Where Conventional Agriculture Fails, Vertical Indoor Farming Offers Sustainable Solutions

While it is clear that conventional agriculture achieves agricultural productivity capable of managing food security, it has failed the American people in that it leads to soil degradation, eutrophication, water pollution, water scarcity, habitat loss, reduced biodiversity, the spread of viruses and zoonotic diseases, and adverse long-term public health outcomes associated with long-term pesticide exposure. For the purpose of this paper, conventional farming is defined as large-scale intensive outdoor agriculture that utilizes rapid technological innovation, uniform high-yield hybrid crops, high labor efficiency, the mechanization of farm work, monocultures, heavy irrigation, intensive tillage, and the excessive use of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. Conventional agricultural farming methods gained traction in the 1950s in order to produce sufficient food supplies to meet mankind’s carrying capacity at affordable prices; this is evident from “World Bank’s estimate that between 70% and 90% of recent increases in food production are the result of conventional agriculture rather than greater acreage under cultivation” (USDA, 1999). Due to the aforementioned environmental and public health failures associated with conventional agriculture, the imminent increase in the global food demand due to future global population growth, and the prediction of climate models that climate change will pose security risks to conventional agriculture systems, current agricultural systems must undergo rapid change. Indoor vertical farms serve as a method of mitigating these system wide failures and future concerns. Indoor vertical farms are a relatively new method of “multilayer indoor plant production system in which all growth factors, such as light, temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide concentration, water, and nutrients, are precisely controlled to produce high quantities of high-quality fresh produce year-round, completely independent of solar light and other outdoor conditions” (SharathKumar et al, 2020). Indoor vertical farms share the characteristics of rapid technological innovation, uniform high-yield hybrid crops, high labor efficiency, and the mechanization of farm work with conventional farming without associating itself with the environmental and public health failures that result from heavy irrigation, intensive tillage, and the excessive use of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. Therefore, vertical indoor farms may improve sustainable food production as opposed to conventional agriculture.

Vertical indoor farms promote sustainable food production by maximizing crop yields through controlling growing conditions, avoiding crop losses due to extreme weather events and the nature of seasonality, and improving land productivity. By controlling growth factors such as air humidity, carbon dioxide contents, light quality, nutritional quality, pH balance, temperature, and water, the crop cycles of produce grown in indoor vertical farms experience a faster turnover because crops are independent of outside weather conditions in a controlled environment. For instance, indoor vertical farming methods such as hydroponics and aquaponics involve “specially formulated, biologically active nutrients in all crop cycles, providing organic minerals and enzymes to ensure healthy plant growth” without the use of soil (Al-Kodmany, 2018). Considering that factors such as temperature, the distribution of microorganism, and moisture levels are variable in natural environments and influence how soil-fixed nutrients are made available to plants, controlling such variables through the use of hydroponics and aeroponics results in maximized and standardized yields. As a result of remaining immune to the consequences of unpredictable extreme weather events, floods, droughts, overexposure to sun, and seasonal changes that routinely plague traditional outdoor farmers, indoor vertical farmers avoid crop losses stemming from poor growing conditions. In turn, indoor vertical farmers maintain consistent quotas which allow them to adhere to supply contracts and delivery schedules in a way that conventional farmers can not. Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events which further threatens the consistency of crop yields associated with conventional agriculture. For instance, “due to an extended drought in 2011, the United States lost a grain crop assessed at $110 billion” (Al-Kodmany, 2018). Beyond avoiding crop losses due to extreme weather events, indoor vertical farmers maximize crop yields by avoiding poor growing conditions rooted in the nature of seasonality which promotes year round food production and a perpetual income for the farmer. The implementation of vertical indoor farms maximize crop yields primarily because they offer 10 times more growing area than traditional farms, with some estimates ranging even higher. For example, “a 30-story building (about 100 m high) with a basal area of 2.02 ha (5 ac) would be able to produce a crop yield equivalent to 971.2 ha (2400 ac) of conventional horizontal farming” (Al-Kodmany, 2018). The increased land productivity of indoor vertical farms is of particular importance due to the future decline in available arable land per capita. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, arable land per capita on a global scale has fallen from .361 hectares per person in 1961 to .184 hectares per person in 2018, representing a 49.0% decrease (FAO, 2020). On a national scale, arable land per capita has fallen from .983 hectares per person in 1961 to .483 hectares per person in 2018, representing a 50.8% decrease (FAO, 2020). Given the impending reductions in arable land and challenges presented by climate change, the ability of indoor farms to maximize yields independent of outdoor weather conditions promotes sustainable food production.

Vertical indoor farms promote sustainable food production by reducing production overheads by 30% through lowering the usage and costs of energy, labor, transportation, water, soil, and pesticides. Despite popular belief regarding the energy demands of indoor vertical farms, the implementation of high efficiency LED lighting technology complemented by the synchronization of photosynthetic wavelengths with the phase of crop growth ensures that only minimum power is used for maximum plant growth (Al-Kodmany, 2018). Energy costs may be reduced even further as demonstrated by Green Spirit Farms, an indoor vertical farm that chose to implement induction lighting which “can last up to 100,000 hours, twice as long as an LED light” (Al-Kodmany, 2018). Other plant growth factors, such as nutrient levels, pH balance, and humidity levels, can be monitored and adjusted remotely through the use of various software applications, which reduce operational costs by only requiring manual labor for planting, harvesting, and packaging (Al-Kodmany, 2018). Indoor vertical farms also reduce the average food miles traveled, the distance food travels between producers and consumers. As a result, the costs associated with transportation, refrigeration, and storage are reduced as compared to those figures associated with conventional agriculture (Al-Kodmany, 2018). In addition, through the use of strategically scheduled aeroponic irrigation systems and recycling methods, a technique of cultivating plants in an enclosed soilless nutrient misting system, vertical indoor farms operate using “10% of the water used in [conventional] farming” (Al-Kodmany, 2018). Comparatively, conventional farming uses “more than two-thirds of the world’s freshwater,” which will become increasingly problematic as climate change increases the frequency and intensity of droughts and a rise in global population increases freshwater demands (Al-Kodmany, 2018). Beyond the value of cost-savings for the indoor vertical farm, their reduction in water usage increases available drinking water, which is of high priority in water-scarce regions that suffer from high desalination costs (Pinstrup-Andersen, 2018). Furthermore, since the application of hydroponics and aeroponics eliminates the need for soil in crop cultivation, soil maintenance issues typical of conventional farming and the costs associated with their remediation such as weeding, tilling, and the exposure of food to animal excreta are non-existent. Finally, by applying strict biosecurity measures at a low cost due to the closed growing system, pests and diseases are eliminated. As a result, the costs associated with pesticide and herbicide inputs are eliminated and the cost of washing and processing produce is drastically reduced as opposed to the costs associated with conventional agriculture not to mention the costs associated with the “contamination of groundwater, rivers, lakes, and coastal waters by pesticides and herbicide” (Stein 2021). Through reducing production overheads, not only do indoor vertical farms limit their own operating costs, but they also limit the usage of water, transportation, soil, and pesticides, which positively impacts sustainability.

The implementation of indoor vertical farms promotes sustainable food production by addressing food security which is of particular concern because of predictions of a rise in global famine. Due to the predictions that urban populations will drastically increase and farmland will undergo shortages, future food demand is predicted to exceed future food supply (Al-Kodmany, 2018). By 2050, the UN predicts that the “world will need 70% more food as measured by calories, to feed a global population of 9.6 billion in 2050,” 80% of which will reside in cities. Furthermore, the effects of a rising global population on food insecurity is amplified by predictions that the price of food will rise as the raw materials of food cultivation (oil, water, energy, land) fall into short supply. However, it is possible for indoor vertical farms to reduce food prices through reducing food miles traveled, which on average travel “1500 miles from the farm field to the dinner table,” with this rate dramatically increasing during winter months (Al-Kodmany, 2018). As a result of reducing food miles traveled, transportation costs, which can “constitute up to 60% of costs,” are lowered, thus granting consumers access to fresher food at a lower price point (Al-Kodmany, 2018). For this reason, indoor vertical farms can be used as a market-based solution to address the United States’ “23 million food deserts, defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as urban neighborhoods and rural towns without ready access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food,” (Al-Kodmany, 2018). Beyond increasing the quantity of food available to consumers, the cultivation of food in indoor vertical farms has the potential to increase the nutritional content of food through the use of biofortification, which “increases the concentration and/or the bioavailability of nutrients in crops, especially the micronutrients that are not present or present in low amounts in plants but are valuable for human nutrition and health” (SharathKumar et. al, 2020). Therefore, indoor vertical farms have the ability to increase both the quantity and quality of food available to address global food insecurity, which offers a more sustainable path forward to addressing food insecurity as opposed to conventional agriculture.

In conclusion, indoor vertical farming promotes sustainable food production in comparison to conventional farming. Indoor farming maximizes yields by controlling for growth factors, which allow farmers to avoid crop losses due to extreme weather events and the nature of seasonality. Furthermore, indoor vertical farming promotes sustainable food production due to its reduction in production overheads by 30% through significantly decreasing the usage and costs of energy, labor, transportation, water, soil, and pesticides. Furthermore, indoor vertical farming addresses food insecurity, which will become an evermore critical problem in the face of a rising global population. While vertical indoor farms face economic and regulatory obstacles which threaten their successful implementation, these barriers may be overcome with various economic and regulatory solutions. The largest barrier to successfully implementing vertical indoor farms, the high capital costs of $150 - 400 per square foot associated with market entry, may be overcome with Department of Agriculture grant programs and property tax incentives (Stein, 2021).The challenges that ambiguous land-use laws present towards the implementation of indoor vertical farms may be successfully overcome at the state and local levels with updated zoning ordinances and reformations to building codes and the International Building Code (IBC) (Simpson, 2019). Once overcoming the barriers associated with their successful implementation, indoor vertical farms have the potential to serve as a method of mitigating the system-wide failures of conventional agriculture including soil degradation, eutrophication, water pollution, water scarcity, habitat loss, and reduced biodiversity. Furthermore, indoor vertical farms represent a paradigm shift in sustainable food production in the advent of climate change, a globally rising population, and supply chain disruptions. For this reason, it is advisable to support the implementation of vertical indoor farms whenever possible through regulatory or economic avenues, whether it be by becoming an investor or a customer at the supermarket.

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