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Could Vertical Farming Help Avoid Brexit Supply Issues?
Hydroponic farming uses water rather than soil to grow plants
Hydroponic Farming Uses Water Rather
Than Soil To Grow Plants
11 Dec 2020
Agriculture & Consumer Affairs Correspondent
Ireland's network of disused mushroom houses could be the ideal infrastructure to develop a hydroponic farm system which could in turn reduce our dependence on imports of herbs, salads and small greens.
It uses much less water than conventional growing, a tiny amount of space and is immune from adverse weather conditions because it is indoors.
One farm in Tipperary has started the transition. Near Ballyporeen, one of eight mushroom tunnels is now converted into a vertical farm.
Brian O’Reilly had been growing mushrooms for almost two decades, but tight margins and an anxiety over the potential impact of Brexit made him change course.
"The risks were too high so we decided to step back. Tighter margins were number one and Brexit was the number two reason, and labour was a problem too," he said.
Now, he has turned to basil. His first crop will be harvested in the coming days and will be sold into the catering industry.
Mr O'Reilly said the process of growing herbs and small greens is similar to mushrooms. There is a cycle and within 32 days from planting a seed, the basil is finished.
It is grown in tiny pods on shelves with the roots stretching down to nutrient-rich water. Bright LED lights encourage the growth, as does hot air blowing into the tunnel.
A wind turbine nearby generates the electricity and a hot humid house means the plant thrive. But the lights are also powered down for hours in order to let the plants sleep.
It looks a million miles from any conventional farm. The tunnel is filled with rows of white plastic shelves, with tiny holes through which the plants appear. Water is circulating under the shelves and overhead there are strips of lighting; white, red and blue.
It is bright and humid with the constant hum of air being pumped in and there is a gentle trickle of water flowing through the system.
Farmony, an Irish technology company, has developed the technology being used in Ballyporeen.
It has built farms in several countries and said the system could make Ireland self-sufficient in herbs and small greens within a few years.
Farmony's John Paul Prior said the range of plants that can be grown is vast and goes way beyond herbs.
He said: "In Ireland, we grow between May and September/October. Imagine if you could recreate that perfect summer's day all-year round.
"That is what we are doing with controlled environment farming, so we could come close to self-sufficient with all your leafy greens, all your microgreens and all your herbs."
Ireland imports the vast bulk of those products and the development offers a huge opportunity to expand the horticulture sector in Ireland.
It is environmentally positive too. If mushrooms houses are used, it is utilising something that has limited suitability for anything else. Farmony claims that the system uses 90% less water than conventional farming methods and is pesticide free too.
The tunnel in Ballyporeen is part funded by the Department of Agriculture as a pilot project and Mr O'Reilly is already testing crops other than basil.
"We are growing microgreens, peashoots and coriander at the moment. We are experimenting with them, we can change our model at any time and grow to what the customer wants," he said.
"When you think of it, this basil which we are growing would normally be imported, sometimes from thousands of miles away, from Morocco, Kenya, Israel, Spain or the UK. We are replacing that. The food miles are being dramatically reduced and we can do it without worrying about the weather outside."
Abandoned mushroom farms are dotted all over the country. There were more than 400 growers at one point, now there are just a few dozen. It is a tight margin business, which is dominated by a few companies and is almost entirely export dependent.
Last year, Ireland exported €102m worth of mushrooms. Up to September this year, we exported more than €82m worth of mushrooms.
Any delays at ports after Brexit could have a huge impact on delivering fresh product to supermarkets in the UK. The possible imposition of tariffs is also an issue.
The Government wants to expand Ireland's horticultural offering. It is lower emitting than sectors such as beef and dairy and there is huge scope for expansion.
Often, our climate is an issue. We have a shorter growing season than other countries and they can also offer scale and a cheaper cost base.
There are some areas of Ireland which grow high quality vegetables, but it is a sector in decline over recent years.
The dominance of the big multiples as the primary buyers has tightened margins and many growers complain that the sector is controlled by too few buyers. Up to September this year, Ireland imported €146m worth of vegetables alone.
Its dependence on UK imports of potatoes and other vegetables could be a problem after Brexit, but it is something which the sector is aware of.
Farmony hopes that developing a network of vertical farms could dramatically reduce our food miles, reduce a reliance on imports and also create jobs and revitalise a declining sector.
UNITED KINGDOM: Bring On The Post-Brexit Vertical Farming Revolution
Vertical Farming, where you grow indoors and control the environment — the temperature, light, CO2 — has been expanding rapidly in recent years. Given the UK’s changing place in international supply chains, and the government’s desire to encourage British companies to lead in developing technologies, vertical farming is just the sort of industry we need
22 October 2020
Chris Davies chief executive of Harvest London
As the UK and the EU stretch out yet another week of “will they or won’t they?” over a trade deal, like a painfully unromantic episode of Neighbours (no jokes about Australian models, please), businesses are not only trying to plan for what happens in January but also questioning how much we should rely on goods moving seamlessly in and out of the country.
In relatively recent times, it was common to say that the internet and highly developed international supply chains had abolished distance. This was always an oversimplification — and at a time when the global business community is worried about trade wars and tariffs, it seems hopelessly idealistic. Borders are back and with them the possibility of big delays.
Waiting an extra few days for your electronics or new shoes to arrive from China may not seem like too much of an imposition, but not all sectors are affected equally. One area where time and distance matter more than most is food — as I have discovered since starting a vertical farming company in East London two years ago.
Vertical Farming, where you grow indoors and control the environment — the temperature, light, CO2 — has been expanding rapidly in recent years. This has been driven in large part by environmentally conscious consumers attracted by the fact that it uses much less water than traditional agriculture, and no pesticides. These are very good points, but another factor is becoming ever more important: proximity to your customer.
You’re probably aware that the UK imports a lot of the food it consumes. According to official statistics, just over half of the food we eat comes from our own farming and fishing industries, but this figure is much lower if you account for ingredients that are grown elsewhere and then processed in the UK. Should we care? After all, extensive consumer choice all year round is very popular.
UK supermarkets offer green beans from Kenya, cherry tomatoes from Spain, and pineapples from Costa Rica to customers because there is plenty of demand. Eating more seasonal British food is gaining popularity, but it seems unlikely our cosmopolitan tastes will vanish altogether.
That’s where vertical farming comes in. We like the variety of cuisines we can enjoy in London, particularly the little luxuries that have come to mean so much more as we’ve spent the last few months cooped up in our homes. The green curry takeaway that you look forward to all week wouldn’t taste as good without Thai basil, your Vietnamese Pho would lack something without fresh coriander.I mention herbs that originate from warmer climates in particular because, even though farmers do grow them in the UK, we tend to import them.
They are delicate, carry a lot of flavor in a small volume, and don’t grow very high. That makes them ideal for vertical farming — in our case in a converted industrial unit in East London, built with hardware from Yorkshire. Being able to put vertical farms close to city centers, near customers (which for us are restaurants), means the reduction in food miles can be massive: lower carbon footprint, and no customs forms to fill in or tariffs to pay.
Vertical farming doesn’t compete with traditional farming, which will continue to produce the overwhelming bulk of food grown in the UK. Just as new technology, and new ideas, greatly increased agricultural production starting in the eighteenth century, so vertical farming can use technology to expand how and where we can grow the food we want, more sustainably.
Given the UK’s changing place in international supply chains, and the government’s desire to encourage British companies to lead in developing technologies, vertical farming is just the sort of industry we need.
Lead photo: Vertical farming can use technology to expand how and where we can grow the food we want, more sustainably (via Getty Images)
Expert Input Can Boost Yields For Vertical Farming
Designing, constructing and integrating new facilities that live up to vertical farming’s many promises calls for the right kind of knowhow, says Ian Hart, business development director at adi Projects
3rd September 2020
Designing, constructing, and integrating new facilities that live up to vertical farming’s many promises calls for the right kind of know-how, says Ian Hart, business development director at adi Projects.
For almost 12,000 years, humankind has found increasingly ingenious ways to convert the natural forces at play on Planet Earth into an ever more bountiful, diverse and predictable source of sustenance.
And, as global and national populations have grown historically and in particular, in recent decades, the issue of food security has always hovered somewhere in the background. Today, although we’re by no means on the brink of a Malthusian catastrophe, the idea that the UK might at some stage struggle to feed itself has taken on a new relevance.
We’ve always been used to the supermarket shelves being full. But the early stages of lockdown betrayed the reality that supply chains are highly sensitive not only to the onset of a pandemic but to economic and environmental shocks.
Imperfect storm
Putting COVID to one side, the UK is staring those other two factors square in the face. We currently import approximately 80% of our food, including real basics, such as carrots, but, in Brexit, we are on the verge of a significant dislocation between ourselves and our biggest and closest trading partners who also happen to supply 30% of the total.
And, while Brexit may cause short-to-medium term disruptions, presupposing an eventual agreement on future trade, the risks posed by the environment seem baked in for decades to come.
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Scottish vertical farming startup harvests £5.4m in funding
Extreme weather events, such as significant flooding which has quadrupled since 1980, can harm livestock and spoil crops. On the other side of the coin, water inefficiency and scarcity are issues in many parts of the world, as agriculture competes increasingly with industry and domestic use.
Rising temperatures are playing havoc with growing seasons and sparking ever more wildfires that can devastate farms, even when the flames don’t actually reach them.
So, the commercial risks are there for producers. Supply chains are fragile, meaning that businesses dependent on imported produce may be unable to meet the service levels demanded by the supermarkets – even in the short-term – and then scramble for unsustainable and often very costly workarounds.
Removing risk
Vertical farming facilities are the subject of increased interest in the industry. Climate-controlled facilities enable producers to regulate the variables of the environment and avoid pollution to grow produce of a consistently high standard and at predictably higher yields.
The vertical farm projects we have worked on are very hygienic, removing fungal and bacterial risks and the threat from all manner of pests. And, run on LEDs and recycling very high proportions of the water they use back into their processes, energy costs can be minimized, there is no need for water to be chemically treated and producers can extricate themselves from any sense that the taps might one day dry up.
Locally sited facilities mean the vagaries of geopolitics and international trade agreements are no longer an issue. And, as importantly, locating one close to a waste-to-energy plant would enable you to harness its heat and CO2 to aid the growing process.
The UK currently imports around 80% of its food
So, vertical farming has a real role to play in helping create circular economies at the local level.
While no means a silver bullet, in our experience vertical farms do solve many of the problems of contemporary food production and have the potential to help brands forge solid reputations as innovators and on sustainability.
But, so great are its potential upsides, one might quite reasonably ask why the shift to vertical farming isn’t gathering pace at a steadier rate. The answer, I believe, lies in a perceived lack of expertise in this country at getting such projects off the ground.
A specialist business
For all the simple answers the technology offers, the processes involved are highly sophisticated and capital intensive. Often it is only businesses with the means who go beyond the initial feasibility stages but, even then, they require specialist assistance.
The design and construction of the facilities themselves are highly complex. Different vegetable, fruits, and greens each require their own zoning and specific climatic conditions, and each of the different vertical levels – up to nine in some cases – has to create and sustain its own unique characteristics.
The electrical and robotic systems running the lighting and hydroponics are as innovative as anything in the sector and that’s before one overcomes the challenges of integrating the entire operation.
So, I’d advise companies exploring their options on vertical farming to go back to basics. If you can get those right from the outset and ensure you have continuity throughout the project, you can not only remove risk during planning and construction and for the duration of the facility’s lifecycle but also enjoy certainty on cost and program during the set-up phases.
Ian Hart is business development director at adi Projects
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