It may sound improbable to grow plants in closed environments without relying on the sun, but modern agriculture is already making incredible strides in bringing 24/7 cultivation to reality by augmenting existing practices with indoor vertical farms and robotic technologies.
In fact, vertical farms are on the rise. There are currently 2.2 million square feet of indoor farms operating across the globe, and that number is expected to increase almost tenfold to 22 million square feet in the next five years. Will vertical farming replace conventional farming practices? No, but this dramatic rise in indoor farms will add even more of a boost to our future food production capabilities, complementing the incredible innovations that are being made in traditional sun-soaked, outdoor crops.
Why such the exponential increase in interest and investment in both vertical farms and robotics? In short, this pairing offers profound potential to help agriculture achieve sustainability in the environmental, economic, and societal spheres.
Protected environments to protect our environment
The most widely discussed benefit of indoor vertical farming is its ability to greatly conserve natural resources such as water, land, and nutrients while concurrently improving harvests for select crops such as leafy greens, tomatoes, and herbs. Interestingly enough, the technologies that vertical farms utilize often overlap those used to optimize the growth potential of conventional outdoor crops, which aren’t limited in terms of the crop varieties they can produce.
The relationship between indoor farms and nature is as interesting as it is symbiotic. Broadly speaking, indoor vertical farms create ideal growing conditions for plants by insulating crops from the harsh extremes of climate change and seasonality. At the same time, these self-contained systems also protect the exterior environment by conserving resources. There are many factors to this mutually beneficial equation.