Vertical Farming: Lifesaver or Luxury?
Image Description: A vertical farm growing spinach in Finland.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Amid one of the most densely-populated areas on Earth, farm infrastructure takes on the characteristics of the city’s skyline. Towering aluminum pillars, some reaching nine meters high, mimic Singapore’s imposing skyscrapers. Yet an entirely different urban ecosystem emerges from these “A Go-Grow” towers — one meant to continually cultivate life rather than simply house it. Singapore’s vertical farming system is one of the most sophisticated and highly mechanized in the world, economizing within a limited footprint to sustain a growing food system. With aid from communities and neighborhoods, such vertical farming systems would not require much time or materials to be installed on rooftops and maintained. Despite the promise of an economical and environmentally-friendly farming method, vertical farming's limited implementation has indicated that this solution might not be as helpful as it seems.
Environmental Incentives for Going Vertical
Between 2015 and 2019, over 100 million hectares of arable land — twice the size of Greenland — were rendered ineffective each year due to processes such as desertification, drought, deforestation, and damaging farming practices. This phenomenon of “land degradation” has only become more significant with the worsening of climate change, in stark and dangerous juxtaposition to Earth’s increasingly-growing population. According to the United Nations Population Division, the global population is projected to clear 9 billion by 2037, yet the impact of climate change on both arable land and the quality of food continues to worsen. Thus, it has become clearer to intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations that new approaches to working with what is left might be the best sustainable option for preventing hunger.
For many nations, vertical farming has proved to be a promising approach in overcoming the handicaps of land degradation while simultaneously re-orienting food systems toward a greener approach. This type of farming provides a wide variety of well-established benefits: an economical use of limited space, resistance to inclement weather, and even a reduction in food transport costs due to urban farming. In fact, it seems a particularly relevant solution in the wake of COVID-19 — following a 50% drop in used office space in Washington D.C. — vertical farming systems were constructed in various then-unused office buildings. Additionally, most vertical farming systems utilize controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) methods, where environmental variances such as light, humidity, temperature, and nutrient density can be optimized to best fine-tune to certain crop types. It synergizes well with hydroponic farming — growing plants in nutrient-dense water rather than soil — to emphasize both efficiency and sustainability. Hydroponic farming is thought to heavily reduce water consumption due to the system’s closed irrigation system, often by 70 to 90 percent depending on the agricultural context.
Image Description: A vertical aquaponics system in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Ryan Griffis
Barriers to a Vertical Future
The incentives for moving to vertical farming are both many and clearly defined. Yet, this practice has yet to take hold in developing countries, despite its potential for alleviating food insecurity and creating a more autonomous food system. Several factors inhibit the widespread adoption of this practice, and they must be addressed in order for vertical farming to become a realistic global endeavor for sustainable farming.
Unsurprisingly, the main reason for the low implementation of vertical farming is the relatively high costs of entry into the market; though it can be a long-term money-saver due to its efficiency, vertical farming’s high upfront costs discourage the adoption of the practice. Furthermore, effective market coordination is needed to make larger vertical farming endeavors profitable. Produce must be entering marketplaces within a reasonable time frame, and “robust supply chain[s]” must be set up to ensure efficient transactions. In many developing countries, both high costs of entry and issues coordinating a profitable supply chain prevent vertical farming from moving past only the smallest of scales. In India, for example, estimates for even a small-scale vertical farm place the starting cost as potentially upwards of 17 lakhs (equivalent to over 20,000 U.S. dollars).
A second reason vertical farming implementation can be complicated in the developing world is its high energy cost. According to the 2021 Global CEA Census Report, vertical farming facilities utilized 38.8 kWh per kilogram of produce, in stark contrast to the 5.4 kWh/kilogram found in a common greenhouse. Though vertical farms can save large amounts of water, this heavy use of electricity — due to intricate networks of lighting, heating and cooling, and humidifying — tacks on a high utility cost to an exorbitant fixed starting cost, making an immediate profit more imperative. This is seen as an extremely risky investment and has prevented many nations from committing to vertical farming measures.
Success Stories Amid Strife
Despite the potentially discouraging disadvantages, a handful of developing nations have been able to offset these downsides and successfully pursue vertical farming. In Liberia, aquaponics-based vertical farming systems have been able to integrate the sustainable farming of fish with the sustainable growing of crops, assisted by the United Nations Mission in Liberia. The combination of these two systems fosters a highly effective symbiotic relationship, where plants assist in repeated oxygenation of the water and fish waste provides nutrients to the plants. These systems can reduce utility costs due to a lesser need for nutrient purchasing and a potentially reduced need for tailored lighting due to the high density of nutrients in this system.
Evidence emerging from Pakistan also indicates that vertical farming methods can be beneficial for supporting small-scale farmers and community-supported agriculture programs: a 60-foot vertical plot saw “around 2,500 plants” of various vegetables that could be grown within each 45-to-60-day period. The farmers alleged that they saw “70 times more production per square meter” compared to conventional farming, and this output coincided with healthy and high-quality produce due to no pesticide or GMO usage. With such produce now being supplied to community markets and restaurants, this smaller-scale system offers an example of how smaller-footprint farms might go to support their local communities without excessively costly mechanization.
Vertical farming is likely to remain a contentious topic in agrarian communities, attributable to the juxtaposition between both its clear benefits and potentially threatening downsides. As the climate crisis and land degradation persist, however, it is clear that newer and bolder approaches to farming sustainably are required to strengthen the food system. Whether through vertical farming or another mechanism, it may be time for the international community to more directly acknowledge the need for more resilient practices to prevent avoidable hunger, malnutrition, and environmental harm.
