1.

2) Protected Agriculture

In addition to the benefits towards overcoming the global challenges for food and
global warming, protected agriculture offers several advantages. In particular, with a
protected crop we can modify the natural environment to achieve optimal plant growth.
Modifications can be made to both the aerial and root environments to increase crop yields,
extend the growing season and allow plants to grow during different periods of the year.
Under this production technology (farming technic) the farmer can modify the factors that
affect plant growth such as air and root temperatures, light, water, humidity, carbon
dioxide, plant nutrition, and complete climatic protection.

We considered two fundamental structures of protected agriculture in this paper: 1)

greenhouse and 2) plant factory (PF). The main feature of greenhouse agriculture is that
allows to control temperature and humidity of the crop [19]. Furthermore, a PF differs from
a greenhouse in which it is capable of controlling light and gases in the system. A PF also
controls temperature and humidity. Therefore, it is important to mention that two of the
main stimuli for the use of greenhouses are precisely the high climate variability (specially
in tropical and arid climates) and the need for production close to urban environments at a
low energy cost. Yet the use of PFs becomes more efficient in places with extreme climatic
conditions (manly in deserts and polar environments) where the control of environmental
variables such as solar radiation and air quality becomes more demanding.

Greenhouses have challenges that PF do not, and vice-versa. On the first hand, in a
greenhouse there is a high variability and unstable annual production. The variability is
associated with the quality product as the main production factors of the crop are not
perfectly controlled. In the side of instability, it is worth mentioning that we still have
impact of climate variability on the crop across the year. On the other hand, PF may offer
many other advantages. Unlike the greenhouse, it allows a high retention of resources,
uniformity of interior climate and density and quality of production. However, the
disadvantage remains the high energetic consumption due to the need for artificial lighting.
All in all, the challenges of greenhouses are the climate variability and technology adoption
to support decision-making, and PF are inefficient relatively but provides high and constant
production levels. In this project we will focus to take these challenges and offering an
alternative DT…

** Quiere que ponga algunos datos de consumo energético de la PF, variabilidad en la

producción del greenhouse.. etc? Cuáles?
** Faltaría conectar con “a possible solution: DT”