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Green Skyscrapers That Add A Touch of Nature + Sustainability To Modern Architecture!
Polish designers Pawel Lipiński and Mateusz Frankowsk created The Mashambas Skyscraper, a vertical farm tower, that is in fact modular!
06/09/2021
Skyscrapers have taken over most of the major cities today. They’re symbols of wealth and power! And most of the skylines today are adorned with glistening glass skyscrapers. They are considered the face of modern architecture. Although all that glass and dazzle can become a little tiring to watch. Hence, architects are incorporating these tall towers with a touch of nature and greenery! The result is impressive skyscrapers merged with an element of sustainability. These green spaces help us maintain a modern lifestyle while staying connected to nature. We definitely need more of these green skyscraper designs in our urban cities!
Zaha Hadid Architects designed a pair of impressive skyscrapers that are linked by planted terraces, for Shenzhen, China. Named Tower C, the structure is 400 metres in height and is supposed to be one of the tallest buildings in the city. The terraces are filled with greenery and aquaponic gardens! They were built to be an extension of a park that is located alongside the tower and as a green public space.
Polish designers Pawel Lipiński and Mateusz Frankowsk created The Mashambas Skyscraper, a vertical farm tower, that is in fact modular! The tower can be assembled, disassembled and transported to different locations in Africa. It was conceptualised in an attempt to help and encourage new agricultural communities across Africa. The skyscraper would be moved to locations that have poor soil quality or suffer from droughts, so as to increase crop yield and produce.
The Living Skyscraper was chosen among 492 submissions that were received for the annual eVolo competition that has been running since 2006. One of the main goals of the project is to grow a living skyscraper on the principle of sustainable architecture. The ambitious architectural project has been envisioned for Manhattan and proposes using genetically modified trees to shape them into literal living skyscrapers. It is designed to serve as a lookout tower for New York City with its own flora and fauna while encouraging ecological communications between office buildings and green recreation centers. The building will function as a green habitable space in the middle of the concrete metropolis.
ODA’s explorations primarily focus on tower designs, in an attempt to bring versatility and a touch of greenery to NY’s overtly boxy and shiny cityscape. Architectural explorations look at residential units with dedicated ‘greenery zones’ that act as areas of the social congregation for the building’s residents. Adorned with curvilinear, organic architecture, and interspersed with greenery, these areas give the residents a break from the concrete-jungle aesthetic of the skyscraper-filled city. They act as areas of reflection and of allowing people to connect with nature and with one another.
Heatherwick Studio built a 20-storey residential skyscraper in Singapore called EDEN. Defined as “a counterpoint to ubiquitous glass and steel towers”, EDEN consists of a vertical stack of homes, each amped with a lush garden. The aim was to create open and flowing living spaces that are connected with nature and high on greenery.
Designed by UNStudio and COX Architecture, this skyscraper in Melbourne, Australia features a pair of twisting towers placed around a ‘green spine’ of terraces, platforms, and verandahs. Called Southbank by Beulah, the main feature of the structure is its green spine, which functions as the key organizational element of the building.
Mad Arkitekter created WoHo, a wooden residential skyscraper in Berlin. The 98-meter skyscraper will feature 29 floors with different spaces such as apartment rentals, student housing, a kindergarten, bakery, workshop, and more. Planters and balconies and terraces filled with greenery make this skyscraper a very green one indeed!
Algae as energy resources are in their beginnings and are seen as high potential. Extensive research work has dealt with algae as an energy source in recent decades. As a biofuel, they are up to 6 times more efficient than e.g. comparable fuels from corn or rapeseed. The Tubular Bioreactor Algae Skyscraper focuses on the production of microalgae and their distribution using existing pipelines. Designed by Johannes Schlusche, Paul Böhm, Raffael Grimm, the towers are positioned along the transalpine pipeline in a barren mountain landscape. Water is supplied from the surrounding mountain streams and springs, and can also be obtained from the Mediterranean using saltwater.
Tesseract by Bryant Lau Liang Cheng proposes an architecture system that allows residents to participate in not just the design of their own units; but the programs and facilities within the building itself. This process is inserted between the time of purchase for the unit and the total time required to complete construction – a period that is often ignored and neglected. Through this process, residents are allowed to choose their amenities and their communities, enhancing their sense of belonging in the process. Housing units will no longer be stacked in repetition with no relation whatsoever to the residents living in it – a sentimental bond between housing and men results.
In a world devoid of greenery, Designers Nathakit Sae-Tan & Prapatsorn Sukkaset have envisioned the concept of Babel Towers, mega skyscrapers devoted to preserving horticultural stability within a single building. The Babel towers would play an instrumental role in the propagation of greenery in and around the area. These towers would also become attraction centers for us humans, like going to a zoo, but a zoo of plants. Seems a little sad, saying this, but I do hope that we never reach a day where the Babel Tower becomes a necessity. I however do feel that having towers like these now, in our cities, would be a beautiful idea. Don’t you think so too?
BRITISH COLUMBIA: Whistler Harvest Corp. Announces Launch of Operations
The Company was founded in March 2021 and began growing its signature microgreens, salad mixes, and gourmet mushrooms in early April. The Company provides its customers with microgreens and mushrooms the same day that they are harvested all year-round
Pemberton, BC Canada - May 20, 2021 - Whistler Harvest Corp., an indoor vertical farming company based in the Sea-to-Sky region of British Columbia, is pleased to announce that is launched and harvesting its first crops.
The Company was founded in March 2021 and began growing its signature microgreens, salad mixes, and gourmet mushrooms in early April. The Company provides its customers with microgreens and mushrooms the same day that they are harvested all year-round. Our products are available at our Pemberton farm, selected farmer markets, restaurants, and online.
The microgreens market is driven by chefs that use them as flavor enhancements and as colorful garnishes on their plates but there is another niche industry that pushes new growth within this segment, cosmetics. These microgreens are processed into oils and ingredients for consumer items like shampoo and skincare products. Microgreens contain a lot of vitamin A&B in addition to many other micro-elements, making them very attractive ingredients for personal care product manufacturers.
Local. Fresh. Now. Our mission to create meaningful relationships with the food we nurture and to strive on providing locally grown, healthy food for our communities. Every day is a perfect day inside our farm.
Whistler Harvest Corp.
(phone) 778.569.0717
(email) sales@whistlerharvest.ca
P A D D Y S M Y T H
Were Medieval Cities Greener? Urban Agriculture In The Middle Ages
Cities have grown so rapidly in the past century that we tend to forget that, until the late nineteenth century, the vast majority of people actually lived in rural settings
By Lucie Laumonier
Cities have grown so rapidly in the past century that we tend to forget that, until the late nineteenth century, the vast majority of people actually lived in rural settings. Even just one hundred years ago, most of the suburbs of large modern cities were completely rural.
In the Middle Ages, cities comprised a large population of farmers, ploughmen, and agriculturalists who worked in close vicinity to urban spaces. Most cities’ outskirts included an important portion of estates dedicated to agriculture where urban peasants laboured. However, one of the key characteristics of any city is that the food it produces does not suffice to feed its population. Medieval cities thus had to import most of the foodstuff required to sustain their citizens, even if a portion of it was produced locally.
Medieval cities were also full of gardens and vegetable beds that people cultivated for their own sustenance or for extra revenues. This preoccupation with urban agriculture is evident in Le Ménagier, a housekeeping guide written by a fourteenth-century gentleman from Paris for his young wife which included several sections about gardens. This was done in part so that his wife would “have some knowledge on horticulture and gardening, grafting in the proper season, and keeping roses in winter.”
This article looks at the urban farmers of medieval France and discusses the roles of the gardens that were found throughout medieval cities.
Urban peasants: How Many Were There?
Medieval population estimates depend on the nature of available sources, few of which were drafted for demographic purposes. Wills and fiscal sources are often the main indicators of a population’s stratification. In the town of Manresa, Catalonia, 13.5% of fifteenth-century taxpayers were farmers. This proportion is relatively low, especially compared to the large city of Montpellier, Languedoc, which counted more than 30,000 inhabitants on the eve of the Black Death. There, 22% of the 1380-1480 taxpayers were farmers or gardeners.
The data thus suggests that one in five late medieval urban dwellers in Montpellier practised agriculture. But, except for the gardeners, we have no concrete information about the actual work the farmers performed. We do not know for instance what proportion specialized in cattle or sheep rearing; how many were mainly producing wine or cereals. We do not know either how many owned the fields they tilled, how many farmed the estates of others, or how many had no land and no job security, and hopped from farm to farm looking for work.
A gardener from around the year 1425, depicted in the Housebooks of Nuremberg – Amb. 317.2 fol. 8v
Part-Time Urban Farmers
Few work contracts were made by the urban peasantry. In Marseille, Provence, 10% of the fourteenth-century work contracts analysed by Francine Michaud concerned farming and agriculture. The figure is low but compares to the data I collected for Montpellier in Languedoc. The reason for such a small figure is that agriculture, in general, seldom prompted the drafting of a work contract, even in rural settings where it was the primary occupation of workers. Since agricultural work was seasonal in nature, it rarely called for the legal guarantees long-term work contracts required.
In the Montpellier sources, some self-identified urban peasants juggled different jobs, suggesting that agriculture was not, in fact, their full-time occupation. Some men described themselves as “agriculturalist and gardener”. Two men were “carpenter and ploughmen;” one taxpayer worked as “musician and ploughman and public crier;” one was a “glove maker and ploughman;” while another was listed as a “ploughman and fishmonger.” It is possible that agriculture was their primary occupation but that they had a side activity to make ends meet.
But it is also possible these workers took on agricultural work during harvest season as a way to supplement their earnings coming from their other activity. Medieval city dwellers often owned small pieces of land they rented out or cultivated in their free time. In the town of Castelnaudary, near Toulouse, 95% of the fourteenth-century taxpaying inhabitants owned at least some agricultural land. The rate was 91.5% in the fifteenth century. Most of these landowners held very small estates (less than 2 hectares), which would not have sufficed to sustain their families. Nonetheless, these lands did offer the guarantee of some sustenance to their owners.
Urban Gardens for the Poor and the Wealthy
Vegetables, fruits, and various herbs had always been cultivated in cities for practical and sustenance purposes. Cities were covered with backyard vegetable beds in which people planted cabbage, carrots, peas, and other products they would eat. Historian Jerry Stannard dubbed such vegetable beds “kitchen gardens” and underlines that “the produce of the smallest, most crudely tilled plot was preferable to nothing at all,” in that they provided “free” food to their owners. Besides vegetables, artisans and workers also planted (grew) medicinal plants.
However, the existence of kitchen gardens often depended on the population density of cities and on the demographic context. At times of demographic pressure, when cities were full, the spaces taken up by the gardens and vegetable patches of the poor were used for housing. The size and number of such gardens therefore decreased. But when the population declined, such as after the Black Death, unoccupied lots and abandoned houses were turned into vegetable beds to help sustain more modest households. Today still, depopulation in cities sometimes prompts the reconversion of available lands into gardens and parks.
Unthreatened by demographic changes were the patrician gardens that belonged to the wealthier inhabitants of cities. These gardens were usually of the mixed type, containing edible and medicinal plants as well as ornamental species cultivated for their beauty and delightful scents. Ornamental gardens were heavily featured in medieval literature (which teems with scenes unfolding in gardens), where protagonists engaged in all sorts of activities — preferably courting a lady or discussing philosophy with allegorical figures. The Romance of the Rose is a fitting example of such.
An illustration from Roman de La Rose, depicting a fountain and a stream pouring outwards from the centre of the garden – Wikimedia Commons
Ornamental Gardens: Aromatherapy and the Pleasure of the Senses
Ornamental gardens gained traction (in popularity) after the devastations of the plague and its ulterior episodes. The scientific belief that nasty vapours carrying miasmas had caused the disease, as the airborne transmission of plague through droplets had been acknowledged by medieval physicians, fuelled the idea that gardens had the power to clean up the air. Gardens, in short, had a curative power one should not ignore. Through their odour, wrote Italian physician Marsilio Ficino in the second half of the fifteenth century, flowers and plants “restore and invigorate you on all sides, as if by the breath and spirit of the life of the world.”
The curative virtues of gardens worked in two ways, notes historian Carol Rawcliffe. On the one hand, the smell of flowers restores health by strengthening the heart, while on the other it works as a prophylactic agent. Medieval scientists recommended the scent of roses and violets as a form of protection against the plague. The perfume of violets was also prescribed to treat headaches, fevers, and skin diseases. Fourteenth-century physician John of Burgundy therefore recommended “to smell roses, violets, and lilies” before leaving one’s home in times of plague to avoid catching the disease.
Even more ambitious was physician Ibn Khatimah, who had witnessed the devastations of the Black Death in Andalusia. He argued that cities should protect themselves from the plague through the intensive cultivation of sweet-smelling plants around their boundaries. This physical barrier against the disease could then be enhanced by the stockpiling of plants to prevent its vapours from reaching the cities’ dwellers. In their homes, town dwellers could scatter freshly cut herbs and flowers on the floor to clear the air; and “refresh” their straw mattresses with the addition of lavender and other plants.
Besides the curative virtues listed above, medieval physicians also believed flowers to be beneficial to mental health. Walking in gardens, smelling and looking at flowers uplifted people’s morale, which in turn had positive effects on their general health. Moderate exercise and strolls in gardens or, when possible, in the countryside, cured both the soul and the body. The reason why medieval hospitals kept gardens in their precincts were both practical (cultivating the medicine and food they needed) and philosophical, thus enabling the sick to breathe some fresh air and engage in light yet invigorating activities.
Medieval cities were surrounded by agricultural estates. Within their walls, the urban space was partly covered with gardens that belonged to the wealthy, to hospitals and convents. In humbler neighbourhoods, the extent land was taken up by private gardens depended on the period of time and the density of the city in question. The fewer the inhabitants of a city, the more numerous its gardens tended to be. Besides their role in alimentation, gardens, ornamental ones especially, also had medicinal virtues for the soul and the body. In the Middle Ages, smelling the roses was to be taken literally.
Lucie Laumonier is an Affiliate assistant professor at Concordia University. Click here to view her Academia.edu page or follow her on Instagram at The French Medievalist.
SINGAPORE: Green Fingers For GKE As It Moves Into Indoor Farming Obtains License From SFA
Warehousing and logistics company GKE Corporation, via its wholly-owned subsidiary GKE Agritech, has received its farm license from the Singapore Food Authority to commercialize indoor farming.
Lim Hui Jie
March 30, 2021
Warehousing and logistics company GKE Corporation, via its wholly-owned subsidiary GKE Agritech, has received its farm license from the Singapore Food Authority to commercialize indoor farming.
The receipt of the farm license allows GKE Agritech to grow and sell its produce commercially in Singapore.
In a press release on Mar 30, GKE explained that with consumers becoming increasingly aware of healthy living, there is a higher demand for better quality and higher nutritional value produce.
This, together with Singapore’s dependence on imported food, motivated it to broaden its businesses into agriculture, it said.
GKE took into account, among others, that its strategic investment in GKE Agritech would enable it to achieve better utilization of its office premises and to align with the Singapore Government’s initiative to produce 30% of the nation’s nutritional needs locally by 2030.
The company revealed that its unutilized office premise located at 6 Pioneer Walk has since been converted into an indoor farm, and has obtained approvals from all relevant authorities to grow vegetables indoors.
It added it has adopted the controlled-environment agriculture approach, where automation and sensors are deployed to provide protection and maintain optimal growing conditions throughout the development of the crop.
GKE then said the initial focus of GKE Agritech is to grow kale as its key product for local consumption and believes that indoor cultivation of kale will provide consistency in the quality and quantity of pesticide-free vegetables,
Neo Cheow Hui, CEO and Executive Director of GKE explained that the kale is cultivated indoors vertically via a racking system, which allows the company to enjoy higher utilization of the office space.
Furthermore, Neo said the current cultivation area for kale is about 2,400 square feet, and with the farm license, the company is looking to increase the cultivation area gradually to 12,500 square feet.
As the business of GKE Agritech is still at an early stage, GKE does not expect this to have any material contribution to the Group in the current financial year ending 31 May 2021, and said it will update shareholders on material developments as and when they arise.
Kimbal Musk’s Quest To Start One Million Gardens
The tech veteran and restaurateur (and brother of Elon) has been preaching the ‘real food’ gospel for years — and his newest project may be his most ambitious yet
MARCH 20, 2021
The tech veteran and restaurateur (and brother of Elon) has been preaching the ‘real food’ gospel for years — and his newest project may be his most ambitious yet
By ALEX MORRIS
Million Gardens Movement
On the day he almost died, Kimbal Musk had food on the brain. The internet startup whiz, restaurateur, and younger brother of Tesla’s Elon had just arrived in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, from a 2010 TED conference where chef Jamie Oliver had spoken about the empowerment that could come from healthy eating. This was something Musk thought about a lot — food’s untapped potential, how he might be a disruptor in the culinary space — but beyond expanding his farm-to-table ethos along with his restaurant empire, Musk hadn’t yet cracked the code. Then he went sailing down a snowy slope on an inner tube going 35 miles an hour and flipped over, snapping his neck. The left side of his body was paralyzed. Doctors told the father of three that he was lucky: Surgery might bring movement back.
“I remember telling myself, ‘It’s all going to be fine,’ and then realizing that tears were streaming down the side of my face,” he says. “I was like, ‘Yeah, OK. I don’t really know what’s going on. I’m just going to, you know, let things go.’”
Musk, 48, eventually made a full recovery, but it involved spending two months on his back, which gave him plenty of time to think about the intersections of food, tech, and philanthropy. Since then, he has launched an initiative to put “learning gardens” in public schools across America (now at 632 schools and counting); courted Generation Z into the farming profession by converting shipping containers into high-tech, data-driven, year-round farms; spoken out vociferously against unethical farming practices and vociferously for the beauty and community of slow food; and this year, on the first day of spring, is kicking off a new campaign with Modern Farmer’s Frank Giustra to create one million at-home gardens in the coming year.
Aimed at reaching low-income families, the Million Gardens Movement was inspired by the pandemic, as both a desire to feel more connected to nature and food insecurity have been at the forefront of so many people’s lives. “We were getting a lot of inquiries about gardening from people that had never gardened before,” says Giustra. “People were looking to garden for a bunch of reasons: to supplement their budget, because there was a lot of financial hardship, to help grow food for other people, or just to cure the boredom that came with the lockdown. To keep people sane, literally keep people sane, they turned to gardening.”
The program offers free garden kits that can be grown indoors or outdoors and will be distributed through schools that Musk’s non-profit, Big Green, has already partnered with. It also offers free curriculum on how to get the garden growing and fresh seeds and materials for the changing growing seasons. “I grew up in the projects when I was young, in what we now call food deserts,” says EVE, one of the many celebrities who have teamed up with the organization to encourage people to pick up a free garden or to donate one. “What I love about this is that it’s not intimidating. Anyone can do this, no matter where you come from, no matter where you live. We are all able to grow something.”
Rolling Stone recently talked with Musk about the Million Gardens Movement, why shipping containers can grow the most perfect basil, and how he is channeling his family’s trademark disruptor drive to change America’s relationship with food.
How did you first get interested in food and then how did that grow into an interest in agricultural innovation?
I’ve always loved food. I started cooking for my family when I was 12, maybe even 11.
What was the first meal you made? Do you remember?
It’s actually funny. My mother is a wonderful person, great dietitian, but because she’s a dietitian, the food we ate was brown bread and yogurt or bean soup. I mean, as a kid, it drove me crazy. So I asked my mom, “If I could cook, could we get something else?” And so I went to the butcher, and I asked them, “How do you roast a chicken?” And he said, “Put it in a really hot oven for one hour.” And I was like, “Oh, how hot is hot?” He was like, “Make it as hot as your oven goes for one hour, and if it starts to burn, then just take it out.” And he gave me the chicken, and that was it. I’ve kept that recipe forever. 450, 500 degrees, one hour. That’s a great straight-up recipe.
And then my mother insisted on a vegetable, so I decided to do French fries, which was my funny way of convincing her that I’m doing a vegetable.
It is a vegetable.
I totally screwed up the French fries. I didn’t heat up the oil ahead of time, and if you don’t do that, the potatoes actually soak in the oil so you’re eating basically a sponge of oil. I made everyone throw up. But the roast chicken was delicious. Everyone loved that. And so I was encouraged to cook more. I cooked for my friends in university. I didn’t have any money, so I figured out how to cook for 40 cents a person. It was a Kraft dinner with weiner sausages. And if someone chipped in an extra dollar, I’d get actually real cheese instead of the powdered cheese.
Anyway, I studied business, and then went down to California to start a company with my brother building maps and door-to-door directions for the internet.
I read that you and your brother were sleeping in your office and showering at the YMCA and that sort of startup lifestyle made you appreciate food.
Yeah, that’s totally right. We only had enough money for rent for either an office or an apartment, so we rented an office. I had a little minibar fridge and put one of those portable cooktops above it, and that was our kitchen. But we also ate at Jack in the Box all the time because it was the only place that was open late. Ugh, 25 years later, I can still remember the items on that menu. It was just really, really not great — a huge inspiration to go focus on real food after that.
And I just did not like the lack of social connection. It’s a work-hard-go-to-sleep-and-work-hard-again culture with not much socializing in the way that I enjoy, which is eating food, eating together over a meal, talking about ideas. I kind of was suffocating a little bit.
It’s a Soylent culture.
Yeah, exactly. They actually want food to be a pill. So I kind of needed to leave. We ended up selling [our company] for a gazillion dollars when I was 27, and I had this sort of opportunity to do whatever I wanted. So I went to New York to enroll at the French Culinary Institute.
Was culinary school as brutal as people make it out to be?
Absolutely brutal. It was Full Metal Jacket, but cooking. They just totally break you down. They make sure you don’t have any faith in your own abilities — within a few months, you’re like, “I am a completely useless fool” — and then after that, they start building you up with the skills they want you to have. It was very, very hard on the ego. I managed to graduate, but I would say 70 percent of the people that start don’t finish — and you pay upfront.
I actually graduated just a few weeks before 9/11 and woke up to the sounds of the plane hitting the building. That’s how close we were. Fourteen days later, I started volunteering to feed the firefighters. We would do 16-hour days, every day — there was never a reason not to work because the alternative is you sit at home during the nightmare after 9/11, where no one was on the streets or anything. I started peeling potatoes and eventually got to the point where I would drive the food down to Ground Zero. The firefighters would come in completely gray in their face and gray in their eyes, covered in dust. And then they’d start eating, and you’d see the color come back in their face, the light in their eyes.
And you worked as a line cook after that?
Yeah, for Hugo Matheson, at his restaurant. He was the chef of a popular restaurant in Boulder, and I just wanted to learn. I was a line cook for $10 an hour for probably 18 months. And loved it. You know, it’s a submarine culture. And you get in there and everything you do in the moment is measured in the moment. It’s very much the opposite of [building] software.
You and Hugo eventually started a restaurant [The Kitchen] that practiced the farm-to-table thing before it was even really a term. Why was it so important to you to have local suppliers and organic methods? At that point, was it mainly about flavor, or was there a bigger ethic behind it?
For sure flavor was the driver. But I think that the thing that I resonated with more was the sense of this concept of community through food. You know, when I was feeding the firefighters, it was all about community. The fishermen would come and give us their fish, so we got the best fish you can imagine. The cooks were all volunteers. We were going through this really tough time. So for me, the community through food was what I loved about it.
[At The Kitchen], we literally had a basic rule to farmers saying we’ll buy whatever you grow. We said that if you can deliver by 4 p.m., then we will get it on the menu that evening.
Oh, wow.
We would get fiddlehead ferns at 4 p.m. and be trying to think, “OK, what can we do with this?” If you turn the food around that quickly, it really does show up in the flavor.
Food that had potentially been in the ground that morning.
Not potentially. Every day was working with the harvest of that day. We had 43 different farmers coming to the back door. It was awesome.
Let’s move ahead to the part of the story, after your accident, when you’re like, “All right, I’ve gotten this new lease on life and now what am I going to do with it?” Obviously, within the food space, there are a lot of choices you could have made. So how did you decide where to go from there?
So when I came out of that hospital, I resigned as CEO of my software company. I told my wife I wanted a divorce. The spiritual message I got was: Work with a way to connect kids to real food, to get kids to understand what real food is. And real food for me is food that you trust to nourish the body, trust to nourish the farmer, trust to nourish the planet. It’s very simple. Processed food would be the opposite of that. There’s no nourishment there. The farmer gets hosed and it’s terrible for the planet. So I [looked into] farm-oriented work and cooking-skills training. Turned out giving kids knives isn’t a good idea.
What? [laughter]
Yeah. Exactly. But the thing that came back to me was the value of a school garden. I actually was pretty frustrated with school gardens. I had been a philanthropic supporter of them for a few years and found them to be expensive, hard to maintain — a passionate parent would put it in, and then their kid would graduate, and it would become this mess in the corner of the schoolyard. So we [created] learning gardens. They’ve got a beautiful Fibonacci sequence layout. They’re made in a factory, but they have a natural look and feel. These are totally food-safe and can go on any school ground. They’re [wheelchair] accessible, easy to teach in, and built into the irrigation system of the school. We go in and we do 100 of them at a time. Pre-COVID we got to almost 700 schools in Denver, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Memphis, L.A.
How did you decide which cities to go into?
I believe this is useful anywhere, but what I found was low-income communities were the areas where you really needed it. Private schools or wealthier schools, they all have gardens — there’s not a private school out there that doesn’t embrace having a school garden. It’s actually the low-income schools that don’t have it. And that is also, coincidentally or not, where the obesity is. And so what I wanted to do is take what existed in private schools and put it into low-income schools and to do it in a way where it would be the most beautiful thing in the school. So instead of that sort of eyesore that was in the backyard, we said, “These have to be right next to the classroom, right next to the playground. You’re not allowed to build a fence around it. And if you don’t want to do that, great, we’ll just find another school. But these are the rules for learning garden.” And because we were doing 100 at a time, the districts would work with us, including maintenance and installation and curriculum and teacher training. Pre-COVID we were teaching almost 350,000 kids every school day.
And are there measurable effects?
Absolutely. Studies show that fifth grade in particular is the most effective grade. If you teach science in fifth grade to a kid, the exact same lesson in the garden versus in the classroom, you will get a 15-point increase on a 100-point score on their test scores.
And then if you teach kids 90 minutes a week in school, which is not hard to do because it’s beautiful and fun to be outside, you’ll double their intake of fruits and vegetables. Now they’re not eating a lot of fruits and vegetables, so the base is low, but you’re still doubling. The way I like to look at it is you’re really not trying to make them eat vegetables all the time — that’s too hard — you just try to change the course of their life by a few degrees; if you can do it by third, fourth, fifth grade, they’re going to be a different adult when they grow up. We’re not here to claim that what we do changes everything. We believe that the cafeteria needs to improve, that we need grocery stores to exist in these food deserts. There are many legs of the stool, but the school garden movement is a critical leg.
Are there any other technological innovations in this space that are really giving you hope?
I think there’s a lot of cool things going on around carbon capture with regenerative farming, because if you do farming correctly, you’ve become a wonderful carbon sink. And there needs to be an economy around it. So what is the value of a carbon credit? They’ve got value for that in Europe, but they haven’t valued it in America. So I think there’s a lot of government policy that needs to work there. But it’s a fascinating area to look at.
It’s interesting, the concept of bringing innovation to agriculture, which is—
So old school! Yeah, it’s fun. I do get frustrated that it doesn’t move fast enough. Then I’m reminded of how big this is and I’ve got my whole life to work on it. So I’m learning to embrace going a little slower. If you are in the software world, it’s more “move fast and break things,” and I think with food, it’s something in between.
Yeah, you don’t want to break the food chain.
No, people need to eat. Exactly.
And I know you’ve been advocating, too, for policies that help farmers shift to organic methods.
Yeah, I’ve been a supporter of that, but I really have pushed my energy now to work with young farmers of any kind. I’m not against organic at all. I love organic. But I’ve kind of said, “You know, we just need young farmers.” Real food doesn’t require it to be organic. If it’s a zucchini that happens to be grown conventionally, I’m still in favor of that.
It’s still a zucchini.
Right. That being said, organic is better. Farmers make more money on it. But it’s really about young farmers getting them into the business.
If you don’t mind, let me take one minute to just talk about [another initiative called] Square Roots. So there was a sort of a turning point in indoor farming technology around 2014, where you could really do quality food. Indoor farming’s been around forever, but the quality was really terrible. It would taste like water. No real flavor. But the technology of lighting really changed in 2014, and so by 2016 we said, “You know, there is a way here.” And what got me going was I really wanted to create this generation of young farmers. I love technology and I love food. And I think that if we bring the two together, we will get young people interested in farming again. And so we started out Square Roots as really a training entity.
And with Square Roots, you’re growing food in shipping containers? There’s no soil?
Yeah, we refine the nutrients [through the water]. We’ve gotten very, very thoughtful about what the nutrients are so that we can re-create as best we can the soil that they would get normally. The shipping containers, what’s beautiful about them is the fact that we can totally control the climate. For example, we have found that Genoa in Italy is where the best basil in the world is grown. It’s four weeks in June that are the best, and actually, 1997 was the best June. And so we re-create the climate of 1997 Genoa, Italy, in each of those containers to create the tastiest basil you can possibly imagine. Using data, we can monitor the growth and how they work. And every square meter of the air in there is exactly the same. That’s why containers are so valuable. Plants factories have to grow basil or cilantro or whatever all in the same climate. We get to grow arugula, basil, parsley, cilantro or whatever each in their own climate. For example, we’ve discovered that mint grows best in the Yucatan Peninsula — superhuman, grows like a weed, delicious. And we re-create that climate.
Square Roots Basil Farm in Brooklyn.
Square Roots
And the shipping containers, the idea for that was, “Let’s use things that we can recycle”?
Well, they are recycled. But no, it wasn’t that. It was actually climate control. They’re actually like refrigerators. We can drop that temperature in there to 40 degrees Fahrenheit for a particular growth cycle. If we have any pests, we don’t use pesticides, we have something called Mojave mode where we turn it into the Mojave Desert for four days. We bring the temperature up to 120 degrees, drop the humidity down to four percent and nothing can survive. That’s how we remove pests. No one else can do that unless you use these kind of containers. So it’s really a technology solution.
You’ve referred to food as being the new Internet. Do you still feel that way?
Oh, my god. Absolutely. It’s showing itself. Food is different to social media and so forth. It takes a long time to build up supply chains, get consistent growing. It’s not as fast-moving, but it is a much bigger business. Software is a $400 billion business. Food is an $18 trillion business. So the opportunity is much, much bigger in food than it is in software.
What are the top two or three things that really bother you about the industrial food system right now?
The processing of food. For some reason back in the ’70s, America just started to idolize processed food. And so what you have is a high-calorie hamburger, for example, that is nutritionally irrelevant. In other words, people were just not thinking about nutrition. And they used laboratories to adjust the flavor, chemicals to adjust the flavor, artificial ingredients. The result was a very high-calorie, highly processed kind of a Frankenstein burger that did please the pallet, but it made you feel awful afterwards.
The other one that is absolutely ludicrous is ethanol. Forty percent of our corn fields are growing ethanol. That’s 25 million acres of land that could be used to grow real food. People keep feeding us bullshit that we need to try and feed the world. We have so much food that we are turning 40 percent of it into ethanol. It takes a gallon of oil to make a gallon of ethanol. So it’s just a total boondoggle for the corn farmers and it’s terrible for the environment. In fact, it’s hilarious: It’s the only thing that both the oil industry and the environmentalists hate. Can you imagine there’s something that those two can agree on? And it’s ethanol.
Why the hell are we doing it?
It’s a subsidy for farmers. We do it because old people vote, and they control the farms, and they would all be devastated right now if the true demand of corn is what they had to deal with. And until a politician has the courage to make those hard decisions, we’re going to be stuck growing ethanol. Now, the good thing is we are all switching to electric cars, so ethanol is going to go away anyway. But for a while, the next five to 10 years, ethanol is going to be a part of what we do.
Let’s talk about the Million Gardens Movement. How did you get the idea that you wanted to do it?
Frank [Giustra] and his team pitched us on joining forces and doing the Million Gardens Movement. And we loved it. We thought it was a great idea. Because of Covid, we had been forced to pivot our model from the learning gardens because we couldn’t really teach people in the gardens anymore. And so we had done this trial of what we call little green gardens, which are round, beautiful sort of beige sacks, and you can come in and pick these up from a local school in your community. You can grow them on a windowsill as long as there’s some light. You can grow them indoors, which enables any city to be able to use them.
Say you get to a million gardens, are there any projections on what the environmental impact of that might be?
What we would be doing with these little green gardens is inspiring people to garden and empowering them to garden. The average garden generates about $600 to $700 worth of food a year. So it provides actual food to your family. You’re having a lower carbon footprint because you’re not shipping food around. It’s great for mental health. Think about Covid and how crazy we all are. This gets you out there. It connects you to your kids. Gardening is such a beautiful thing to do for yourself, for the community, for the environment.
It’s easy to think about what has been lost during this time, but I do like this idea of using COVID as an opportunity for change.
It’s obviously one of the worst things we’ve gone through as a society, but if we do this correctly, if we take this opportunity well, it could be one of the best things that’s happened to society — in a few years, we’ll look back and say, “OK, this was a good way to restart and focus more on climate change, focus more on gardening with your family, being connected to each other.” I think it has a lot of potential, as long as we take that potential and we leverage it. So the Million Gardens Movement is a part of that.
4 Young Visionaries Built A Thriving Business
Recently, in one of our most popular webinars of all time, Wihelmsson fired us up with Ljusgårda’s amazing story – building a thriving modern farm in what was once a factory, by “replacing the tractor with lights and the shovel with an iPad.”
17-12-2020
It all began in 2017 when three friends, Magnus Crommert, Cristoffer Barath and Erik Lundgren decided to try modern indoor farming. Our own Plant & Light Expert, Ida Fällström, remembers when Magnus visited our Göteborg office, introduced us to his team’s vision of modern farming, and left with an ELIXIA LED grow light under his arm. With that LED grow light, he started to conduct tests in his garage while the rest of the business took form, including bringing on a young business visionary, Andreas Wihelmsson, as partner and CEO. Fast forward to today, and their operation has grown to become Ljusgårda AB, a successful and sustainable climate certified farm in Tibro, Sweden.
Recently, in one of our most popular webinars of all time, Wihelmsson fired us up with Ljusgårda’s amazing story – building a thriving modern farm in what was once a factory, by “replacing the tractor with lights and the shovel with an iPad.” An enthusiastic evangelist for modern vertical farming, Wihelmsson explained, “We took the concept of farming outdoors and brought it indoors, creating a controlled ecosystem where we can grow under optimal conditions year-round. We have a facility here of 7,000 square meters. A year from now, we will have outgrown this facility and we will begin building the next one.” He continued, “If someone would have told me years ago that I would be growing salad for a living, I would have thought they were joking. Yet today thousands of families are eating our salad every week.”
What are the secrets to Ljusgårda’s overwhelming success? Here are 5 key things we learned in our webinar about starting a successful vertical farm:
5 Habits of a Highly Successful Vertical Farm
1. Quality Comes First
Wihelmsson commented that “More than 70% of all the fruits and vegetables Sweden eats are imported from other countries.” This leads not only to higher emissions but it also negatively affects plant quality and nutrients due to the transportation time. Because indoor vertical farming enables Ljusgårda to grow locally, they always get their products to store within 24 hours of harvest to retain quality and nutrition.
2. Give Your Customers What They Really Want (Not What You Think They Want)
Ljusgårda produces salad greens, including lettuce and arugula, for Swedish tables year-round. Wihelmsson noted, “When it comes to making a produce buying decision in Sweden, 7 out of 10 people say that one of the most important factors is that it's Swedish. Sustainability and price are also very important. We provide a great tasting Swedish product that is sustainable, and we sell it at roughly the same price as imported products.”
When it comes to giving customers what they want on an individual crop level, Ljusgårda is able to use LED grow lighting and intelligent controls to influence every phase of plant growth, from biomass development to finish and flavour. Wihelmsson commented, “One very interesting experience we had was with our rocket salad, the first product we launched. I remember our initial tryouts and it tasted terrible.” He laughed, “We were by far growing the worst tasting rocket salad in the world, but we became better. We developed a good product with a robust peppery flavour, and we went to grocery stores for people to try it. Their polite reactions were that it was okay, so we knew that we had it dead wrong. We progressed by altering our rocket salad’s flavour through lighting control and conducting countless in-house and in-store taste tests.”
Wihelmsson continued, “We realized that Swedes didn’t want a traditional strong rocket salad. They wanted a mild one. We have a term in Sweden, Lagom, which relates to balance – not too little, not too much. We ended up producing a milder rocket and outsold all other products in that store.” He concluded, “You don't always know what the customer actually wants until you test in person and can see their reaction. If in the future customers demand a spicier rocket salad, we can achieve that with our flexible LED lighting. We have the ability to control taste, nutrition, quality, colour, biomass, almost everything – because light has a huge effect on the plants. You just first need to figure out what your customer wants in their food.”
3. Control Your Light to Optimize Your Production
An intelligent LED lighting strategy can help you achieve your crop goals. We have worked with Ljusgårda to accelerate their production of arugula and reduce their production time by 19%, by making adjustments to their lighting strategies. Wihelmsson commented, “For us, light control is very important to our production. If we look at our collaboration with Heliospectra, we chose to go with ELIXIA LEDs because we needed maximum flexibility. The other reason was their positive effect on reducing power consumption.”
Ljusgårda has also found that flexible LEDs can help them control risk and even save crops. Wihelmsson noted, “Now that we have been running this farm for a few years, we’ve come to see that our flexible lights can actually be used to compensate for human errors, or things like the water tank failing or other issues. In such cases we have been able to change the spectrum to recovery lighting. Our LED lighting has meant a lot to us and the flexibility has been extremely important.”
4. Automate Step by Step (and Plan Several Steps Ahead)
Wihelmsson talked about the company’s approach to automation, “We had to redesign the system to be able to get it automated step by step and growing-wise it's been working. For us most steps in production will be semi-automated, leveraging a machine but with human beings still involved, while other steps will be fully automated.”
He cautioned, “You need to do the math and see where automation makes economic sense for you. Our approach is to look at what takes up the most labour, what is most costly in the whole economic calculation, and address it. We also run the numbers to plan ahead. For example, we are preparing some processes for automation, but we won't automate them until production volumes hit certain critical numbers. Overall, it’s best to take it one step at a time, starting with a semi-automated approach.”
5. Keep it Simple and Learn from Others
Rather than focusing on the high-tech aspects of their operation, Ljusgårda found that their consumers responded better to a simpler, more straightforward message. Wihelmsson commented, “We know that our consumers want local produce, and so it says three times on the bag that our salad is from Sweden. We keep our messaging and packaging simple, ensuring people know that we are passionate about growing great tasting, nutritious, and sustainable food that they can eat in good conscience year-round. This simple, positive message has helped put our bag salad in the top three in each and every store, and it’s even number one in several of them.”
If you are interested in starting your own vertical farming operation or taking your farm to the next level, Wihelmsson suggested that you try to learn from others who have succeeded. He commented, “We have something we like to call common farmer sense. It's a direct translation from Swedish, and it basically consists of us questioning all the solutions that are out there and always telling ourselves not to reinvent the wheel. See if any industry or any other grower has already taken an approach you want to try. Take a look at it, learn from it, and then start growing from there.”
Watch the entire webinar here.
Source and Photo Courtesy of Agritech Tomorrow
The Little Farm That Could
“Farm By The Quay will serve as a hub to educate the public about urban farming while illustrating how growing food at home doesn’t have to be difficult using HAVVA solutions and technology
16 Nov 2020
Vertical farming systems can maximize use of space in an urban context.
FOR all that pottering about in one’s garden might sound fulfilling, there are many of us who are daunted by the prospect of growing our own plants.
Difficulties such as finding the right type of soil and the optimal amount of sunlight and water, all while fighting off common garden pests, can lead to frustration for those without green thumbs.
Such trials may be a thing of the past thanks to HAVVA Agrotech, as it pioneers an innovative farming solution integrating hydroponic, aquaculture, vertical farming, vermiponic, and aeroponic techniques.
These innovations will be showcased at HAVVA’s Farm By The Quay at Quayside Mall in twenty-five.7, Kota Kemuning, Shah Alam, allowing residents and visitors to experience the next step in urban sustainability.
A new frontier
“Farm By The Quay will serve as a hub to educate the public about urban farming while illustrating how growing food at home doesn’t have to be difficult using HAVVA solutions and technology.
“We will demonstrate how our system is fully scalable, ranging from small 1sqft farms to large-scale commercial farms, ” says HAVVA chief operating officer Kenzo Tan.
Doubling as HAVVA’s flagship outlet, Farm By The Quay is an organic vertical farm facility located at Quayside Mall, a few minutes’ walk from twentyfive.7’s bustling waterfront boulevard.
The vertical farm features a floor area of 195sqm, and visitors can look forward to a comprehensive line-up of activities organized by HAVVA to educate participants on the merits and methods of urban farming.
Farm By The Quay is a 195sqm vertical organic farm at Quayside Mall, twentyfive.7.
Farm By The Quay customers can also get their grocery shopping done, as it features fresh food and produce concept where vegetables can be plucked and fish freshly caught on the spot.
“Typically, urban farms in malls are located on rooftop levels, which reduces their visibility and accessibility to customers.
“However, Farm By The Quay is located at a prime spot on the ground floor within Quayside Mall, inviting exploration from visitors.
“Its design layout and fit-outs cater to the mall’s environment and conditions, and we also took into consideration factors such as safety, public access, and public engagement, ” says Tan.
From humble roots
Established in 2018 by co-founders Philip Loo and Tan, the idea for HAVVA began four years earlier when Loo visited Taiwan to learn about aquaponics, vertical planting, natural farming, and related techniques.
With this knowledge, he rented a 650sqm bungalow in George Town, and in partnership with his brother kick-started Penang’s first vertical aquaponics urban commercial farm – Loo Urban Farm.
Despite an uphill road, Loo persevered. In 2016, the eventual success of Loo Urban Farm encouraged him to submit an accelerator program for social enterprise at MaGIC (Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre), where he fortuitously met Tan.
“I was quite taken with what Philip was doing.
‘HAVVA’s business model ticked all the right boxes for us. Their operations are a good fit for the chosen space and location in our mall, ’ said Tan.
“To begin with, we had similar views on the necessity for toxic-free and nutrient-rich food.
“As he was working alone in the program without a team, I assisted him in any way that I could.
“By the end of 2016, I joined Philip and we focused on using technology to augment the growth of the business, ” says Tan.
While initial sales were sluggish, factors such as changes in market perception towards urban farming, clean eating, and organic food gave the business a welcome shot in the arm.
The company’s commitment to investing in technological and process enhancement has also paid off, as it has been accredited by organizations such as Cradle Fund Sdn Bhd and MaGIC, in addition to accolades at the Asia-Pacific Information and Communication Technology Alliance Awards (APICTA) and the Hope Awards in 2018.
New center of gravity
Farm By The Quay at Quayside Mall complements twentyfive.7’s cosmopolitan outlook and highlights the placemaking principles and master planning approach of developer Gamuda Land.
A 104ha self-sustained development in Kota Kemuning, twentyfive.7 features a gross development value (GDV) of RM4.2bil.
Its urban aesthetics and lifestyle amenities position it as the new center of gravity in Kota Kemuning and the surrounding community.
Loo (left) and Tan co-founded HAVVA to promote urban farming in Malaysia.
“HAVVA’s business model ticked all the right boxes for us. Their operations are a good fit for the chosen space and location in our mall.
“Despite being a relatively young company, their forward-thinking business plan, which targets both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) activity, is strategically comprehensive with promising growth potential, ” says Gamuda Land director of retail and leasing Herbie Tan.
“Quayside Mall caters to changing consumer demand for open spaces in retail centres following the Covid-19 outbreak.
“Special attention in its design has been given towards spatial quality, natural light and ventilation, and extended functionality of space, along with an emphasis on fostering closer connections with nature, allowing Gamuda Land to adapt a variety of communal programs and planting schemes within the mall.
“In addition, its curated tenant mix emphasizes lifestyle draws, with a diverse range of F&B, entertainment, beauty, and lifestyle retail outlets enhancing Quayside Mall’s appeal as the beating heart of Kota Kemuning in the new norm.
Quayside Mall in twentyfive.7 will house the vertical farm on the ground floor.
“The mall also strategically integrates the outdoor environment into its design. With a promenade leading directly from the mall towards the pet-friendly twentyfive.7 Central Park, featuring lakeside activities and social spaces surrounded by lush trees, visitors to Quayside Mall will experience retail like never before.
“We believe that the introduction of urban farms, whether community-based or as viable business concerns, is vital for our greater good as it will address the problems of logistics and climate change, enhance accessibility to food resources, improve food security in cities and reduce overproduction of food by increasing own-harvested food resources – a direction that has only been reinforced by the current pandemic, ” says Herbie.
Thanks to HAVVA, twentyfive.7 residents and the public can now enjoy fresh, non-toxic, and pollutant-free produce while learning more about the urban farming movement.
Farm By The Quay is scheduled to open its doors in December 2020.
TAGS / KEYWORDS: Branded , Gamuda Land, HAVVA Agrotech, Urban Sustainability
SINGAPORE: New Vertical Farm To Produce 500,000 kg of Greens Annually
&ever has been awarded funding under SFA’s ‘30x30 Express’ grant to ramp up local food production over the next six to 24 months
&ever Singapore Pte Ltd (previously Farmers Cut Pte Ltd), a fully-owned subsidiary of &ever GmbH from Germany, will grow and deliver leafy greens to consumers in Singapore with its first indoor farm in the region.
Amid the global food supply challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) launched a ‘30x30 Express’ Grant earlier this year. The grant will support the country’s agri-food industry and accelerate the ramp-up of local production, with the aim of meeting 30 percent of Singapore’s nutritional needs with food produced locally by 2030.
&ever has been awarded funding under SFA’s ‘30x30 Express’ grant to ramp up local food production over the next six to 24 months. The grant is awarded to companies who make use of highly productive farming systems that can be constructed and implemented quickly to achieve high production levels.
&ever will produce annually up to 500,000 kg of leafy greens for consumers in Singapore using their Dryponics method. Dryponics keeps the plants alive, with the roots intact, until they reach the consumer. Consumers will be able to harvest the plants only seconds before consumption, resulting in higher nutritional value and better-tasting greens.
&ever’s fully automated technology allows for everything inside the farms to be controlled digitally- from the seeding to harvesting, CO2 levels, temperature, and airflow. IoT sensors and edge computing are collecting data throughout the farmhouses to produce and maintain the healthiest plants.
“To accelerate the ramp-up in local food production and meet our '30 by 30' goal, we will need to leverage productive farming technology. Technology can help farms achieve higher production levels, and be more resilient against the impacts of climate change. We are pleased to see our agri-food players, such as &ever Singapore adopting productive and innovative farming systems, and will continue to work with them to strengthen our food production capabilities. This in turn will enhance Singapore’s food security, and create good jobs for our people,” said Mr. Melvin Chow, Senior Director of SFA’s Food Supply Resilience division.
&ever has been present in the hyper-local agri-food scene since early 2019. With the successful launch of their first indoor farm in Kuwait earlier this year, they aim to bring their sustainable farming solution to other parts of the world with challenging climate conditions.
Dr. Henner Schwarz, CEO of &ever, said: “We are excited to continue our global roll-out and bring better tasting, highly nutritious salad to the people of Singapore.”
“At the same time we make a strong contribution to one of the world’s most exciting eco-systems for indoor vertical farming," added Mark Korzilius, founder and CISO of &ever.
For more information:
&ever
and-ever.com
27 Oct 2020
Navotas City Launches Philippines' Tallest Vertical Farm
The vertical farm is equipped with state-of-the-art technology that increases vegetable yield by a factor of 100, two times more than other farms
October 24, 2020
By DANNY PATA
National Capital Region's Navotas City Council, together with the Boy Scout of the Philippines (BSP) and Good Greens & Co., unveiled on Saturday the tallest aeroponic vertical farm in the country.
Text and photos by Danny Pata
According to the city council, the four-tower farm standing on a 300-square-meter area in Tanza resettlement community."
The aim is to produce high-volume harvests that are centrally located in the community," according to Simon Villalon, GGC president.
He said that aeroponic tower farm technology allows saving 75% to 90% space, which is an important consideration when operating out of a greenhouse, indoors, or on a rooftop.
The vertical farm is equipped with state-of-the-art technology that increases vegetable yield by a factor of 100, two times more than other farms.
Suited to a tropical climate, the structure supports vegetable growth year-round, with a target harvest of eight tons of leafy vegetables every year.
In the Philippines, aeroponic vertical farm is already tested in Taguig City, Villalon said, adding that some have been built up in San Fernando, Pampanga; and two in Bacolod City; and in Paranaque City
Text and photos by Danny Pata
LBG, GMA News
VIDEO: Vertical Farming: The Only Way Is Up
Just like we've grown accustomed to living in compartments stacked directly on top and beside each other so too are lettuce and herbs
by Jasmine Reimer
Trends - /March 2, 2020
Just like we've grown accustomed to living in compartments stacked directly on top and beside each other so too are lettuce and herbs.
Agriculture is going vertical. Why? Because it saves water, increases efficiency, and provides us with fresh, local produce.
Vertical farming is the practice of producing food on upright surfaces. Instead of farming in a field, vertical farming grows plants stacked in layers, in structures like shipping containers or warehouses.
If this seems like an insignificant shift, unlikely to produce much effect, consider this: by 2050 the world's population is expected to grow by another 2 billion people.
Feeding everyone will be challenging. Vertical farming could be a solution.
What is vertical farming?
Assembled layer by layer under candy-colored lights, vertical farming has become an increasingly popular way for food producers to reduce costs related to space and energy consumption while increasing growth rates and nutrient values.
Of the many companies that are testing out this innovative farming method, Urban Crops uses a conveyor-like system to hold baby plants under LED ultraviolet lights. Their system is automated and relies on technology to program lighting and growing conditions specific to each species. And because they don't heat up, the bulbs can be placed closer to the leaves to encourage optimal light absorption.
In addition to not having to maintain an entire plot of land, Urban Crops boasts that vertical farming yields more crops per square meter than traditional farming or greenhouses. It also grows plants faster and can be used year-round. In theory, vertical farming can be practiced anywhere, which means that water-restricted locations can still harvest produce. Vertical farming uses up to 95% less water than traditional methods.
As Urban Crops' Chief Executive Maartin Vandecruys points out:
“Basically… every day is a summer's day without a cloud in the sky."
CES 2020: LG are launching exciting new indoor gardening technology.
While vertical farming could be the future of large-scale agriculture, companies like Urban Crops are also hoping that non-farming folk like yourself will be interested in investing in DIY versions. Because, while it makes sense to grow salad greens and edible flowers, trying to grow other foods like wheat for bread isn't yet an option: “At 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, the amount of energy it would take to produce wheat would [translate to] something like $11 for a loaf of bread," states, Vandecruys. Nonetheless, vertical farming could mean big changes in the way you think about “local" produce.
Vertical farming helps reduce the amount of questions for the consumer including its provenance, growing conditions and harvest date.
Data is useless unless you put it to work
Around the world, data-driven technologies are being used to keep indoor farming afloat. Detailed, real-time data collected via artificial intelligence, location services and IoT technology is used to analyze and produce better feeding models and optimal configurations, i.e. the concentration and scheduling of light and ratio of nutrients. Most recent is IoT company n.thing's Planty Cube, launched at this year's CES 2020.
Leo Kim, n.thing's CEO, came up with the idea for Planty Cube after creating an IoT-enabled smart pot called “Planty Square."
Planty Cube is a smart hydroponic vertical farm that relies on data from farming logs, which are fed back into a database called the “Cube Cloud" and analyzed with AI to help farmers determine optimal growing conditions. As the user adds more Planty Cubes to the vertical farm, this real-time, cloud-based system makes it easier for the grower to manage the overall farm, even remotely.
But even prior to sowing seeds, technology can help vertical farmers and consumers alike.
Automation, tracking and AI technology also opens up the potential to locate farms in urban, industrial, and even domestic spaces that can produce crops all year round.
This has the possibility to truly change the way cities source food. Most urban supermarkets are supplied from distributors around the world. Local indoor farms could decrease reliance on imports and reduce carbon emissions from transportation.
In the future, I hope to see supermarkets filled with vertical farms of their own.
The ups and downs of growing up
The vertical farming industry is booming. However, there are realities to consider before growing on a professional scale:
What are you growing and for whom?
Before you invest, do some market research. Get a sense of who your customers will be and your price point. Basically, if you can't sell it, you shouldn't grow it.
What is your distribution plan?
How will you physically get your produce to your customers? Find out who your end customers are and keep your farm as close to them as possible. Being local is an integral component to your success but this may present further challenges such as high cost of land, poor soil quality, and resource restrictions.
Will your building meet your needs?
Remember, indoor farming requires substantial amounts of power: lighting, pumps, HVAC, automation equipment, fans, computers etc. Not all buildings are equipped with the type of electricity you require. And if you're serious about getting into the vertical farming industry, you need to plan for future expansions.
Fortunately, vertical farming is being supported by more than just salad-starved individuals like me; location services and tracking technology are helping farmers retain high yields and prepare for the future.