What The Tech: Is vertical farming the future of modern agri­cul­ture?

Expanding cities need space to grow food. And that is exactly what is dwin­dling as the popu­la­tion grows. Could vertical farming be a solu­tion for this problem?


Growing vegeta­bles in verti­cally stacked layers is called ‘vertical farming’. Vertical farming reduces usage of water, opti­mizes the space and cuts down trans­port costs. The goal of vertical farming is to produce food in chal­lenging envi­ro­ments, where conve­tional culti­vated areas are unavail­able or rare.

This enables foods to be produced on top of each other instead of next to one another, which also allows it to be produced close to consumers. This is also possible indoors, which negates the need for pesti­cides. And all this irre­spec­tive of the weather condi­tions. 40,000 to 80,000 square meters of tradi­tional arable land corre­spond to a vertical farm of 4,000 square meters. Nowa­days, herbs such as basil or mint and leafy vegeta­bles such as spinach or garden lettuces are being grown success­fully.

This method can also dras­ti­cally reduce water consump­tion: where around 250 liters of water were previ­ously required for 1 kilo­grams of lettuce, a single liter is suffi­cient in vertical farming. But there are still disad­van­tages at the moment: a vertical farm’s high energy consump­tion also results in high oper­ating costs. The biggest factors are lighting, venti­la­tion and air humid­i­fi­ca­tion. The good news is that the central air supply has the poten­tial to save a lot of energy. Modern EC fans can be used to reduce the heat built up from lighting and to supply air to the plants based on the require­ments.

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  • Ramaraju on said:

    Farming is the back­bone for human life. It is a plea­sure that ebm-papst is initi­ating a commend­able job to increase the produc­tivity of farming prod­ucts. Really amazing!