A new generation of farmers is looking up, and making some heady claims about their ability to produce food on a warming planet.
Farmers everywhere have always been at the mercy of the weather. Droughts, prolonged periods of rain, early frosts, hailstorms, and unexpected temperature fluctuations (not to mention pest infestations and other non-weather-related scourges) can delay crop growth or destroy the harvest. But over the past couple of decades, vertical farming — growing plants in multi-story, high-tech greenhouses with the help of artificial intelligence and robotics — has been sidestepping the uncertainties inherent to conventional agriculture.
In terms of output, there are multiple benefits to the practice. Vertical farm crops are typically hydroponic — the plants grow in trays supplied with nutrient-enriched water, not soil — and consume 90% less water than traditional outdoor farms. They’re also highly productive: Plenty, an indoor farming company based in California, claims that its “vertical plant towers” yield 350 times more fruits and leafy greens per acre than a traditional farm. Since the plants are indoors, vertical farm operators can control and monitor the light and the macronutrients and trace elements the plants absorb, and a variety of different crops can be grown year-round in the same location. And vertical farms can be built in areas where there’s no arable land, and/or close to where the demand for food is greatest, such as cities.
Because the effects of climate change on traditional agriculture are already painfully apparent, massive vertical farms are being built around the world to help offset the inevitable crop losses that will occur as the planet warms. There are several large vertical farms in the U.S. AppHarvest, whose flagship indoor farm in Morehead, Kentucky — one of four indoor farms the company has in the state — is as large as 50 football fields. Bowery has a vertical farm in Kearny, New Jersey. Aerofarms has commercial vertical farms in Ithaca, New York; Newark, New Jersey; and Danville, Virginia. And these players will undoubtedly be joined by many more in the next few years: a recent report says the global indoor farming technology market will be worth $53 billion by 2027, up from $33 billion in 2023.
Despite their environmental promise in some regards, however, vertical farms face some thorny problems. They require millions of dollars in startup funding to get built and ongoing dollars to pay for labor and the massive amounts of electricity they require for lighting, heating, cooling, ventilation, and plumbing. Details are scarce, but it’s likely that some of these costs contributed to critical cash flow issues and a recent Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by Appharvest, which two years ago began shipping tomatoes to major US grocery retailers, such as Walmart and Kroegers.
Another challenge is that indoor farm facilities need carbon dioxide to fuel crop growth. Typically, this comes from a nearby fossil fuel source, and we all know that burning fossil fuel is bad for the environment. In addition, the emissions from those fuels must be filtered to remove gases such as sulfur dioxide, which can harm plants. Because of these factors, many crops produced by vertical farms become more expensive for their owners to produce — and for consumers to buy — than field-grown crops.
But brilliant minds are working to tackle these issues and bring costs down. “Through lean methodologies, optimization, improved inventory forecasting, and a range of other techniques currently being explored, vertical farming and other new food supply initiatives may indeed prove to be as beneficial as they are revolutionary,” writes Kat de Naoum in an overview of the vertical farm industry.
Don’t be surprised if, one day soon, the lettuce in your salad doesn’t come from a field in California, but from a gleaming high-tech factory on the outskirts of your town.
