About Vertical farming
- Vertical farming is the practice of growing crops in vertically stacked layers.
- It often incorporates controlled-environment agriculture, which aims to optimize plant growth, and soilless farming techniques such as hydroponics, aquaponics, and aeroponics.
- Some common choices of structures to house vertical farming systems include buildings, shipping containers, tunnels, and abandoned mine shafts.
- As of 2020, there is the equivalent of about 30 ha (74 acres) of operational vertical farmland in the world.
- The modern concept of vertical farming was proposed in 1999 by Dickson Despommier, professor of Public and Environmental Health at Columbia University.
- Current applications of vertical farmings coupled with other state-of-the-art technologies, such as specialized LED lights, have resulted in over 10 times the crop yield than would receive through traditional farming methods.
Advantages Vertical farming
- The main advantage of utilizing vertical farming technologies is the increased crop yield that comes with a smaller unit area of land requirement.
- The increased ability to cultivate a larger variety of crops at once because crops do not share the same plots of land while growing is another sought-after advantage.
- Additionally, crops are resistant to weather disruptions because of their placement indoors, meaning fewer crops lost to extreme or unexpected weather occurrences.
- Because of its limited land usage, vertical farming is less disruptive to the native plants and animals, leading to further conservation of the local flora and fauna.
Techniques of vertical farming
- Hydroponics: Hydroponics refers to the technique of growing plants without soil.In hydroponic systems, the roots of plants are submerged in liquid solutions containing macronutrients, such as nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, potassium, calcium, and magnesium, as well as trace elements, including iron, chlorine, manganese, boron, zinc, copper, and molybdenum.
- Aquaponics: The term aquaponics is coined by combining two words: aquaculture, which refers to fish farming, and hydroponics—the technique of growing plants without soil.Aquaponics takes hydroponics one step further by integrating the production of terrestrial plants with the production of aquatic organisms in a closed-loop system that mimics nature itself.Nutrient-rich wastewater from the fish tanks is filtered by a solid removal unit and then led to a bio-filter, where toxic ammonia is converted to nutritious nitrate.While absorbing nutrients, the plants then purify the wastewater, which is recycled back to the fish tanks.
- Aeroponics: The invention of aeroponics was motivated by the initiative of NASA (the National Aeronautical and Space Administration) to find an efficient way to grow plants in space in the 1990s.Unlike conventional hydroponics and aquaponics, aeroponics does not require any liquid or solid medium to grow plants in.Instead, a liquid solution with nutrients is misted in air chambers where the plants are suspended.By far, aeroponics is the most sustainable soil-less growing technique,as it uses up to 90% less water than the most efficient conventional hydroponic systems and requires no replacement of growing medium.
- Controlled-Environment Agriculture: Controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) is the modification of the natural environment to increase crop yield or extend the growing season.CEA systems are typically hosted in enclosed structures such as greenhouses or buildings, where control can be imposed on environmental factors including air, temperature, light, water, humidity, carbon dioxide, and plant nutrition.In vertical farming systems, CEA is often used in conjunction with soilless farming techniques such as hydroponics, aquaponics, and aeroponics.
Source: The Hindu
