Vertical Farming | What’s the Deal Anyway?

The word farming evokes a range of sentiments. For me, I see images of the sun shining on green, open fields with animals grazing about. Can the same be said when you hear vertical farming?

The origins of vertical farming

First invented in 1915 by American geologist Gilbert Ellis Bailey, the initial concept of vertical farming was understood as a sort of rooftop farming.¹ The definition evolved as vertical farming moved indoors, and while definitions vary, most agree that vertical farming refers to the growing of edible greens in stacked rows in a controlled environment.²

What is vertical farming?

Vertical farming often aligns with ‘indoor farming’, ‘urban agriculture’ and ‘controlled-environment agriculture’ (which also encompasses greenhouse cultivation), but the concept remains unique. With vertical farming, the growing occurs where factors such as temperature, nutrients, lighting, irrigation, and air circulation are constantly monitored and adjusted. Here's a peek at the inside of a vertical farm in the Netherlands:

Definitions of the concept vary, particularly concerning the geographic aspect of vertical farming and whether vertical farming takes place exclusively in an urban context.³ However, definitions aside, the question becomes—is this futuristic concept the answer to sustainably producing food for a growing, increasingly urbanised population?

Is vertical farming more sustainable?

While there is not yet an end-all, single solution to creating a more sustainable food system, introducing vertical farming practices in urban centres may offer a complementary system to traditional farming. 

Vertical farming’s reduced use of water and land and decreased waste and CO2 emissions could already help mitigate climate change were it to become more widely explored. The controlled and contained nature of the technology could reduce agricultural runoff as well, which, in traditional farming, is any water that is carrying away by-products from a farm and may contain fertilizers and other contaminants.⁵

Additionally, proponents of the technology claim that it makes crops less susceptible to pests and diseases without the use of pesticides since food is grown in a controlled environment. This type of agriculture also provides ideal circumstances for growing plants in all climates, locations, and seasons. It allows crops to be nutrient-dense since factors influencing quality can be carefully tailored and controlled.

Find out how fertilisers affect people and the living planet.

Is there a need for change in agriculture?

This question is increasing in importance as advances in modern agriculture, although having been instrumental in giving many parts of the world a reliable food supply, have provided a system which causes harm to our natural ecosystems, including habitat loss, wasteful water consumption, pollution, climate change and loss of genetic diversity.³

Many critics of vertical farming argue against the large amount of energy needed to produce large crops, whereas the sun is free. This would make it difficult for vertical farming to replace traditional agricultural methods entirely.⁴ Therefore at the moment, the best way to think of vertical farming is probably as a technology that complements traditional farming techniques.

Feeding urban communities

Given that vertical farming technology can work anywhere, parts of the food system would be less dependent on transport from rural areas to urban centres, thereby decreasing some of our fuel emissions.⁴ Food waste by spoilage could also be reduced considering there would be little time spent between when crops would be harvested and sold to us, the consumers.⁴ 

Vertical farming also uses a fraction of the land and water required for conventional agriculture due to the carefully controlled environment in which the crops grow.³ This introduces the possibility of using abandoned or unused properties in urban environments rather than overworked land in rural areas. Foods can be grown in warehouses in cities, in produce departments of local supermarkets, in kitchens of restaurants and even in microwave-sized models in peoples’ home kitchens.³

Growing food where we live also means harvesting at the peak level of ripeness and nutritional value. By the year 2030, an anticipated 60% of people will be living within cities, making urban agriculture an attractive technique for feeding parts of our growing population while protecting our environment, as well as offering a way of enabling our urban population to reconnect with how our food is produced.⁶