What is vertical farming?<\/a><\/li>

Down on the robot farm<\/a><\/li>

Could farming without soil help solve the world’s food crisis?<\/a><\/li><\/ul>
If it lives up to its promise, the approach could revolutionise the way humanity feeds itself. That\u2019s why the crew filming the \u2018Humans\u2019 episode of Planet Earth III<\/em> was on site a day after the farm began operating, so that audiences around the world could see for themselves.<\/p>
The episode takes an unflinching look at the effect our species is having on the planet.<\/p>
\u201cThe biggest challenge facing the natural world from the human world, right now, is habitat loss,\u201d explains producer-director Fredi Devas. \u201cAnd the biggest area of habitat destruction comes from agriculture.\u201d<\/p>
Today, half of the world\u2019s habitable land is used for farming. More than three-quarters of that is used to rear animals, yet meat and dairy make up only around a third of the world\u2019s protein supply and provide less than a fifth of its calories.\u00a0<\/p>
As the world\u2019s population grows, our supply of cultivable land is dwindling and we\u2019re encroaching further into other species\u2019 homes. We urgently need to figure out how to keep up with the increasing demand for food. Do vertical farms like the one at Compton hold the key?<\/p>
From seed to shop<\/h2>
At Plenty\u2019s Compton farm, every step of the process, from seed to shipping, is automated. From the moment that a worker tips a bag of seeds into the drum of the seed-sowing machine, the machines take over.<\/p>
First, the seed-sower drops seeds into trays filled with a soil-free coconut husk substrate. The trays are sprinkled with water and whisked away on a conveyor belt for a two-day stint in a darkroom, where they\u2019re kept in humid conditions to encourage the seeds to germinate.<\/p>
Seeds are lightly watered before being transported to a darkroom where conditions are optimised to promote germination. Photo credit: Plenty Unlimited.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
Once the seedlings emerge, the trays are sent to a vast propagation room. Here, the baby plants spend a couple of weeks stacked in horizontal racks, bathed in a carefully curated spectrum of LED light<\/a> and receiving a bespoke cocktail of nutrients that kick-start the growing process.<\/p>
Within two weeks of being sown, the young plants have a robust set of first leaves and their roots have wound their way down through the substrate, forming neat little plugs.<\/p>
A bank of white robot arms, each fitted with a row of pincers, are surprisingly gentle as they pluck the plants and their plugs from their trays. In unison, the arms turn and nestle the plants into evenly spaced holes along a skinny 10m (32ft) section of metal track.<\/p>
Except this isn\u2019t a track, it\u2019s a tower \u2013 a fact that suddenly becomes clear as an enormous yellow robot arm grabs it, swings it through 90\u00b0 and hangs it from the ceiling.<\/p>
From here, the tower trundles down a corridor to the grow room, where it\u2019ll spend the next couple of weeks under precisely controlled light, water and nutrient conditions, gradually advancing along the runners as each of the towers ahead of it is taken off for harvest. By the time it reaches the front of the queue, it\u2019s brimming with plush green leaves.<\/p>
$\"Robot$
Once the plants are ready, a robotic arm fits them into a tower and hangs it from the facility\u2019s ceiling. Photo credit: Plenty Unlimited.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>
Down another corridor, in the harvest room, a robot arm unhooks the tower and lays it flat before zipping it through a set of rotating blades.<\/p>
The harvested leaves tumble through an advanced optical sorting machine, which uses AI and special wavelengths of light to check each leaf for damage. Any that don\u2019t make the grade are popped off the conveyor belt and into the waste pile by a targeted puff of air.<\/p>
The rest are packaged on the spot; since they\u2019ve never been in contact with soil, pesticides or human hands, there\u2019s no need to wash them.<\/p>
The produce harvested here is trucked five minutes down the road to downtown Compton\u2019s Walmart, or to Wholefoods stores around Los Angeles. <\/p>
Plenty\u2019s greens go from seed to shelf in little more than four weeks \u2013 less than half the time it typically takes for the same products grown outdoors. And because everything about their environment is controlled, they can be grown year-round, at peak-season quality.<\/p>
Bright lights<\/h2>
Vertical farming isn\u2019t new. The idea of maximising a given footprint of land\u2019s growing potential by stacking plants indoors was developed in the early 2000s by Columbia University professor Dickson Despommier and students in his medical ecology class. Since then, hundreds of start-ups and investors have attempted to turn the concept into a viable, scalable method of food production, but none have succeeded.<\/p>
\u201cNumber one, they had the wrong architecture,\u201d says Nate Storey, co-founder and chief science officer at Plenty.<\/p>
The artificial lighting that plants need to grow indoors without sunlight produces heat. A lot of it. The brighter the lights, the more heat they produce. Growers have struggled to protect their stacked plants from the heat rising from the layers below and found the cooling costs of vertical farming crippling.<\/p>
$\"Worker$
Vertical towers crammed into a warehouse make for a more efficient use of space than horizontal rows spread across fields. Photo credit: Plenty Unlimited.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
The seed for Storey\u2019s big idea was sown more than 20 years ago, as he tinkered with organic systems at the University of Wyoming. One of his trials involved testing how well plants would grow in towers.<\/p>
\u201cAt a plant level, the performance was terrible,\u201d he says. \u201cBut on a square foot production basis, the performance was very high. And I thought: there\u2019s something to this.\u201d<\/p>
The beauty of truly vertical architecture is that air can circulate freely, allowing natural convection to carry heat up and away, rather than trapping it between horizontal shelves. That switch means Plenty can use powerful LED lighting that mimics the Sun.<\/p>
\u201cWe\u2019re able to put three, four or five times as much energy into the space as someone else can, which means we get three, four, five times as much energy out for every dollar of hardware in the facility,\u201d says Storey. That \u201cenergy out\u201d is the energy the plants use to grow. Five times the energy in; five times the yield.\u00a0<\/p>
The facility at Compton is the culmination of more than nine years of research to optimise every possible aspect of the process and the product, from flavour to crunch. The facility opened on 18 May this year and the Planet Earth III<\/em> crew was there to film it.<\/p>
But persuading a company to let you fly drones around millions of dollars\u2019 worth of brand-new equipment is a tall order. The negotiations took six weeks, with Devas\u2019s proposal going in front of Plenty\u2019s board at least twice.<\/p>
Read more:<\/strong><\/p>
Which vegan milk is best for the environment?<\/a><\/li>
Are there any crops that can be irrigated by salt water?<\/a><\/li>
Is peat-free compost better for the environment?<\/a><\/li><\/ul>
What swung it was a video Devas sent over of the man they had in mind for the job, world-class drone operator Zach Levi-Rodgers, flying drones at breakneck speed in and out of equipment in a gym. \u201cI think from that they understood. \u2018Okay, if he can do that\u2026\u2019 It put their minds at ease,\u201d says Devas.<\/p>
Unusually, for wildlife filmmaking, it was easy to capture smooth, gliding ground shots, thanks to the level floors. But there were new challenges to contend with, including figuring out which camera settings would prevent all the frequencies of light on the farm causing the images to flicker.<\/p>
To meet the farm\u2019s strict food safety standards, four crew members spent an entire day pre-shoot sterilising each piece of equipment: trolleys, gimbals, sliders and rigs, nine cameras, and every last lens cap and screw.<\/p>
On the day of the shoot, they suited up like the farm workers, donned gloves, shoe covers and goggles, and finally stepped through the air-locked door. \u201cIt really genuinely felt like a vision of the future,\u201d says Devas. \u201cIt was very strange to see these towers of produce just moving, with no-one around.\u201d<\/p>
Of course, they couldn\u2019t leave without tasting the goods. \u201cI grow my own food, totally organically, on my allotment,\u201d says Devas. \u201cAnd this food at Plenty tastes absolutely exceptional.\u201d<\/p>
Growth strategies<\/h2>
Plenty\u2019s staff includes nearly 80 plant scientists. It\u2019s their job to decipher the optimal growing conditions for each plant and feed that information back to the company\u2019s more than 100 hardware and software engineers.<\/p>
\u201cPlants are really just little software programs,\u201d says Storey. \u201cThe DNA<\/a> of a plant tells it what to do\u2026 what to build, how to react to the environment around it.\u201d<\/p>
By building a deep understanding of each plant\u2019s physiology, Plenty\u2019s scientists have learned how to push the buttons of the plants\u2019 DNA \u2013 without modifying it \u2013 to program qualities like growth, flavour, texture and nutrition. For instance, hitting a plant with light at the bluer end of the visible spectrum, at the right point in its growth cycle, gives its leaves a satisfying crunch come harvest time.<\/p>
$\"Rows$
LEDs shine specific wavelengths of light at the plants to boost growth and flavour. Photo credit: Plenty Unlimited.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
Plenty has invested heavily in proprietary LED lighting systems that deliver what Storey calls, \u201cthe best parts of the Sun\u201d. Plants thrive on sunlight, but they don\u2019t use the entire spectrum to grow and develop flavour. Using a targeted spectrum of light, Plenty provides every wavelength the plants require, while also reducing the lights\u2019 energy demand and a little of the heat that they generate.<\/p>
Traditional agriculture consumes 70 per cent of the planet\u2019s freshwater each year<\/a>. On the Compton farm, the water supply is controlled on a plant-by-plant basis, and the vapour that evaporates from their leaves is condensed and put back into the irrigation system.<\/p>
The approach means that the farm uses less than a tenth as much water as field-based farms. It\u2019s a major boon in Compton\u2019s drought-stricken home state of California, where the main source of water (the Colorado River) is rapidly running dry. Meanwhile, the sealed environment means the Plenty crop can be grown completely pesticide-free. That means no washing, on the farm or at home, and no agricultural runoff.<\/p>
A step in the right direction<\/h2>
The electricity needed to power and cool farms like the one at Compton mean that, for now, they\u2019re not a silver bullet to the climate crisis. But the grid is greening at a faster rate than anyone predicted, says Storey. Meanwhile, the environmental cost of conventional farming is only rising.<\/p>
Climate instability is already having a disruptive impact on food supply. In the US, extreme weather events such as floods, storms, droughts and wildfires destroyed more than $21 billion worth of crops in 2022, making it the third costliest year on record.<\/p>
But indoor farms are protected from extreme weather, which means they could have an immediate role in climate resilience and food security. Of course, the world can\u2019t live on lettuce alone. And staples such as wheat, and protein crops like soybeans are still a long way off being economically viable in the indoor setup.<\/p>
Nevertheless, as companies like Plenty expand their range of crops, land that was once farmland can be returned to nature, giving it a chance to bounce back.<\/p>
\u201cI view what we\u2019re doing as providing an alternative\u2026 to tilling up more soil, to cutting down more trees,\u201d says Storey. \u201cIf we can take pressure off marginal agricultural lands, and turn those back into wild spaces, that\u2019s the ultimate contribution to biodiversity.\u201d<\/p>
Devas is also cautiously optimistic about vertical farming. A committed vegan who has witnessed, up close, the Amazon rainforest being cleared to make room for cattle grazing, he sees its potential for breaking the link between the growing need for agricultural land and species loss.<\/p>
In the \u2018Making Of\u2019 reel that accompanies Planet Earth III<\/em>\u2019s \u2018Humans\u2019 episode, his impression of Plenty\u2019s Compton farm is caught on camera: \u201cIt does feel like a really good start.\u201d<\/p>
About our experts<\/h2>
Fredi Devas<\/strong> is an Emmy-nominated BBC television producer and director who has worked on iconic science shows such as Frozen Planet<\/em> and the Planet Earth<\/em> series.<\/p>
Nate Storey<\/strong> is the co-founder and chief science officer at Plenty.<\/p>
Read more:<\/strong><\/p>
Food aversion: A psychologist reveals why you hate some foods, but could learn to love them<\/a><\/li>
8 foods to eat for a healthier, happier brain<\/a><\/li>
Does eating spicy food give me acid reflux?<\/a><\/li><\/ul> <\/body><\/html>\n
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Growth strategies<\/h2>Plenty\u2019s staff includes nearly 80 plant scientists. It\u2019s their job to decipher the optimal growing conditions for each plant and feed that information back to the company\u2019s more than 100 hardware and software engineers.<\/p>