Vertical farming means growing plants inside city buildings. This is done instead of using traditional farm fields. The plants grow under controlled lighting, temperature, and humidity. Using sensors and AI-based systems, you can provide optimal levels of inputs such as water and nutrients to the plants. The advantages of vertical farming include the ability to grow plants anywhere and in any season. Also, it leads to enormous saving of water and other resources. Plus, the production process is sustainable and environment-friendly. Vertical farming is growing around 25% per annum. Experts forecast that by 2022, the market for vertical farming will be around US$ 5.8 billion.
What is vertical farming?
The global population is likely to reach 8.5 billion by 2030. As a result, our food production needs to grow substantially. But there are constraints such as scarcity of arable land and water for irrigation. Also, growing urbanization will lead to cities becoming ‘food deserts’. And making food available at urban centers is going to be a huge challenge. Also, producing food, the traditional way and transporting it to urban areas is becoming extremely environment-unfriendly.
Vertical farming promises to solve these problems. Using emerging technologies, vertical farming helps produce food in urban, indoor facilities. And for local consumption.
Vertical farming refers to growing plants indoors. Vertical farms usually grow greens, medicinal plants and herbs. And you can grow plants inside micro-spaces. Such as your kitchen, restaurants, supermarkets or even in shipping containers!
Plants use nutrient-dense water (hydroponics) or mist (aeroponics) as a growth substrate instead of soil. Also, plants are grown under artificially-controlled lighting, temperature, humidity and air circulation.
In fact, vertical farming is a combination of biology, engineering and data science. In other words, you can adjust growth parameters to optimize the size, shape, texture, and flavor of the plants. Additionally, you can improve the nutritional value of the produce.
The biggest benefit of vertical farming is simple. You can grow plants anywhere and in any season. In fact, weather does not matter at all! Plus, you can control the use of water and nutrients precisely using technology. And so, you can cut costs by a large amount. You can do all this in a sustainable and environment-friendly way.
What are the technologies used in vertical farming?
You can group all the software and hardware used in vertical farming under the following heads.
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Perception technologies
The equipment under this group includes IoT (Internet of Things) devices that connect to a network. These are devices with sensors and actuators. These sensors track moisture, humidity, and temperature at all times. Highly sensitive cameras connected to the network take pictures in real time. And all the sensor and image data will go to a central network for processing.
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Artificial intelligence-based systems
Machine learning and AI-based systems track the health of the plants. And then determine the exact amounts of water and other inputs required. For example, computer vision algorithms such as CNN (Convoluted Neural Networks) can monitor the color and shape of the plants. They can also detect if there is any change in appearance of the plant due to infection or presence of any disease.
Machine learning models can collect the data spewed out by the IoT devices. And they figure out exactly how much water and other inputs that the plants need. These systems can also determine very accurately what should be the ambient conditions inside the farm–the right temperature, humidity and air circulation levels.
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Mechatronic devices
These are the physical infrastructure elements such as racks and trays that act as the bed for housing the plants. And these racks also have the right plumbing systems for effective water and nutrient circulation. Also, LED (Light Emitting Diodes) lights substitute the sun light that the plants need.
These LED lighting systems create a custom light algorithm for each plant. And they provide the exact spectrum, intensity and frequency that the plants need for proper photosynthesis- all in an energy-efficient manner.
Robotic arms can apply the right level of inputs such as nutrients, adjust the level of water and maintain the right temperature and humidity for optimum plant growth. They can also harvest the plants at the right time.
What are the advantages of vertical farming?
Using vertical farming, you can grow crops anywhere in the world- irrespective of the climate. And in any season. You can produce organic food without any pesticides or other chemicals. Vertical farming uses a lot less land and other resources with low operational costs. Also, vertical agriculture produces very little carbon emission.
Let’s look at each of these benefits.
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No geographical constraints
You can grow crops anywhere you want. This is a huge plus since arable land all over the world is shrinking because of rapid urbanization.
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Reliable, round-the year crop production
Since the weather is no longer a factor, you can grow crops all through the year in any season. This assures continuous flow of produce to the consumers and also revenue to farmers.
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Ease of management
Unlike managing a remote agricultural land, managing an indoor farming facility is a lot easier. Especially with the advanced technology available. Since the farms operate inside city limits, Internet connectivity is not a problem. Since you have a high visibility of the growth process, it is easy to adjust the inputs to the plants accurately.
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Better products
By definition, you are producing organic vegetables since there is zero need for pesticides and other chemicals. And consumers don’t even have to wash the produce! Plus, urban customers are willing to pay more for organic produce.
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Optimum resource use and lower costs
Vertical farming is extremely land and water efficient. It uses about 95% less water, because you can recycle the water. It uses over 97% less land to grow a unit of produce.
Since you can control precisely the amount of inputs, you can optimize resource usage. And also reduce wastage of inputs such as water and other nutrients.
Since crops can be grown within city limits, you can reduce transportation costs to the market or end-consumer locations.
Also, the biggest risk for traditional agriculture is the uncertainty of weather conditions. With vertical farming, those risks go away as do your insurance costs.
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Lower environmental impact
There is no need to ferry inputs to the remote agricultural land and transport the harvested produce to the markets. And so, the carbon emissions are quite low for vertical farming. Also, since there is no need to use conventional fertilizers, weedicides and pesticides, there is zero environmental pollution. And since you can recycle water and plant wastage, vertical farming is environment-friendly.
What are the disadvantages?
The biggest negative for vertical farming is the high upfront capital costs. The cost of land or rent for a building inside the city can get quite expensive. You also need plant bed trays, LED lights, and an irrigation system. And you need to invest in a large number of IoT devices such as sensors and an AI-based software system.
Trained workers are hard to find and can be costly. Some farms use robots to reduce the labor requirements.
Lastly, the range of crops you can grow is limited. For example, most vertical farms grow different types of greens such as lettuce, kale and a few herbs. Some farms can grow peppers, tomatoes and strawberries.
Who are the major players in the vertical farming industry?
There is a variety of players in the vertical farming space. And most of them are venture-funded startups.
First, startups that grow different types of plants for urban markets. These growers use different types of substrates for growing plants. The prominent methods of production are hydroponics, aquaponics and aeroponics.
Second, startups that provide different types of technologies to vertical farms. These companies sell technology infrastructure such as platforms with plumbing and electrical connections, LED lighting systems, water circulation systems and sensors. And there are other companies that provide AI-powered software services that help farmers optimize the inputs.
Let’s look at a few examples in each of these categories.
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Startups that produce vertically farmed plants
The following are some of the well-known vertical farming companies.
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Plenty
One of the shining examples of this class of startups is the US-based, AgTech unicorn, Plenty. Backed by Softbank and other prominent investors, Plenty produces organic kale, lettuce and arugula and other greens and supplies them to large retail chains.
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Aerofarms
This US-based vertical farming company produces microgreens such as kale, arugula, watercress and several spicy herbs and berries and tomatoes. This company uses aeroponics to grow crops. Aeroponic technology uses a mist that consists of water and other nutrients. And this mist covers the roots of the plants. This technology uses 95% less water than conventional farming. It uses even less water than hydroponic systems. Aerofarms counts companies such as AmazonFresh and WholeFoods as clients.
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Bowery Farms
This New York-based vertical farming company produces organic, GMO-free, dark leafy greens, lettuce, arugula, kale and herbs such as cilantro, basil and parsley. Backed by leading investors such as Google Ventures and Temasek and several angel investors, the company is a leading player in vertical farming. Bowery uses hydroponics to grow plants and it has a proprietary, AI-based operating system, BoweryOS to monitor the crop cycle.
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IronOx
This California-based vertical farm produces greens using hydroponics. Interestingly, the company has a fully autonomous farm. It uses software-controlled robots for everything from planting to harvesting greens. It has a huge operational cost advantage compared to other vertical farming models that depend on highly skilled labor that is expensive. IronOx is backed by Eniac Ventures.
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Startups that provide technology for vertical farms
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Illumitex
This is a technology company that offers vertical and green house farmers, high resolution cameras integrated to an AI system that uses computer vision system called FarmVisionAI. With this system, you can monitor every single plant and optimize inputs and improve productivity.
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Voeks
This California-based company offers irrigation and water management systems to vertical and greenhouse farms. If offers solutions for aeroponics, hydroponics and aquaponic methods of nutrient delivery.
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Sanon Bio
This company provides vertical farming infrastructure that is reconfigurable, like Lego pieces that you can assemble based on the structure you need. Its proprietary technology called Radix offers food-grade racks, the LED lights, irrigation systems and nutrient delivery mechanism – all in one package.
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Growtune
This company provides a SaaS-based software to help farmers manage their vertical farms. Right from planning the seeding to monitoring and detecting issues early and taking corrective actions to harvesting the crop, this software offers help.
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Agrilution
This German company has taken vertical farming directly to consumers’ homes! You can use their PlantCube technology to grow microgreens like kale and basil inside your kitchen. And you can harvest greens on a daily basis. The company also sells ‘Seedbars’ that contain a wide variety of seeds along with the substrate to grow them.
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What is the future of vertical farming?
Given the fact that we can grow only certain plants in vertical farms, we still need the traditional flat farms to produce other crops. Also, vertical farms require a wide range of technology competence and trained labor. And this could limit the growth of vertical agriculture to only certain urban centers. In the short to intermediate term, we will see a hybrid of regular farming and vertical farming.
But in the long-run, vertical farming technologies will improve and we may be able to grow a wider variety of crops. In sum, vertical farming will contribute a significant portion of food required to meet the needs of a growing population in a sustainable manner.
