The World Economic Forum’s New Vision for Agriculture initiative has helped create public-private partnerships in 23 countries that have benefited millions of farmers.
What is vertical farming?
Vertical farming involves growing plants indoors, which is why it’s sometimes also known as indoor farming. Instead of sunlight and rain, vertical farms use LED lighting and controlled growing and nutrition systems. Plants are stacked vertically in layers, so many of the farms look like warehouses filled with large shelving units.
For example, Europe’s biggest vertical farm is being developed outside Copenhagen in Denmark by Danish start-up Nordic Harvest. It is a warehouse-like 75,000-square-foot facility where plants are grown in 14 stacked layers, according to Free Think. When it’s fully completed, Nordic Harvest says its vertical farm will supply 1,000 tonnes of food a year.
What are the benefits of vertical farms?
Vertical farming is considered a highly efficient and sustainable way of producing food. For instance, Nordic Harvest says it uses 250 times less water than a traditional farm would need.
Automation is the key to this efficiency. Software, robotics and data science are some of the technologies used in vertical farms to monitor crops and create optimum growing conditions. This includes controlling temperature, humidity, CO2 and light.
Controlled environment agriculture like this helps to reduce the vertical farm’s environmental impact, eliminating the need for pesticides for example.
Vertical farms also aren’t reliant on the weather, so fresh produce can be grown all year round.
How will vertical farming change agriculture?
Instead of growing fruit and vegetables on big farms and then transporting it over long distances in trucks and planes, vertical farming can supply local produce from neighbourhood buildings. This means less fuel is used and the food is fresher.
Vertical farms also tend to produce more than conventional farms. Nordic Harvest says plants can be harvested 15 times a year. In a conventional field, harvesting is twice a year.
Vertical farming sector struggles with costs
The New Vision for Agriculture (NVA) initiative, led by the World Economic Forum, is helping to ensure that the agricultural sector can sustainably nourish a growing world population. The initiative has helped forge public-private partnerships for sustainable agriculture in 23 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America that are implemented through regional programmes – the Grow Africa Partnership, the Grow Asia Partnership, NVA India and NVA Latin America.
At a regional level, Grow Africa has created more than 80,000 jobs. Grow Asia’s impact has reached 700,000 smallholder farmers in South-East Asia, leading to improved smallholder incomes by up to 80%, increases in yield by up to 52% (as of 2017) and reduced carbon emissions by about 40%.
Today the NVA engages over 650 organizations and has advanced 100 value-chain initiatives that have benefited millions of farmers.
It has also helped create the Food Systems Action Platform, a coalition of partner organizations that leverages their diverse and complementary competencies to support new and existing value-chain initiatives for scaling positive impact for food systems.
The challenge in creating sustainable food systems.
Today’s food systems do not provide the world’s population with enough nutritious food in an environmentally sustainable way.
Nearly 800 million people are undernourished, 2 billion are considered micronutrient-deficient and an additional 2 billion are overweight or obese. Meanwhile, food production, transport, processing and waste are placing enormous pressure on environmental resources.
What will the situation be in 2050 when the demand for food is projected to be 70% higher?
