Vertical farming, a system of growing food without soil or sun that has flourished for decades in sci-fi movies and the International Space Station, is going mainstream. Aerofarms is poised to become the first vertical-farming startup to be listed on the Nasdaq next month after completing its merger with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. Its products—leafy greens grown in a former steel mill in Downtown Newark, New Jersey—are sold in chains in and around New York City, from Walmart to Whole Foods. Founded in 2004, AeroFarms is rolling out its boxes of greens to more stores in the Midatlantic and New England, while expanding its product portfolio to include hundreds of varieties of greens and hops for breweries, berries and cocoa. Including the development of new crops.
I believe that a growing portion of the fruits and vegetables we eat—in fact, the entire $1.3 trillion global fresh produce industry in the U.S.—will be grown inside high-tech greenhouses like aerofarms. The market is projected to grow from $4.4 billion in 2019 to $15.7 billion by 2025.
First, the caveat: This new kind of farming requires more energy and technology than conventional agriculture. AeroFarms pioneered an ‘aeroponic’ system that grows plants in vertical metal trays, with their roots dangling in the air as they are fed a nutrient-rich mist. LED lights replace sunlight. Cameras and sensors collect millions of data points to track the needs of plants as they grow.
This type of highly-controlled indoor agriculture requires an expensive labor force of engineers, plant scientists, and computer programmers. In fact, few of the AeroFarms team of 200 employees have any experience in agriculture. Vertical farming also relies on more expensive urban real estate than rural farming. AeroFarms’ products, which include “Baby Watercress” and “Micro Broccoli,” currently sell for $2 per ounce—luxury goods that will hardly feed the world.
Still, the technology AeroFarms and other market leaders are leading very well, especially in areas where water and arable land are increasingly limited. Aeroponic farms use 95% less water than farm vegetable production and grow food 30% to 40% faster. According to AeroFarms CEO David Rosenberg, they use as little as 0.3% of a farm farmer’s land: more food can be grown inside the space of a soccer goal net than can be grown in five soccer fields outside. Is. Plants are grown without herbicides, fungicides or pesticides, with benefits for both economics and human health. And while artificial lights will always be more energy intensive than sunlight, AeroFarms’ LED efficiency has increased 59% over five years.
Meanwhile, plant data gathered by its cameras and sensors has driven rapid innovation: The company has seen its yield-per-square-foot indoor growing space increase by 23% over the past year, and the growth cycle has been slow. Hastened to 20 to 14 days for baby leafy greens – compared to 4 to 6 weeks in the field. Variables including light, moisture, nutrients, oxygen, CO2 and temperature can be monitored so precisely within a vertical farm that the taste, nutrients and phenotype of plants can in turn be manipulated. This means that Aeropharm and others in this industry are well positioned for not only high flavor and high nutrient production, but also high profit ingredients for pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals.
After completing the acquisition by October 24th—Spring Valley will pay $125 million to help it scale AeroFarms, according to its Securities and Exchange Commission S-4 filing. Rosenberg said he plans to build 16 new facilities by 2026, from St. Louis, Missouri to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Traditional, underground agriculture will continue to produce the vast majority of our staple crops in the coming decades—that’s for sure. Vertical farms, however, can play an important role in the production of local and perishable specialty crops. They can eliminate food rot and waste as well as fuel-intensive long-distance trucking. When they are located in and around cities, they have the added benefit of being protected from supply chain disruptions, as we are seeing today.
High-tech agriculture is still high-risk: Because there is no soil or other barrier to protect the roots, even small amounts of bacteria or mold in the root chamber can damage plants. And any malfunction in the system—a pump or sprinkler or timer—can kill the crop. But the drought crisis in America is troubling the farmers. The West reminds us today that the increased risk of weather instability outside is outweighed by the risk of broken machinery inside.
The fact that vertical farming holds so much promise says perhaps little about its merits when it comes to the growing dangers of conventional agriculture in an age of climate change.
Amanda Little is a professor of journalism and science writing at Vanderbilt University and a columnist for Bloomberg
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