Vertical Farms Could Grow All The Wheat We Need

05-08-2020    |    Gizmodo

For years, vertical farming has captured headlines, including on this very website. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday shows the practice could revolutionize the world’s ability to grow wheat.

The global population eats a lot of wheat. It’s the most widely grown crop in the world, and it accounts for approximately 20% of the calories and proteins in the average human diet. As the global population grows, we’ll need more of it to sustain humanity. With arable land a premium, the new study looks at if vertical farming—a method of growing crops in vertically stacked layers—could help.

To find out, the authors created two growth simulation models of a 10-layer vertical farm set up with optimal artificial light, temperatures, and carbon dioxide levels. They found that the simulation could yield up to a whopping 1,940 metric tons of wheat per hectare of ground per year. For context, the current average wheat yield is just 3.2 metric tons per hectare of land.

It makes sense that the authors would be looking into this now. Globally, one in nine people already face hunger, and the problem could become more acute as the population increases. The world could have to produce more than 60% more wheat to account for population growth. That won’t be easy; rising temperatures and other changes in growing seasons driven by the climate crisis are lowering crop yields around the world.

The new study offers an insight into how to address some of these problems. But right now, scientists are only offering simulations. Actually bringing these massive wheat crop yields to fruition would come with massive challenges.

For one, vertical farming is wildly expensive. It requires massive amounts of energy to work, especially because unlike traditional farming, it requires artificial lighting systems. The authors say their simulated systems would provide a light intensity for the crops 30 to 50% greater than directly overhead sunlight. Watering systems and technology to ensure optimal temperature and air quality conditions in these indoor environments would also be costly—not to mention energy-intensive. Depending on how the systems are powered, that could be a problem for the climate. Previous research shows that powering these systems could require vastly more energy than our current high-emissions food system.

“No one has ever attempted to grow food crops under artificial lighting that’s as strong as sunlight, much less strong, for the simple reason that it would require too much energy,” Stan Cox, a scientist and plant breeder at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, said in an email.

The new study’s authors note that recent innovations in solar energy are lowering the costs of electricity and lighting is becoming more efficient, but note crops grown this way are still not likely to be economically competitive with current market prices of agriculture. Cox found that to be an understatement.
“A decade ago, given the amount of light wheat plants require to produce one pound of grain, I calculated that growing the entire U.S. wheat crop indoors would consume eight times the country’s entire annual electricity output,” he said. “That was before recent advances in lighting efficiency. So, hey, maybe it would now use up only four to five times our total electricity supply! For one crop!”

Innovations in automation, the authors note, could further lower the costs of vertical farming. That may be true, but in our current economic system, that could be a problem for farmworkers, who are already seeing their pay get cut. For these reasons and more, vertical farming has been a controversial topic in agricultural and environmental circles.

The new study’s authors note that there are also many unanswered questions about growing wheat in indoor facilities. It’s not clear, for instance, what the nutritional value and quality of indoor-farmed wheat would be, or what diseases could arise in such facilities.

Though their projected crop yields are exciting, even if vertical farming does work, it can’t be the only solution to our agricultural issues. Other systemic changes, including reducing food waste, moving away from meat-centric agricultural systems, diversifying crops, and improving soil health, should also play a role.

“Under specific circumstances, and if the energy cost and profitability issues can be resolved, indoor vertical wheat farming might be attractive,” the authors conclude. “Nonetheless, the outcomes described here may contribute only a relatively small fraction (yet to be determined) of the global grain production needed to achieve global food security in the near future.”

By Dharna Noor

Source: Gizmodo
Photo by Science in HD on Unsplash

Are We Ready For Indoor Wheat Farms?

They Could Feed The World on a Fraction

of The Land Area, But at What Energy Cost?

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By Emma Bryce

July 31, 2020

Bread made from high-rise farms may be a thing of the future. Researchers have found that if we started growing wheat in stacked vertical farms instead of the field, we could generate 600 times more of this grain than traditional farming methods do—all while freeing up huge amounts of land from agriculture. 

But before this could become a reality, we’d need some serious technological innovation to offset the controversially high energy costs of vertical farms. 

Wheat currently supplies 20% of calories and protein for the world’s population, which is projected to grow to 11 billion people by 2100. With that expanding population, we’ll need a 60% increase in the worldwide production of grain. The researchers on the new study wanted to investigate how vertical farming—the production of crops across multiple floors in enclosed buildings—could help to plug that gap. 

To find out, they used a crop simulation tool called DSSAT-NWheat, which projects yield based on the simulated field conditions, incorporating inputs like temperature, light, and water. This simulation showed that if wheat were grown inside a 10-floor vertical farm, covering one hectare of ground land, and under optimal conditions, the crop could generate almost 2000 metric tons of grain per hectare. That’s about 600 times more than the current annual world average of 3.2 metrics tons per hectare. Ramping things up to simulate a 100-floor farm, the researchers showed that the vertical farm could generate 19,400 metric tons of grain per hectare —6000 times more than the average hectare of farmland produces every year.

In some countries, vertical farming is already used to produce foods like lettuce and herbs where plenty can be grown at more confined scales. But crops like wheat—which require more space and typically need a lot of sunshine—haven’t yet been commercially produced in this environment. Showing that we could grow staple crops in this way, instead of only niche foods like salad greens, is an important step.

This massively efficient production approach would generate enough food to feed an expanding world population. By growing food vertically on smaller plots of land, it could also drastically curtail farmland expansion, an enormous source of emissions, and a driver of biodiversity decline. Growing food indoors, under perfectly controlled conditions, would shield crops from the vagaries of climate change and therefore bolster food security. It would also reduce pesticide use, and limit the chances that they’d get into soil and water.

But as the researchers caution, we shouldn’t get too swept up by these possibilities: farming wheat in high-rises—such a tantalizing idea—nevertheless comes with one considerable caveat. The cost, both financially and energy-wise, of artificially lighting up the interior of a vertical farm so that crops can photosynthesize, is enormous, enough to draw a question mark around the viability of this farming method. This is a problem that already haunts vertical farming in general: considering that its image depends partly on the idea that it’s better for the environment, the high energy usage—and consequent emissions contribution—makes it somewhat controversial. The researchers also point out that most field-based cereal farming around the world is heavily subsidized to make it financially viable, so the elevated costs of vertical wheat farming would make it difficult to compete with traditional modes of production. 

Innovation in energy production could go some way to closing this gap. The researchers highlight the growing potential of renewable energy to provide all the light needed to keep crops growing artificially indoors. But even so, if vertical wheat farming does take off, it’s likely to form only a tiny part of the market at first, until we figure out how to make it less costly. And in the meantime, the researchers acknowledge that there are more urgent agricultural challenges to tackle, and which we already know can improve food security and ease the pressures on our planet—such as reducing food waste, and diversifying our food sources so that we’re perhaps not so reliant on single monocrops.

Yet, it may also be the case that entirely separate forces speed up energy innovation and make vertical wheat farming a reality one day. For example, the association between wheat prices and food riots we’ve seen in the past “could be reason enough to develop and install some indoor wheat production facilities,” the researchers suggest. Climate change in regions already beset by food insecurity might also hasten the arrival of bold new farming approaches like this one. 

So, while we might not quite be ready for vertical wheat farming, options like these are likely to become more important in our changing world. “Although it is unlikely that indoor wheat farming will be economically competitive with current market prices in the near future,” the researchers say, “it could play an essential role in hedging against future climate or other unexpected disruptions to the food system.”

Source: Asseng et. al. “Wheat yield potential in controlled-environment vertical farms.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2020.

Vertical Farms Could Grow All The Wheat We Need - But At A Cost

Dharna Noor

July 27, 2020

For years, vertical farming has captured headlines, including on this very website. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday shows the practice could revolutionize the world’s ability to grow wheat.

The global population eats a lot of wheat. It’s the most widely grown crop in the world, and it accounts for approximately 20% of the calories and proteins in the average human diet. As the global population grows, we’ll need more of it to sustain humanity. With arable land a premium, the new study looks at if vertical farming—a method of growing crops in vertically stacked layers—could help.

To find out, the authors created two growth simulation models of a 10-layer vertical farm set up with optimal artificial light, temperatures, and carbon dioxide levels. They found that the simulation could yield up to a whopping 1,940 metric tons of wheat per hectare of ground per year. For context, the current average wheat yield is just 3.2 metric tons per hectare of land.

It makes sense that the authors would be looking into this now. Globally, one in nine people already face hunger, and the problem could become more acute as the population increases. The world could have to produce more than 60% more wheat to account for population growth. That won’t be easy; rising temperatures and other changes in growing seasons driven by the climate crisis are lowering crop yields around the world.

The new study offers an insight into how to address some of these problems. But right now, scientists are only offering simulations. Actually bringing these massive wheat crop yields to fruition would come with massive challenges.

For one, vertical farming is wildly expensive. It requires massive amounts of energy to work, especially because unlike traditional farming, it requires artificial lighting systems. The authors say their simulated systems would provide a light intensity for the crops 30 to 50% greater than directly overhead sunlight. Watering systems and technology to ensure optimal temperature and air quality conditions in these indoor environments would also be costly—not to mention energy-intensive. Depending on how the systems are powered, that could be a problem for the climate. Previous research shows that powering these systems could require vastly more energy than our current high-emissions food system.

“No one has ever attempted to grow food crops under artificial lighting that’s as strong as sunlight, much less stronger, for the simple reason that it would require too much energy,” Stan Cox, a scientist and plant breeder at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, said in an email.

The new study’s authors note that recent innovations in solar energy are lowering the costs of electricity and lighting is becoming more efficient, but note crops grown this way are still not likely to be economically competitive with current market prices of agriculture. Cox found that to be an understatement.

“A decade ago, given the amount of light wheat plants require to produce one pound of grain, I calculated that growing the entire U.S. wheat crop indoors would consume eight times the country’s entire annual electricity output,” he said. “That was before recent advances in lighting efficiency. So, hey, maybe it would now use up only four to five times our total electricity supply! For one crop!”

Innovations in automation, the authors note, could further lower the costs of vertical farming. That may be true, but in our current economic system, that could be a problem for farmworkers, who are already seeing their pay get cut. For these reasons and more, vertical farming has been a controversial topic in agricultural and environmental circles.

The new study’s authors note that there are also many unanswered questions about growing wheat in indoor facilities. It’s not clear, for instance, what the nutritional value and quality of indoor-farmed wheat would be, or what diseases could arise in such facilities.

Though their projected crop yields are exciting, even if vertical farming does work, it can’t be the only solution to our agricultural issues. Other systemic changes, including reducing food waste, moving away from meat-centric agricultural systems, diversifying crops, and improving soil health, should also play a role.

“Under specific circumstances, and if the energy cost and profitability issues can be resolved, indoor vertical wheat farming might be attractive,” the authors conclude. “Nonetheless, the outcomes described here may contribute only a relatively small fraction (yet to be determined) of the global grain production needed to achieve global food security in the near future.”

Dharna Noor

Staff writer, Earther

Lead photo: Wheat being harvested in an open field. It could be a thing of the past someday. By, Christopher Furlong (Getty Images)