Are vertical farms efficient?
Vertical farming has been hailed as a potential solution to sustainability issues, allowing increased plant production on land that would otherwise not be suitable for agriculture.
However, because they rely on artificial lighting, there are concerns that the technology could actually have a negative overall impact due to high energy use.
Taking the amount of energy, water, and CO₂ required for production into consideration, do vertical farms make technical and financial sense?
Researchers in the Netherlands are calculating the feasibility of vertical farming in urban areas. “The main goal is to put a figure on vertical farming,” Wageningen University & Research’s Luuk Graamans told FoodNavigator.
The million dollar question: Is vertical farming the solution to feeding more than 9 billion people by 2050?
“In my view, vertical farming can provide a new, additional element to food production.
“It won’t be the final solution to shift everything into the vertical farming model. That simply isn’t the most efficient way of food production,” responded Graamans.
“In order to truly tackle the food issues presented by the UN, for the development towards 2050, the solution will likely have to be a combination of open field production, greenhouse production around cities, and fresh food production in the city.”