{"id":15763,"date":"2022-07-24T05:00:23","date_gmt":"2022-07-24T03:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sciencefocus.com\/?p=123098"},"modified":"2022-07-24T05:17:09","modified_gmt":"2022-07-24T03:17:09","slug":"vertical-farming-why-stacking-crops-high-could-be-the-future-of-agriculture","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/rss_feed\/vertical-farming-why-stacking-crops-high-could-be-the-future-of-agriculture\/","title":{"rendered":"Vertical farming: Why stacking crops high could be the future of agriculture"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Luis Villazon\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Sunday, 24 July 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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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.<\/p>\n

Plants are grown in completely enclosed conditions, with LED lights replacing sunshine and closed-loop water recycling. There is no need for pesticides<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Salad leaves and strawberries are small plants with large profit margins, but cereal crops \u2013 like wheat and corn \u2013 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 \u00a318, just for the electricity to power the LED lighting, according to a study at Cornell University<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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LED lighting is the current most efficient form of artificial lighting for use in vertical farms \u00a9 Getty images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

Solar panels on the roof and walls of the building are not enough to make vertical farms self-sufficient. But indoor agriculture allows farming to be integrated directly into cities, reducing food miles. It is more efficient to transport electricity from rural solar farms to a city and grow the food close to where people live. This closed-loop growing cycle<\/a> could be much less polluting to the environment too, and may even be the answer to supplying human settlements on the Moon or Mars.<\/p>\n