditional Agriculture Industry
In the basement of 77 Worth Street in Tribeca, down a white-tiled hallway one floor beneath a dimly lit lobby, lies Farm.One. Echoes of dogs barking reverberate off the walls from Worth Street Veterinary down the hall. Many of the farming essentials are missing: overalls, pitchforks, dirt, even sunlight. Instead, horticultural scientists sit in a control center with computers, monitoring their plants. To enter the “lab,” as they call their farm, one puts on a lab coat, booties, and a hair net and walks through a pressurized door. Gusts of air brush over you as you walk in, washing away harmful pathogens. LED lights illuminate rows of plants layered like bookshelves, tightly aligned on a concrete floor. Specialty produce like micro shisho and purple oxalis grow alongside arugula and micro Swiss chard.
Farm.One is an urban vertical farm that relies on a hydroponic system. Hydroponic systems allow plants to grow free of soil and sunlight while nutrient solutions containing nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium are fed to the plants’ roots.
As the effects of global warming become more evident across the world, farmers and consumers are beginning to worry about its effects on the food supply. In 2018, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations published a report showing that an estimated 95 million out of the 124 million people who suffered acute food insecurities in 2018 were also affected by extreme climate shocks. Hydroponic farming has recently emerged as a potential solution. While for the moment, in the United States, these farms are only producing about 4% of staples like lettuce, that number is increasing, and hydroponics are becoming a hot investment property. Meanwhile, traditional local farmers eye these upstarts warily. For them, urban vertical farms are both a reasonable solution and a source of anxiety as the future status of both the land and their employment remains unknown.
“Hydroponics are reliable because you can control the nutrients the plants are up-taking,” said Rob Laing, founder and CEO of Farm.One in Tribeca. “So you have a very consistent growing season throughout the year.”
Julie Noble, Director of Farming at Ryder Farms, a traditional farm in Brewster, NY, 53 miles north of New York City, agrees that consistency has been one of the victims of climate change, which she prefers to call “climate chaos.”
“Let’s say during the winter I would mark my calendar to plant sweet peas on March 12, because I knew winter would be over by then,” Noble said. “Because of climate chaos, you can’t do that anymore.”
Each year, she budgets for up to 20 percent of her crops to be lost.
In recent years, Noble has also had increased attacks by Lyme Disease-carrying tics.
“The winter keeps getting delayed,” Noble said. “We need the deep freeze to kill the tics. It’s a real problem.”
Vertical farms, by contrast, can regulate both their temperature and their foreign pathogens.
Some bugs are beneficial to the biodiversity of indoor farms. Farm.One strategically uses ladybugs to aid in controlling the pests that do make it through the pressurized doors.
Prior to 2010 there were no known vertical farms. Today they are spread across the globe in places like Dubai, Amsterdam, Singapore, and Japan. Farm.One’s Laing says that the recent takeoff in vertical farming is the result of major drop-offs in the cost of LED lights.
“If you want to build a vertical farm you need to buy hundreds of thousands of LED lights,” Laing said.
While Farm.One sells its specialty produce to local New York restaurants, larger hydroponic facilities can produce up to 10,000 heads of lettuce a day, and are beginning to compete with big agricultural firms.
The global hydroponics market, estimated at $8.1 billion in 2019, is forecasted to reach $16 billion by 2025, according to market research from PR Newswire. This is still a small portion of the estimated $1.9 trillion global produce market, according to PR Newswire, but it is growing.
San Francisco-based startup Plenty opened a 100,000 square foot farm near Seattle after receiving a $200 million infusion — the largest-ever agricultural technology investment according to multiple sources — and is expected to service over 100 grocery stores soon.
On the opposite coast, at 70,000 square feet, Aerofarms in Newark, New Jersey produces roughly two million pounds of vegetables and herbs per year for clients, including Freshdirect and Whole Foods.
BrightFarms, located in four different states, has produce in over 650 stores, including Walmart and Kroger, and has reached a household penetration of 1.5 million, according to an article on Food Navigator USA.
Traditional farmers are hesitant to embrace hydroponically grown foods. Part of their reluctance stems from the taste.
Produce derives its flavor from the environment: the fresh air, sunlight, water, and microbiology embedded within the soil. Each region has its own distinct combination of ingredients that shape the flavor.
“If you consider agriculture part of the culture of an area, that gets lost,” said Noble. “The taste of a region is gone. People like to talk about the terroir of wine—well the same thing applies to food.”
Traditional farmers also worry about the land and their future within the agricultural industry.
“It’s not just the venture capitalists and modern food tech that’s producing everything, it’s us, too, the caretakers of the land,” said Michaela Hayes-Hodge, Co-founder of Rise & Root Farm in Orange County, NY.
The biodiversity of the microbiome in soil is also essential for sustaining earth’s ecosystem and limiting climate change. An article from Columbia University’s Earth Institute shows that soil removes roughly 25 percent of the world’s annual carbon emissions. Aside from their own job security, farmers worry that a world of vertical farms will mean that the land is neglected.
“My concern is that in the future everyone lives in a city where all their food is grown indoors, all of the land has become concrete, and all of the biodiversity vital to our existence has been wiped out,” said Clayton Colaw, Market Manager at NYC’s Greenmarket.
Standing at the Union Square farmer’s market, Julie Noble envisions this exact future, “There will be no farmland left, and I’ll be out of a job.”
Laing from Farm.One, while a believer in urban farming, warns that this future is not exactly around the corner. High costs associated with building and maintaining vertical farms are still a big question mark. Their locations within urban areas are grossly expensive compared to cheaper farmland in rural areas. And profitability is unlikely without sufficient automation.
“Robots that can plant seeds, harvest plants and clean systems are going to be essential moving forward,” said Laing.
Back at Farm.One, visitors are encouraged to try one of the more exotic plants being grown under 77 Worth Street: the acmella oleracea, or “toothache plant,” indigenous to the Amazon. It is a yellow fuzzy flower the size of a pinky nail. Biting into it recently, a visitor felt his gums go numb, the inside of his lips tingle intensely, and tears come to his eyes. It was hard to breathe.
