Indoor Soilless Agriculture Could Supplement US Food Supply While Decreasing Environmental Impact of Food Production

WWF Report Examines the Environmental and Economic Viability of Scaling Indoor Agriculture Systems

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WASHINGTON, DC – WEBWIRE

May 18, 2020

The Markets Institute at World Wildlife Fund (WWF) released an Innovation Analysis examining the environmental impact of various systems of indoor soilless farming. These systems include hydroponics, aquaponics, and aeroponics in greenhouse and vertical settings. At scale, this method of farming could have positive effects on the environment by decreasing pressures on land, biodiversity, natural habitat, and climate. However, the industry also faces hurdles that prevent it from moving beyond its current specialization in high-end leafy greens.

“Indoor soilless farming could have a significant impact on how we grow food in the future, in certain categories. Right now we are looking at whether or not it can be viable—both economically and environmentally—to grow more fruits and vegetables in these systems at a large scale,” said Julia Kurnik, director of innovation start-ups at WWF’s Markets Institute. “If we can address the challenges and make this happen, it could be a real game-changer for communities that do not have access to fresh fruits and vegetables for much of the year, or places that are food insecure.”

While these systems make efficient use of land and water, the energy footprint from lighting and cooling can depending on the local energy source, increase the overall environmental footprint. Indoor soilless farming is also considerably more expensive than traditional agriculture. However, there are several innovations under development that could significantly change the cost and environmental footprint to drastically alter the mid-to-long-term viability of the industry. These include progress in lighting, fiber optics, AI and machine learning, gene editing, renewable energy, co-location and co-generation, and waste and recycling.

The report details the next phase of the project, which aims to help solve the challenges identified in phase I. WWF will explore using stranded assets—large infrastructure investments such as power plants and postal hubs that have depreciated in value but will continue to be used in a limited capacity for 10-50 years—and build a robust coalition of local partners, including The Yield Lab Institute, to launch a pilot farming system in St. Louis.

“The Yield Lab Institute, working with World Wildlife Fund and the McDonnell Foundation, is proud to be a part of a distinguished, local team of community volunteers who are working to bring local, indoor and sustainable food production to the St. Louis area,” said Thad Simons, Co-Founder and Managing Director of The Yield Lab Institute. “It will also spark innovation among our ag-tech entrepreneurs and is intended to provide access to nutritious food to the underserved areas of our community.”

Why The World Wildlife Fund Is Trying To Spark An Indoor Farming Revolution

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05-18-20

The conservation organization is known for work protecting endangered animals, but now it’s starting to help push for broad solutions—such as a major plan to expand vertical farms in St. Louis in an attempt to prove that local farming can cut emissions.

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BY ADELE PETERS

A network of caves in St. Louis, Missouri, was once used for brewing beer before the advent of refrigeration. Now, the conservation organization World Wildlife Fund is interested in helping the city repurpose some of that unused space for indoor farming—in a new pilot that can demonstrate how the indoor agriculture industry can become more sustainable and a viable way to make the food system more resilient.

The organization is best known for its work to save iconic species, such as protecting tiger habitat or reducing demand for elephant ivory. But within a section of the nonprofit called the Markets Institute, it also studies trends in agriculture and ways to help lower the massive environmental footprint of growing food, from the energy and water used on farms to the impact of clearing forests to make room for farmland.

The institute, launched in 2016, works with partners across the food industry on challenges such as how to prevent food waste or how to deal with impacts from climate change in the cocoa industry supply chain. The organization recognizes that the entire food system needs to change to protect nature, and it can play a role in catalyzing that change in the business world.

“We’re looking for new business models, new strategies and partnerships, and different ways of approaching things that are financially profitable as well as environmentally sustainable,” says Julia Kurnik, director of innovation startups at World Wildlife Fund. “Our goal as an institute is to find things that can happen quickly and at scale, so that’s why we’re interested in making sure they can really take off and live beyond our investment.”

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Image: World Wildlife Fund]

It saw promise in the nascent indoor farming industry. Companies that grow produce in greenhouses, or stacked in vertical units inside warehouses, can grow more food on far less land than traditional farming, leaving room for forests to stay in place or be replanted. The methods they use to grow food without soil also use far less water. If indoor farms are distributed in cities, they can also help avoid the carbon footprint of trucking produce thousands of miles across the country. Because the spaces are sealed and insects can’t get in, they can also avoid pesticide use; the produce is also more uniformly perfect and gets to customers more quickly, so there’s less food waste; the farms also aren’t affected by extreme weather outside, so crops won’t be lost in storms or impacts from a changing climate.

Image: World Wildlife Fund

Still, indoor farms aren’t environmentally perfect. In a new report, World Wildlife Fund examined the total environmental footprint of growing lettuce on fields in California versus a hypothetical indoor farm in St. Louis. The organization chose St. Louis for its study and pilot after searching for cities that met a certain list of criteria—a climate that doesn’t allow for year-round growing, a large population, and stranded assets that could be used as infrastructure for growing food. Because of St. Louis’s unique industrial infrastructure, including the abandoned caves, it was chosen from a shortlist of 10 cities. (WWF is not investing in the projects itself, just helping set up the infrastructure for governments and companies to work together on the effort.)

In its study of the potential of indoor farming in St. Louis, the organization confirmed that soilless indoor growing can save land and water, but the researchers also identified challenges. The lights used to grow crops indoors use large amounts of energy, though the technology has become more efficient, and generate so much heat that greenhouses often have to use air-conditioning to maintain a steady temperature, even in the winter. If you grow lettuce in Monterey, California—in a region where much of the country’s lettuce is grown—and ship it to St. Louis, the carbon footprint is lower than growing in a standard indoor farm in St. Louis now. That’s because St. Louis still gets most of its energy from coal, and that outweighs the footprint of driving lettuce long distances in a refrigerated truck or the benefits from avoiding pesticides or food waste.

The report also examines ways that the industry could shrink that footprint, from fiber-optic tech that can bring sunlight into a room to options for renewable energy. If the farms can use less energy, there’s also an economic benefit—and that will begin to make it possible for companies in the industry to expand beyond growing leafy greens. Greens such as lettuce and spinach are common now in indoor farms because they grow more quickly than, say, strawberries or tomatoes, and they fit within the economics of current growing systems.

In St. Louis, the nonprofit is bringing together a group of stakeholders, including existing indoor farming companies, local plant science experts, community groups, the local power company, potential funders, and potential customers such as grocery stores, to test new alternatives. Several types of unused or underused infrastructure may work as farming space, such as cold storage in postal hubs, or space next to power plants that can take the excess heat from an indoor farm and convert that into energy.

The city’s caves are of interest because they’re naturally cool, helping offset the need for air-conditioning. By the end of the year, the aim is to have an agreement for a pilot design, either a single farm or a network of farms, that can be built in the city in 2021. “We won’t build the farm or own the farm,” says Kurnik. “Our model here is to bring all the players together.”

Once the pilot proves how well the new approaches work, that can be shared more broadly with the industry. The project may also be able to share some knowledge about technology such as automation, which can help bring down the cost of growing. (Labor is a major expense at indoor farms, and robots can help address that, while also spurring the creation of some more highly paid jobs in the industry than farm labor.) Right now, existing farms “are each investing in their own technology and R&D,” she says. “If there were standardizations across some of that, it might be able to boost the entire industry.”

Communities outside St. Louis will also be able to learn from the pilot, both as a way to reduce the environmental footprint of their local food supply and a way to make the supply chain more likely to survive disruption from climate change. While interest in indoor agriculture is already growing in some areas—for instance, water-starved Abu Dhabi, which wants to create a more resilient food system that doesn’t rely as much on imports—it could eventually be much more widely used elsewhere if the energy and economic issues can be addressed. In California, increasing drought may eventually make traditional farming less and less feasible. Other impacts from climate change, including extreme heat and increasing storms and floods, are also beginning to make traditional farming more difficult. Indoor farming “has potential to be one tool in the toolbox for tackling those things,” says Kurnik.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adele Peters is a staff writer at Fast Company who focuses on solutions to some of the world's largest problems, from climate change to homelessness. Previously, she worked with GOOD, BioLite, and the Sustainable Products and Solutions program at UC Berkeley, and contributed to the second edition of the bestselling book "Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century."