SUBMITTED BY : SPARSH TIWARI (14155)

SUBMITTED TO : Prof. O.P. Mishra

Prof. B.Jirli

THE VERTICAL FARM

 Problems
• Arable land is finite, with agricultural land covering
38% and arable land covering 11% of the total land
area.
• Water is a scarce resource too.
• Climate change possess great challenge.
• Degradation of soil.
 Why Vertical Farming ?
• Vertical Farming holds the promise of
addressing environmental issues by enabling
more food to be produced with less resources
use.
• Minimisation of water requirements (through
water recycling).
• Steady supply of the products to the centres
of demand, bringing down the necessity for
storing and refrigeration.
• Food, nutrition insecurity and poverty are
major phenomenon in urban centres which
particularly affect the urban poor and
unemployed youth.
 VERTICAL FARMING
Vertical farming is the practice
of producing food and
medicine in vertically
stacked layers, vertically
inclined surfaces and/or
integrated in other structures
(such as in a skyscraper, used
warehouse, or shipping
container)
• Eg. A Vertical Farm stands in Suwan, South
Korea (Levenston, 2011). There, the Rural
Development Agency is investigating Vertical
Farming technology (Fabian and Kollenberg,
2011). The facility is three stories in height
totalling an area of 450 m². Almost 50% of the
energy requirement is supplied through
renewable resources like geothermal and
solar arrays, which is mainly necessary for
heating, cooling and artificial lighting
requirements.
General structure of a vertical farm
• In order to support 15,000 people with enough
food, this system design for Vertical Farm has
been presented with 37 floors totalling a height
of 167.5 m.
• Five of these floors are underground, housing the
3 floors of Aqua cultural and 2 of waste
management sub-systems .
• The 32 floors above ground comprise of the 25
floors for agricultural production and 2 for food
processing sub-systems among others.
• The building occupies a land area of 0.25 ha, has
a footprint area of 1,936 m² and floor area of
1,600 m², giving it an aspect ratio of 3.81.
• This area is multiplied to 9.27 ha for plant
growth due to multiple stacking and to an
equivalent of 68 ha due to multiple harvest
potential.
• In addition there is one floor for cleaning of
the growth trays, sowing and germination,
one for packing and processing the plants and
fish and one for sales and delivery at the
basement.
• LED (Light Emitting Diode) technology is
chosen for the artificial lighting as it emits a
low level of thermal radiation, has no hot
electrodes, and has no high-voltage ballasts.
  ESTABLISHMENT COST
Fixed costs Costs(Euro)
Building(incl. site) 111 581 994
Equipment 90 382 192
Total costs 201 964 186
Variable costs Costs(Euro/a)
Personnel 2 050 000
Power demand 5 390 941
Plant seeds 44 406
water(recycled) 0
Nutrients 424 919
Fish food 127 020

Total costs 8 037 286

 ADVANTAGES
1. Increased crop production.
2. Protection from weather-related problems.
3. Environmentally friendly.
4. Growing higher quality produce.
5. Conservation of resources.
6. Vertical farming flexibility.
1. INCREASED CROP PRODUCTION
• Indoor farming can produce crops year-round.
All-season farming multiplies the productivity of
the farmed surface by a factor of 4 to 6
depending on the crop. With some crops, such as
strawberries, the factor may be as high as 30.
• crops would be sold in the same infrastructures in
which they are grown, they will not need to be
transported between production and sale,
resulting in less spoilage, infestation, and energy
required than conventional farming encounters.
2. PROTECTION FROM WEATHER-
RELATED PROBLEMS
• Because vertical plant farming provides a
controlled environment, the productivity of
vertical farms would be mostly independent
of weather and protected from extreme
weather events.
• Nature of geological and meteorological
events such as undesirable temperatures or
rainfall amounts, monsoons, hailstorms,
tornadoes, flooding, wildfires, and severe
drought.
3. ENVIRONMENT FRIENDLY

• Significantly reduces transportation distance,

thereby reducing cost, energy and carbon
footprint.
4. GROWING HIGHER QUALITY
PRODUCE
• Provides higher quality produce with greater
nutritional value and a longer shelf life.
• No need for the use of harmful herbicides or
pesticides.
5. CONSERVATION OF RESOURCES

• Vertical farming would reduce the need for

new farmland due to overpopulation, thus
saving many natural resources.
• Deforestation and desertification caused by
agricultural encroachment on natural biomes
would be avoided.
 6. VERTICAL FARMING FLEXIBILITY

• Able to grow over 80 varieties of leafy greens,

micro greens and strawberries.
• Works on non-arable lands and close to major
markets or urban centers.
• Scalable from small to very large food
operations.
VERTICAL FARMING V/S TRADITIONAL
FARMING
• Yields are approximately 20 times higher than
the normal production volume of field crops.
• Vertical crop requires only 8% of the normal
water consumption used to irrigate field crops.
• High levels of food safety due to the enclosed
growing process.
• Significant operating and capital cost savings over
field agriculture.
Minimizes the negative environmental effects
of agriculture :
 With regard to greenhouse gas emissions.
 Soil degradation.
 Protection of already dwindling water
supplies.
 Biodiversity arises.
 Estimated yield of a Vertical Farm
compared to traditional agriculture
Crops Yield in VF due to Field Yield Factor increase Factor increase
tech.(tons/ha) (tons/ha) due to Tech due to Tech
and Stacking

Carrots 58 30 1.9 347

Radish 23 15 1.5 829
Potatoes 150 28 5.4 552
Tomatoes 155 45 3.4 548
Pepper 133 30 4.4 704
Strawberry 69 30 2.3 368
Peas 9 6 1.5 283
Cabbage 67 50 1.3 215
Lettuce 37 25 1.5 709
Spinach 22 12 1.8 820
Total (average) 71 28 2.5 516
 Due to the closed environment and
controlled lightning, the land productivity of
Vertical Farming is twice as high as traditional
agriculture. Taking additionally into account
that only 0.25 ha on which the farm is built
are needed, the total yield increases 516 fold
compared to traditional agriculture through
stacking the production. In total this leads to
an estimated production of 3,573 tons of
edible fruit and vegetables.
So, practicing vertical farming is the
paramount solution to feed the ever
increasing urban population.
 SWOT Analysis
• A SWOT analysis is being used to analyse
different facets of Vertical Farming.
• The environmental scan comprises the
analysis of the internal situation as well as the
external environment.
• The internal situation describes the main
product advantages and disadvantages,
mainly in comparison to the main competing
product (conventional agriculture in this case).
• In other words, the Strengths- Weakness
analysis (SW-analysis) looks at the total output
of the system as a self-affected good.
• The external Opportunities-Threats analysis
(OT-analysis) examines the external
environment. Opportunities and threats are
anticipated future pathways and should be
described in a dynamic sense, considering the
current situations, existing threats,
unexploited opportunities as well as probable
trends.
 STRENGTH
• Abandoned urban properties, abandoned mines
or even peripheries of buildings can be converted
into food production centres thereby eliminating
the need for expensive constructions.
• Eg. 1 indoor acre is equivalent to 4-6 outdoor
acres or more, depending upon the crop (e.g.,
strawberries: 1 indoor acre = 30 outdoor acres).
• Due to provision of artificial light at the required
wavelength (380-450 nm in the violet end and
630-700 nm in the red end) for an optimal
duration, crop production becomes a year round
enterprise, comparable with other manufacturing
industries.
• It also creates new employment and research
opportunities.
• Technologies developed for VF may prove to
be useful not only for remote research
stations like in the poles, but also in refugee
camps especially in flooded or earth quake
affected areas where camp dwellers need to
be fed for prolonged period of time.
• No weather-related crop failure due to
droughts or floods as irrigation is artificial and
controlled.
• Temperature and photo-intensity and duration
are also artificial and optimal.
• VF dramatically reduces fossil fuel use since
there is no agricultural machinery or inorganic
fertiliser involved.
• Food is grown locally or closer to points of
consumption, transportation is reduced, thus
saving on energy and the environment.
• High value fruits and vegetables cultivated in
Vertical Farms has the potential to take some
pressure from agriculture.
 WEAKNESS
• Crops require space, light, carbon dioxide and
water, which is available freely in nature. In
case of Vertical Farming all these need to be
supplied at a cost.
• Structures need to be built, generating
additional costs.
• Taking this into consideration, Vertical
Farming is logically viable only in places
where agriculture is necessary but agro-
climatologically difficult to be practiced in the
open, like in desert nations or mountainous
nations lacking flat arable land.
But,
• By 2050, our growing global population will
require an estimated 60% more food than we
produce today (Alexandratos and Bruinsma,
2012; Tilman et al., 2002; Green et al., 2005).
• Until 2050, the number of people living in
urban areas is expected to rise to more than
6 billion.
• Food and Agriculture Organization of U.N.
predicts that about 1.3 billion tons of food
are globally wasted or lost per year
(Gustavasson, et al. 2011).
 OPPORTUNITY
• There is an increasing demand for protein,
vitamin and mineral rich food as more and more
countries transition from developing to
developed nations.
 According to the United Nations World Food
Programme, nearly 1 billion people worldwide
are undernourished (FAO, 2012).
• It is clear that places where population is
growing also happen to be places where land is
shrinking in terms of arability.
 Vertical Farming might also find opportunity in
this dismal fact.
• Vertical Farming can relieve high yielding land,
now used for fruit and vegetable cultivation.
• The recent developments in the field of
renewable energy, like Photovoltaics, Solar-
Thermovoltaics, Wind or even Pumped-storage
Hydroelectricity, are mostly located in areas unfit
for agriculture.
• Even a small fraction of their generating capacity
might be used for the purpose of a VF.
 THREAT
• The biggest threat to VF is scepticism from
business and academia (e.g. Richard, 2005;
Alter, 2010), and it is not entirely unfounded.
• It is feasible to grow only high value crops for
consumers with dispensable money for such
products.
• It has no merit to flourish even in Mega-cities
in resource rich nations as long as conventional
agriculture can supply food cheaply.
• Due to subsidies, conventional agriculture can
and will supply food at prices much lower than
the real price and therefore present a tough
competition for this new technology, where
energy cost is a big concern.
• one could avoid competition with conventional
agriculture by producing niche high value
products.
 MARKET POTENTIAL
• Presently the biggest markets for this
technology according to the SWOT analysis, is
in Desert regions, Taiga region and Mega-
cities .
• The criteria are that we consider only those
countries or cities where the GDP per capita is
$ 20,000 or more and there is a demand
emanating from a population of 5 million or
more.
 DESERT
• Desert regions refer to Middle East and North
African (MENA) countries.
• Saudi Arabia as an example for the situation
of the desert regions, Conventional farming is
out of question with an average rainfall of only
70-100 millimeters a year.
• Vertical Farming which undoubtedly is more
sustainable than the form of agriculture
hitherto practised, might find a market in
these countries.
 TAIGA REGION
• The Nordic countries do not have suitable
conditions for agriculture, enjoy high
purchasing power and abundance of
renewable energy in the form of hydro-
electric or off-shore wind power.
• In addition to that they strive for food
sufficiency which makes them a good market
for VF technology.
• Considering the countries in the desert, the
Taiga regions, and the mega-cities, there is a
potential of setting up around 2900 VF.
• Although this projection looks utopian, mass
production will bring down costs, research
will make production cheaper, as a result of
which the market potential will extend to
cities and countries not envisaged in this
analysis.
• With an increasing threat of desertification
caused by climate change, this segment is also
going to retain its importance
 ACHIEVEMENTS

• World’s largest vertical farm in Newark, New

jersey.
• Futuristic Japanese indoor vertical farm,
produces 12000 heads of lettuce a day with
LED lighting.
• Singapore’s giant vertical farm, grows 80-120
tonnes of vegetables every year.
 INDIAN SCENARIO
• ICAR scientist’s at Kolkata are working on a
module to grow vegetables and fruits in
multistoried structures.
• “ ICAR is looking into the scope of vertical
urban agriculture. this could cater to the
need of fresh vegetables in the cities which
are growing in terms height with numerous
multistoried buildings cropping up. And this
farming will be done soil free.”
- Deputy Director General(crop science)
ICAR
• Scientists in at the Bidhan Chandra krishi
Viswa Vidyalaya Nadia have already had initial
success in working on a small scale on brinjal
and tomato, but implementing it on a large
scale would require additional fund.
• Productive efficiency of vertical farming was
tested in Punjab where scientist have attained
initial success in growing potato tuber, fruit
and vegetables in soil less and controlled
environment.
 CONCLUSION
 It is the practice of producing food and
medicine in vertically stacked layers, vertically
inclined surfaces and/or integrated in other
structures.
 The land productivity of Vertical Farming is
twice as high as traditional agriculture.
 Yields are approximately 20 times higher.
 It can produce crops year-round.
 less spoilage, infestation, and energy required
than conventional farming encounters.
 Mostly independent of weather and
protected from extreme weather events.
 Reduces transportation distance, thereby reducing
cost, energy and carbon footprint.
 Higher quality produce with greater nutritional
value and a longer shelf life.
 No need for the use of harmful herbicides or
pesticides.
 Conservation of resources.
 Applicable on non-arable lands.
 Requires only 8% of the normal water
consumption.
 Minimizes the negative environmental effects of
agriculture.
 Operating and capital cost savings over field
agriculture.
 High levels of food safety.
 REFERENCES
 Chirantan Banerjee. 2014. Up, Up and Away!
The Economics of Vertical Farming in Journal
of agricultural studies, Vol. 2, No.1
(Macrothink Institute)
 CE study at DLR (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft-
und Raumfahrt), Bremen.
 The Vertical Farm, Feeding the world in 21st
century by Dickson Despommier.
 Despommier, D. (2008). "Vertical Farm Essay I"
Vertical Farm. Retrieved 2009-06-26.
THANK YOU