Vertical Farming: Rising Agriculture’s Potential and Lowering its Environmental Influence

Our planet is limited and with the population rising, how do we provide food to the world without taking up more space?

The techniques include growing crops in vertical frames or even in high-rise farms, saving on our valuable limited space, making a move towards moving farms into urban areas, and production of more nutritious crops without utilizing topsoil.

Traditional farming needs lots of space and fertile soil to grow food crops to feed farm animals. Naturally, traditional farming leads to clearing forests and disturbing wild habitats, but the arrival of vertical farming gives us an innovative solution that uses less space and feeds more people quickly.

The United Nations estimates that the planet’s population will hit nearly 10 billion by the year 2050. Almost 70% of those people will be living in and around cities.

Vertical farming allows food production facilities to be inbuilt in urban areas instead of in rural areas. Swing vegetables and fruits in stacked planters in underground areas, on the top of the buildings, or even in high-rise facilities, which eventually mean food production can expand upwards rather than outwards.

Traditional and intensive farming practices fuel climatic change. Better food management technologies in reducing food waste can also be very helpful in preserving the environment and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Growing crops indoors allows pharma to strictly control light temperature and water conditions which could maximize the yield per area. Using LED lights of different desired colours can also be helpful to stimulate leaves growth and flowering of the plants.

There are various techniques used in vertical farming such as hydroponics, in which nutrient-rich water is being circulated to the plant’s root so that plants can be raised without soil. The other technique is aquaponics, in which plants are fed nitrate-rich water, filtered from fish tanks, and aeroponics, in which a nutrient water mist system is used which reduces water usage by more than 90%.

As Mr. Bill Gates, A Philanthropist, said “We need a double green resolution where we will have to think about lowering the environmental impact of farming as well as doubling productivity”. So indoor agriculture and vertical farming may be the answer to this food production riddle.

The global vertical farming market is predicted to be sixfold bigger in 2026 than it’s today. This is because due to several reasons such as a rise in the demand for more organic food, countries looking to increase their food security and to gain independence from importing food from outer sources.

Development of rack greenhouses that rotates planting boxes inside a vertical greenhouse where no artificial light and usage of biogas in such plants are just a few examples of innovation in vertical farming.

Crop One in Dubai is currently the largest vertical farming company, whose aim is to produce fresh, nutritious, and delicious organic food using the indoor farming technique. Crop one is a unique solution to the problems faced by Dubai which are the lack of suitable soil and high temperature, and its output will hit almost 2.2 million pounds of leafy greens each year.

As the vertical farming industry expands it has few limitations such as it only works for some crops, it is labour extensive plus start-up technologies and urban locations can be expensive in different countries.