What is Vertical Farming?

Vertical farming: Why stacking crops high could be the future of agriculture

Vertical farming is the practice of growing crops in vertically stacked layers.It often incorporates controlled-environment agriculture, which aims to optimize plant growth, and soilless farming techniques such as hydroponics, aquaponics, and aeroponics. Some common choices of structures to house vertical farming systems include buildings, shipping containers, tunnels, and abandoned mine shafts. As of 2020, there is the equivalent of about 30 ha (74 acres) of operational vertical farmland in the world.

The modern concept of vertical farming was proposed in 1999 by Dickson Despommier, professor of Public and Environmental Health at Columbia University.Despommier and his students came up with a design of a skyscraper farm that could feed 50,000 people. Although the design has not yet been built, it successfully popularized the idea of vertical farming.Current applications of vertical farmings coupled with other state-of-the-art technologies, such as specialized LED lights, have resulted in over 10 times the crop yield than would receive through traditional farming methods.

The main advantage of utilizing vertical farming technologies is the increased crop yield that comes with a smaller unit area of land requirement.The increased ability to cultivate a larger variety of crops at once because crops do not share the same plots of land while growing is another sought-after advantage. Additionally, crops are resistant to weather disruptions because of their placement indoors, meaning fewer crops are lost to extreme or unexpected weather occurrences. Because of its limited land usage, vertical farming is less disruptive to the native plants and animals, leading to further conservation of the local flora and fauna.

This has led vertical farming companies to raise unprecedented amounts in North America as well as in other parts of the world such as the Middle East.Today, Venture Capitalists, governments, financial institutions, and private investors are among the principal investors in the sector.

Vertical farming technologies face economic challenges with large start-up costs compared to traditional farms. In Victoria, Australia, a "hypothetical 10 level vertical farm" would cost over 850 times more per square meter of arable land than a traditional farm in rural Victoria. Vertical farms also face large energy demands due to the use of supplementary light like LEDs. Moreover, if non-renewable energy is used to meet these energy demands, vertical farms could produce more pollution than traditional farms or greenhouses.

Vertical farming is a way of taking the controlled environment of a modern commercial greenhouse to the literal next level. By stacking plants vertically on shelves or tall pillars, vertical farming allows 10 times the yield for a given land area.

Plants are grown in completely enclosed conditions, with LED lights replacing sunshine and closed-loop water recycling. There is no need for pesticides, since the indoor space is already free of bugs, and plants can be grown in such clean conditions that there is no need to wash them before eating.

A vertical farm can fit the equivalent of 280 hectares (700 acres) of farmland in a building the size of a large supermarket, and by manipulating the artificial day length and season, it can harvest crops all year round.

Intensive indoor agriculture suffers from high start-up costs and energy bills, but recent advances in increased efficiency and lowered manufacturing costs of LEDs have begun to make vertical farms more cost-effective. It currently only makes sense for certain crops though.

Salad leaves and strawberries are small plants with large profit margins, but cereal crops – like wheat and corn – are too tall to stack efficiently and have a much lower value per tonne. A loaf of bread made from vertically farmed wheat would cost around £18, just for the electricity to power the LED lighting, according to a study at Cornell University.

Imagine walking into your local grocery store on a frigid January day to pick up freshly harvested lettuce, fragrant basil, juicy sweet strawberries, and ripe red tomatoes – all of which were harvested at a local farm only hours before you’d arrived. You might be imagining buying that fresh produce from vertical farms where farmers can grow indoors year-round by controlling light, temperature, water, and oftentimes carbon dioxide levels as well. Generally, fresh produce grown in vertical farms travels only a few miles to reach grocery store shelves compared to conventional produce, which can travel thousands of miles by truck or plane.

Beyond providing fresh local produce, vertical agriculture could help increase food production and expand agricultural operations as the world’s population is projected to exceed 9 billion by 2050. And by that same year, two out of every three people are expected to live in urban areas. Producing fresh greens and vegetables close to these growing urban populations could help meet growing global food demands in an environmentally responsible and sustainable way by reducing distribution chains to offer lower emissions, providing higher-nutrient produce, and drastically reducing water usage and runoff.

Recently, USDA and the Department of Energy held a stakeholder workshop focused on vertical agriculture and sustainable urban ecosystems. At this workshop, field experts shared thought-provoking presentations followed by small group discussions focusing on areas such as plant breeding, pest management, and engineering. Workshop attendees from public and private sectors worked together to identify the challenges, needs, and opportunities for vertical farming. A report on this workshop will be released to help inform Departmental strategic planning efforts for internal research priorities at USDA and external funding opportunities for stakeholders and researchers.

We’re excited about the potential opportunities vertical agriculture presents to address food security. That’s why USDA already has some of these funding and research opportunities in place. The National Institute for Food and Agriculture has funding opportunities (PDF, 1.22 MB) that could support future vertical agriculture conferences and research. Similarly, the Agricultural Research Service is working on a project to increase U.S. tomato production and quality in greenhouses and other protected-environments. We look forward to continuing our partnership with our customers, both internal and external.