My name is Caleb Owen and I am currently in my final year at Harper Adams University studying BSc (Hons) Agriculture. As part of my course, I am required to complete a dissertation. With the wide range of sectors within agriculture to choose from, I opted to look into urban agriculture and more specifically vertical farming. This field has become of growing interest to me due to it being a relatively young sector within agriculture. It offers exciting new opportunities for the industry as well as individuals who are interested in going into urban agriculture.

As it is a young industry I was intrigued to better understand the opinions that various stakeholders within vertical farming have towards the growth and especially the sustainability of their industry. I, therefore, decided to construct a questionnaire in order to understand the opinions and views of various stakeholders and try to determine any similarities as such.

Once my aims were established I underwent a literature review on the subject. I focused mainly on published peer-reviewed articles where I picked out their strengths and weaknesses. I discovered unsurprisingly that there was not much-published literature on vertical farming as it is such a young sector. However, I was surprised to find out that the concept was first mentioned over 100 years ago in a 1915 book by Gilbert Ellis Bailey where he described it as a utopian concept with the system similarly describing that of underground vertical farming in the Netherlands.

I looked into several aspects of vertical farming including its advantages and disadvantages over conventional farming, energy requirements, perceptions of the industry and the challenges and opportunities that are currently facing the industry. Although these were the topics that were mostly covered by the literature, there was still a lack of research. For example, there is a significant lack of information about the perceptions of vertical farming and more specifically the public perception of the industry. From looking at these various topics I drew out possible research gaps that can be looked into in the future. This included conducting more primary research into the sustainability and perceptions of vertical farming.

After conducting the literature review I was better informed in constructing a questionnaire that would help me achieve my targets. I then went to it to construct a short questionnaire that would provide me with as much information as possible about the views and opinions of vertical farming stakeholders. I chose to do this by using an online survey as it was easy to edit as well as being easy to distribute to as many people as possible. I understood from the start that there would not be many vertical farmers within the United Kingdom and therefore I have chosen to contact as many vertical farmers globally in order to make my results as statistically significant as possible. I hope that the results are drawn from my questionnaire highlight the knowledge that the stakeholders have on the sector as well as their concerns about any possible challenges.     

Over the past few months, I have conducted a literature review on the topic and made a short questionnaire in order to better gain an understanding of vertical farmers perceptions on their industry

I would be very grateful if you are able to distribute the questionnaire link that is provided below to your members. The questionnaire should take 5-10 minutes to complete and will close on the 6th of March at 18:00 GMT.

Questionnaire link: https://harper-adams.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/vertical-farmers-perceptions-of-vertical-farming-copy