History of vertical farming

Vertical farming is not a new idea. Indigenous people in South America

have long used vertically layered food growing techniques, and the rice
terraces of East Asia follow a similar principle. The term "vertical farming"
was coined in 1915 by American geologist Gilbert Ellis Bailey. Architects
and scientists have repeatedly looked into the idea since then, especially
toward the end of the 20th century.

The concept of integrating agriculture into a built environment was invented

in a Danish farmhouse back in the 1950s that attempted to grow cress ― a
peppery, tangy flavored herb botanically related to mustard ― in a factory
on a mass scale. Today a more evolved type of urban farming where
produce is grown in a fully controlled vertical indoor urban environment is
attracting wider attention. U.S., European and Asian countries have been
conducting research and development on this concept for decades.

Why vertical farming?

By 2050, the UN predicts that the global population will surpass 9 billion
people. Given current agricultural productivity rates, the Vertical Farm
Project estimates that an agricultural area equal in size to roughly half of
South America will be needed to feed this larger population. The world
faces large scale food security concerns, loss of arable land and reduced
access to fresh water fueled by global warming. A rapidly growing global
population and increasingly limited resources are making the technique
more attractive than ever.

The Green Revolution of the late 1950s boosted agricultural productivity to

an astounding rate, allowing for the explosive population growth still seen
today. Since 1950, the Earth's population has nearly tripled, from 2.4 billion
to 7 billion, and global demand for food has grown accordingly. Vertical
farming has the potential to solve this problem.

Until now, the traditional agricultural industry could keep up. Today,
scientists warn that agricultural productivity has its limits. What's more,
much of the land and the soil on which the world's food is grown has
become exhausted and is no longer usable.

Grow up, not out.

The concept of the vertical farm arose in Dr. Dickson
Despommier’s classroom in 1999 as a theoretical construct on how to deal
with a wide variety of environmental issues, specifically how to change the
way we grow food. From Dr. Despommier and his students’ initial idea of
"rooftop farming," the cultivation of plants on flat roofs, the class developed
a high-rise concept. The students calculated that rooftop-based rice
growing would be able to feed, at most, 2 percent of Manhattan's
population. "If it can't be done using rooftops, why don't we just grow the
crops inside the buildings?" Despommier asked himself. "We already know
how to cultivate and water plants indoors."

With its many empty high-rise buildings, Manhattan was the perfect location
to develop the idea. Despommier's students calculated that a single 30-
story vertical farm could feed over 50,000 people. Theoretically, they
calculated 160 similar structures could provide all of New York with food
year-round, without being at the mercy of seasonal swings.

The Future of Food Production

In order to support an exploding global population estimated at 9 billion by
2050 plus utilize dwindling natural resources more efficiently and offset the
negative affects of global climate change, the concept of high efficiency
food production required parting ways with modern yet unsustainable
practices currently employed in traditional agribusiness.

Worldwide interest in vertical farming is growing and as of 2010, several

vertical farms have been designed and developed. The first prototype
examples are located in the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea,
and England. In the US, a five-story vertical farm is planned for Milwaukee,
Wisconsin by Will Allen’s Growing Power organization and others are
underway in Jackson, WY, Chicago, IL and Encinitas, CA.

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History[edit]
Proposal of Vertical Farming[edit]
Dickson Despommier, professor of Public and Environmental Health at Columbia University, founded the root of the concept
of vertical farming.[2] In 1999, he challenged his class of graduate students to calculate how much food they could grow on
the rooftops of New York. The student concluded that they could only feed about 1000 people. [3] Unsatisfied with the results,
Despommier suggested growing plants indoors instead, on
multiple layers vertically.[3] Despommier and his students then
proposed a design of a 30-story vertical farm equipped with
artificial lighting, advanced hydroponics, and aeroponics[29] that
could produce enough food for 50,000 people.[3] They further
outlined that approximately 100 kinds of fruits and vegetables
would grow on the upper floors while lower floors would house
chickens and fish subsisting on the plant waste.[3] Although
Despommier's skyscraper farm has not yet been built, it
popularized the idea of vertical farming and inspired many later
designs.[3]
At the TED2016 conference in Vancouver, Astro Teller — the
head of Google X — revealed that the secretive moonshot lab
once tried to create an automated vertical farming system. X
made progress in automated harvesting and efficient lighting
technology, and managed to grow some greens. But the Google
lab couldn't grow staple crops like grains and rice using the
technique. As a result, X ultimately killed the project.[30]
Implementations of Vertical Farming[edit]
Developers and local governments in multiple cities have
expressed interest in establishing a vertical farm: Incheon (South
Korea), Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), Dongtan (China),
[31]
 New York City, Portland, Los Angeles, Las Vegas,
[32]
 Seattle, Surrey, Toronto, Paris, Bangalore, Dubai, Shanghai,
and Beijing.[33]
In 2009, the world's first pilot production system was installed at
Paignton Zoo Environmental Park in the United Kingdom. The
project showcased vertical farming and provided a solid base to
research sustainable urban food production. The produce is used
to feed the zoo's animals while the project enables evaluation of
the systems and provides an educational resource to advocate for
change in unsustainable land-use practices that impact upon
global biodiversity and ecosystem services.[34]
In 2010 the Green Zionist Alliance proposed a resolution at the
36th World Zionist Congress calling on Keren Kayemet L'Yisrael
(Jewish National Fund in Israel) to develop vertical farms in Israel.
[6]
 Moreover, a company named "Podponics" built a vertical farm
in Atlanta consisting of over 100 stacked "growpods" in 2010 but
reportedly went bankrupt in May 2016.[35]
In 2012 the world's first commercial vertical farm was opened
in Singapore, developed by Sky Greens Farms, and is three
stories high.[7] They currently have over 100 nine meter-tall
towers.[36]
In 2012, a company named The Plant debuted its newly
developed vertical farming system housed in an abandoned
meatpacking building in Chicago, Illinois.[21] The utilization of
abandoned buildings to house vertical farms and other
sustainable farming methods are a fact of the rapid urbanization
of modern communities.[8]
In 2013 the Association for Vertical Farming (AVF) was founded
in Munich (Germany). By May 2015, the AVF had expanded with
regional chapters all over Europe, Asia, USA, Canada and the
United Kingdom. This organization unites growers and inventors
to improve food security and sustainable development. The AVF
focuses on advancing vertical farming technologies, designs and
businesses by hosting international info-days, workshops, and
summits.[9]
In 2015 the London company, Growing Underground, began the
production of leafy green produce underground in abandoned
underground World War II tunnels.[37]
In 2016, a startup called Local Roots launched the "TerraFarm",
[38]
 a vertical farming systems hosted in a 40-foot shipping
container, which includes computer vision integrated with
an artificial neural network to monitor the plants; and is remotely
monitored from California.[39] It is claimed that the TerraFarm
system "has achieved cost parity with traditional, outdoor
farming"[40] with each unit producing the equivalent of "three to five
acres of farmland," using 97% less water[41] through water
recapture and harvesting the evaporated water through the air
conditioning.[42] The first vertical farm in a US grocery store
opened in Dallas, Texas in 2016, now closed.[43]
In 2017, a Japanese company, Mirai, began marketing its multi-
level vertical farming system. The company states that it can
produce 10,000 heads of lettuce a day - 100 times the amount
that could be produced with traditional agricultural methods,
because their special purpose LED lights can decrease growing
times by a factor of 2.5. Additionally, this can all be achieved with
40% less energy usage, 80% less food waste, and 99% less
water usage than in traditional farming methods. Further requests
have been made to implement this technology in several other
Asian countries.[4]
In 2019, Kroger partnered with German startup Infarm to install
modular vertical farms in two Seattle-area grocery stores.[44]