Vertical farming isn’t new, but now that it’s reaching industrial scale, farmers need to get their business model right

By DAPHNE LEPRINCE-RINGUET

Tuesday 4 December 2018

Hairnet-equipped, white coverall zipped up, lab boots on and hands both washed and disinfected: Paul Challinor, the co-founder of the Jones Food Company (JFC), is all set. He is about to enter the germination room of the hyper-clean facility in North Lincolnshire where, four weeks ago, JFC started growing its first crops. This is Europe’s largest vertical farm, with crops soaring up over 17 storeys high. And there’s not a spot of soil in sight.

All the crops at JFC are grown hydroponically. Plants are fed the necessary nutrients, diluted in water, with the effect of sunlight created by the eerie, artificial glow of pink-hued, LED lights.

Before he walks in, Challinor still needs to spend a couple of minutes standing in what he calls an “air shower”, to blow off any dust that might be lurking on his exposed hair and skin. “It is crucial that we ensure that our crops don’t get contaminated,” Challinor says, “so that we optimise our production, and provide the highest-quality plants on the market at an industrial scale.”

In the 5,000 square-metre production site – previously a cold store, with high ceilings that provide a perfect setting for a vertical farm – JFC are claiming that they will be able to deliver 420 tonnes of plants per year once the farm reaches full capacity. At this scale, it’s not just the largest vertical farm, it’s right up there with some of the largest in the world, coming close to rivalling AeroFarm’s 6,500 square-metre facility in the US.

Growing underground: the hydroponic farm hidden 33 metres below London

The reason that we need to convert farming from landscape to portrait mode? Food security. The UK’s population is steadily growing at about 0.6 per cent a year – while the country is expected to face a shortfall of two million hectares of farmable land by 2030. Add Brexit into the mix and food security is a significant cause for concern.

In these circumstances, farming methods that don’t rely on traditional agriculture, with its risk of bad harvests because of uncontrollable weather, become very attractive. Last summer, for example, UK consumers saw fruit and vegetable prices rise because farmers struggled to grow crops in high temperatures. The heatwave caused lettuce yields to plummet 25 per cent, while prices went up 22 per cent.

Vertical farms, on the other hand, can produce the same quantity and quality of crops all year round. And they have a significant advantage over greenhouses, too: they take up less space. In theory, they could even operate right at the centre of our cities. Dickson Despommier, professor of public health at Columbia University, draws an apt analogy: “In the context of a densely-populated city, vertical farming is the equivalent of apartment-houses, and greenhouses are similar to single-family houses,” he says.

JFC is one of only a few operational vertical farms in the UK, alongside Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS) in Scotland and the Growing Underground project, which grows crops in a converted air raid shelter below Clapham Common in London.

Neat in theory, vertical farming is more difficult in practice. Plenty of vertical farming projects have gone bust around the world. Podponics and Farmed Here are just two examples of the many projects that failed in past years. Experts say there are plenty of reasons why vertical farms are struggling commercially - and fail.

Rhydian Beynon-Davies, head of novel growing systems at horticultural research organisation Stockbridge Technology Centre (STC), explains previous failures: “Startups come into the industry with too little knowledge of it,” he says. “There isn’t enough knowledge transfer between different sectors. So they aren’t capable of building appropriate business models”.

Vertical farming is an integrated system with different variables, he continues. You have to think of lighting, humidity, air flow, irrigation, and many more. To manage all of those, many skills from different sectors have to be brought together.

STC’s goal is to attract those different skills and bridge between them. The centre has two small vertical farms, where developers can trial and test their technology. “We can generate data about the efficiency of different systems,” says Beynon-Davies. “The ultimate goal is to have a visible supply chain, to make business planning much easier.”

Peter Lane, the founder of CEAR&D, a research and development firm dedicated to controlled-environment agriculture, concurs. “There is a lack of understanding of the complexities of vertical farming,” he says. “It’s like trying to build a house only with a plumber. The plumbing work may be perfect, but the rest will fall apart.”

To try and avoid this pitfall, JFC struck a partnership with Current – a division of General Electric – to manage the LED lighting technology. Current’s lighting solution is only used in one other vertical farm in the UK – and that’s one of the two facilities at the STC. “At the moment Current is ahead of other systems,” says STC chief executive Graham Ward. Current claims that its system generates 33 per cent less heat than competitive products, which means the cooling process is less energy-greedy.

In an industry where energy use is estimated to make up for 20 to 30 per cent of the total production cost, that’s key. “We learned before going into this that the main reason for companies going bust was electricity,” says James Lloyd-Jones, JFC’s managing director. That’s why the farm also uses solar panels to reduce its electricity bills; it is currently 20 per cent carbon neutral and aims to become entirely self-sufficient.

The JFC team is confident that the site is set to become a commercial success – but you shouldn’t expect JFC-made tomatoes or cucumbers anytime soon. The farm is currently growing herbs and leafy greens, like most vertical farms. Technically it’s possible to grow any plant – but basil, dill, chives and the like are a lot more financially viable, mostly because they are smaller and can be grown at scale.

“The market is built for certain products that we wish to focus on,” says Challinor. “This is the first stage. Only once we have a viable and consistent business, will we look at growing more consumer crops.”

It’s clearly not just the technology that’s a challenge for vertical farms; getting the business model right is a heavy lift too. For Lloyd-Jones, however, it’s only a matter of time: in ten years, he says, we could see vertical farms completely replace greenhouses.