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The vertical farming market will grow to a value of US $ 3 billion by 2024.

The time is so perfect to acknowledge that the world is under food crisis. The growth in global population and the migration of people from rural to urban areas have put a new face on foods scarcity.

Economically developed countries like China are bringing up moves to not waste food. The initiative named ‘Clean Plate’ created by Chinese President Xi Jinping reflects on the lack of food products and its availability. The President has asked the country people to not waste food. A further move to make robots cook food for army personnel’s brought wide gossips on China facing a food shortage.

These were the outcomes of the pandemic and major urbanisation across the globe. It is predicted in a report that nine million people will lie in cities by 2100. Therefore, the traditional food source will fall out of the plate to meet peoples hunger need.

As a change to the developing food scarcity, the easily adaptable method of ‘vertical farming’ was introduced. Various countries are taking initiatives to include vertical gardening in their government projects. But vertical farming is quite different from it. Vertical farming refers to the practice of producing fruits and vegetables vertically, in stacked layers, sometimes on many floors, using artificial lights instead of sun and a whole range of relatively new technologies.

Vertical farming utilizes vertically-stacked layers of crops grown in climate-controlled facilities, significantly less water and soil than traditional agriculture. The transformation of cultivation techniques is capable of bringing a revolutionary change to the food supply system. With automation added to the developing technique, it becomes transformational and indispensable part of our food system.

There are two major reasons behind the rapid switch to vertical farming. They are,

• Tens of millions of dollars are being invested in the vertical farming sector by emerging start-ups.
• The urbanisation has lead to people taking the city areas to produce fresh food products to equal the lack.

However, the job is minimized by adding new technologies to the working system. The automation of vertical farming leads to production at low-cost which is profitable. Some of the technologies used in vertical farming units were expensive in the past. That is one of the reasons why vertical farming took decades to be established on a large scale.

There is a standard table on how the automation and manual work in vertical farming could be equated with one another. This categorizes the current and future of automation potential if vertical farming companies and technologies move further.

• No automation- All process in vertical farming involves human hand and brain including decision making.
• Basic growth automation- The subsystems required for plant life support like lighting on and off, nutrient pH control, air temperature and humidity are controlled without human inputs.
• Conveyor automation- The process is similar to traditional manufacturing. Seeding, generating, harvesting and packaging are automated using non-intelligent machines.
• Adaptive automation- Machines and computers monitor the movement, feeding habit without the implication of human physical interaction.
• System automation- Humans take care of the output services of the self-sufficient growing system. Every other farm operations are automated including refills, services and maintenance operations.
• Full automation- Humans are only involved as customers in the full automation process. The technologies look after the demands in the market and cultivate accordingly. The delivery process also evolves without human-decision making and labour.

Research and Market have forecasted that the vertical farming market will grow to a value of US $ 3 billion by 2024. Farmers who give their will power in farmlands on daily labour are getting old. The next generation has no intention of taking farming as their career. So the time is perfect to adapt to a much better system where humans hand is less needed.

Some of the top vertical farming companies and their techniques

Fine-tune automated crop growth

A developing vertical management technology firm iFarm has figured out a smart value proposition in the still-nascent market. The company is essentially an operating system that utilizes tremendous volumes of sensor data to fine-tune automated crop growth. iFarm is entering a worldwide network of the vertical farming market with financial partners willingly investing in Finland, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Netherlands, Russia and UAE.

Aeroponic soil-less plantation method

AeroFarm, launched in 2004 has patented over the aeroponic technology which could take indoor vertical farming to a new level of precision and productivity with minimal environmental impact and virtually zero risks. The company has raised US $ 138 million in funding since its launch. ‘Aeroponic’ refers to the technique of growing plants in an air or mist environment without the use of soil or any other earth-like material.

Zero pesticide and non-GMO seeds

Bowery Farming, a company that has developed its network across US steers clear of everything that is genetically modified. The company stands out by its initiative to produce zero pesticides and non-GMO seeds for vertical farming. Bowery farming rose to an investment capital of US $ 140 million since its launch in 2015.

People are slowly starting to embrace vertical farming in modern society to fulfil their own needs while automation is pumping its aid to develop it further. If the initiative is taken further at the same pace will lead to new openings and less food shortage.