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As we migrate to urban conurbations in growing numbers and populations increase, the mega cities of the future face many issues from societal inclusion and integration, to health, employment and food production systems fit for this future challenge.
V-Farm vertical farming allows for faster, more controlled production, irrespective of season enabling greater future food security, as production through such controlled systems is not vulnerable to variability of factors such as climate or pests and pathogens. Furthermore, V-Farm can be deployed in redundant urban and peri-urban infrastructure and taking advantage of low value land otherwise unavailable for conventional food production.
Through funded community action projects it can also be a vehicle for social change through integration, improved health, wellbeing and training leading to entrepreneurship. It can o er an agent for change in both tower dwelling and remote rural communities.
Vertical Farming is thus regarded as a realistic future farming system, which may offer the stable model needed for future food production, to provide for the 3 billion increase in population and population migration predicted by 2050.
Fostering policies to promote Vertical Farming will provide new jobs in multiple sectors. Enhanced localised productivity linked in with local community renewable energy projects can lead to lower food and energy costs and improve incomes. The oversupply of high-rise apartments and disused warehouses in capital cities can be reduced by using empty buildings for multi-story farms. Saving local government money through maintaining buildings, preventing vandalism, dumping, and labour intensive upkeep. Rejuvenating neglected neighbourhoods with V-Farm community farms can make them a thriving community food and education hubs, produce food close to the consumer with a higher nutritional fresh content and deliver a positive impact on local diets.
The model can help to address isolation in remote rural communities and re-skilling workers in technology for vertical farms in local towns and cities. It is well established that rates of depression and suicide are higher in remote regions and part of this problem relates to isolation and lack of a vibrant social network, especially for males. Vertical farming has elements of a collective enterprise with social interactions among activities, Community V-Farms providing meeting places for socially isolated staff with opportunities for new friendships. More on this topic is discussed in the Community section.
A key political advantage of vertical farms is that climate-change commitments are more easily satis ed and the technology supports adaptation and mitigation. The closed-system approach supports biosecurity because of greater protection from invasive pest species. A distributed network of vertical farms has lower blackout risks and there is also reduced dependence on a few large power stations that are vulnerable to earthquakes or terrorist attacks.
V-Farm can provide solutions for temporary emergency situations. It can be erected a lot faster than traditional growing methods and by the very nature of being fully controllable it can be growing nutrient rich crops within days in any location.
Farming in high-rise buildings will generate new careers for technologists, project managers, maintenance workers, marketing, and retail staff . There will need to be workers to manage planting, cultivation, monitoring, harvesting, and research and development. Consulting engineers will be required to install and manage air-conditioning, water recycling, and lighting controls. In industrialized economies, there are few problems in providing skilled labour or scientific resources due to the supply of university-educated workers.
At the same time, novel industries may develop to provide advanced electronic instrumentation and services with consulting professionals advising on derivatives of the vertical farming concept such as Aquaponics and insect farming. The new jobs created may prove to be more highly skilled and diverse and probably increase overall employment in the food-production sector. The semi-automation of some aspects of the food cycle will also provide opportunities for robotics and software engineers for process improvement.
Methods of direct selling via farmers markets or community food halls offer reliable markets for small urban entrepreneurs to expand operations. Farmers markets draw consumers from a larger radius than supermarkets, aiding social interaction and cohesion. City markets with a higher populous and more expendable income yield the highest gross sales and show an increased demand for value-added products. For all the many benefits community markets offer, it is vitality important that they are encouraged and supported in policy making.
It is worth noting that to compete with supermarkets and large scale growers it is particularly important for smaller farmers to earn more pofit selling directly instead of engaging lower margin wholesale strategies.
Vertical urban farms and community farms can successfully incubate new businesses. From small indoor farms to food processors that produced value-added products to sell. Urban farm projects can serve as a catalyst for entrepreneurial projects.
“Whilst at first glance growing inside closed environments, independent from the natural sunlight, may appear counter productive, in extreme temperature climates it is the environmental control, not the light costs that are critical. Added to this, humidity control in such climates is often even more difficult than temperature control, leading to poor yield performances compared to more moderate climates where light levels would be seen as less favourable in an insulated, highly energy-efficient growing space the V-Farm system enables optimal, precise growing conditions to be maintained at all times, irrelevant of the outside weather conditions. Once you are inside the unit, you could be in an arctic science research station or a Saharan desert oil field operation. You - and most critically the plants – would have no idea. They are in plant heaven, and will reward you accordingly with the best possible produce for yield, quality and flavour.”
Dr Phillip Lee - Evolve Growing Solutions