In this article, I’ll delve into the challenges posed by food production on the climate, and explore the importance of sustainable alternatives like vertical farming. Issues such as soil degradation and making efficient use of water irrigation systems present everyday challenges for growers, and have knock-on impacts on food security. Vertical farming presents an innovative solution to mitigate the environmental footprint of agriculture, while enhancing food production and sustainability. Let’s find out how.
Why does food production contribute to climate change?
Start with the effects of our existing systems on the planet. The impact of food and agriculture on climate change is sizeable, but luckily there are ways we can mitigate it. Here’s how agriculture currently impacts the environment.
Impact on soil quality
Soil is a non-renewable resource that provides us with essential food and resources, but the arable land that the world needs for food production is decreasing, and a third of the world's soil is found to be moderate to highly degraded.
Soil erosion and degradation are caused by the loss of soil quality. This diminishes its capacity to support animals and plants. It's a natural process, but accelerated because of human activity on the soil through practices like intensive agriculture, deforestation, and overgrazing, as well as the use of man-made chemicals to fertilise the soil.
When natural land is converted into farmland, important nutrients are removed, and the natural soil cycle of recycling and replenishment is stunted. This also reduces the amounts of carbon the soil can store by up to 75%.
Intense use of resources
The agriculture industry uses a lot of water. Worldwide, this accounts for around 70% of freshwater withdrawn for human use. This water is then redirected onto farmland through irrigation systems. Our demand for water is also expected to rise by 55% by 2050 due to increasing population and industrial growth. Combined, this presents a growing issue which we need to address.
The long-term effects of large-scale water division are becoming known. Areas with too much irrigation can become waterlogged, poisoning plants through anaerobic decomposition (where microbes decompose organic material without oxygen). In areas where water has been diverted because of irrigation, soils can build up too much salt, damaging plant growth.
Irrigation can also cause increases in water evaporation, which can change surface air temperature and pressures and affect atmospheric moisture conditions. This may also affect rainfall patterns, not only in over irrigated areas, but thousands of miles away. Water irrigation also depletes river systems, aquifers, and downstream groundwater.
Agriculture's greenhouse gas emissions
The agricultural industry emits significant amounts of methane and nitrous oxide emissions. On the whole, the industry comprises approximately 12% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Looking at food systems on a wider level, this figure jumps up to roughly a third of emissions. While there are global disparities in mitigating agriculture’s environmental impact, it’s clear there’s a need to change the status quo.
Climate change and food insecurity
Our current farming practices are significantly interlinked to food security challenges. This includes crop failures, disrupted food production systems, and increased vulnerability to extreme weather events (which will only worsen in the future). Along with rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns and the spread of pests and diseases affect crop yields and livelihoods, leading to decreased availability. This can lower the quality and increase the price of food. To address these challenges, we need to implement more sustainable agricultural practices.
Food may also become more expensive to the consumer because of increased energy prices, the cost of production, labour, and raw materials, or as new climate mitigation laws are introduced. On top of this, the impact of extreme weather may cause severe reductions in productivity, resulting in dramatic rises in food prices.
What is vertical farming and how can it help?
Vertical farming is the process of growing crops and plants in vertically stacked layers. At IGS, we do this using Growth Towers, which are made up of trays roughly the same size as a snooker table. These make up a biosecure environment, where every aspect of the growth process can be controlled to grow a large variety of crops and plants. These can be deployed in any suitable location, including rural ones where greenhouse or open-field farming is challenging due to a lack of arable land, adverse weather or water scarcity.
We deploy our vertical farming infrastructure around the world, empowering our customers to sustainably grow high-quality, profitable, and nutritious food.
Our Growth Towers can be used to grow various crops, including leafy greens, starter plants, and herbs. We have successfully trialled growing everything from lettuce plugs, strawberry and tomato starter plants, to tree seedlings and perennial crops, such as chillies.
Our vertical farming technology can complement traditional farming, allowing growers to grow regardless of seasonality and extreme weather, as well as being able to scale up or down to demand.
How can vertical farming reduce greenhouse gas emissions?
Vertical farms produce fewer greenhouse gases than traditional open-field farming. This is because this system emits fewer carbon emissions as it uses less land, and employs innovative crop production techniques. Vertical farms can also produce food nearer to the end consumer, reducing food miles and in turn mitigating the climate impact of food production.
Energy usage
One of the biggest misconceptions around vertical farming is its energy use. Whilst vertical farming takes a large amount of energy to grow crops, there are many opportunities for vertical farms to run on renewable energy sources. This can help to significantly bring down operating costs.
IGS vertical farming technology optimises energy usage through our patented three-phase power and control platform. This allows customers to dynamically control LED usage, delivering only the light the plants need, when they need it. Our trials have shown that this can significantly reduce energy usage. When growing lettuce, for instance, IGS Growth Towers use 11.8 kWh less energy per kg of lettuce than the industry standard (approximately 38.8 kWh per kg of head lettuce).
In addition, our three-phase lighting system can grow lettuce heads in 30 to 50 days (whereas the industry average is around 70 days). This allows growers to lower operating costs, and grow crops quicker than by using other means.
Other benefits of vertical farming
Vertical farming practices also offer a wide range of benefits, including:
- Efficient use of resources — closed-loop fertigation and UV water filtering means that most of the water consumed is in the crops themselves. All the wastewater is flushed every six months depending on the crop. This wastewater can be recycled, e.g. open field crop irrigation
- Consistent crops and high yield — our patented HVAC and fertigation systems deliver uniform crop growth. Our Growth Recipes can achieve 2 to 3 times greater yields (kg per square metre) than in a glasshouse environment
- Zero protective chemicals — vertical farming allows you to grow crops in clean and biosecure environments without pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides. This method also reduces the emissions of greenhouse gases from methane and nitrous oxide. Unlike glasshouses, Growth Towers do not require gas, protective chemicals or high levels of CO2
- Reduced waste — crops are grown closer to consumption or distribution centres, significantly extending the shelf-life of the crop and can be supplied to meet local demand. Growth Towers can also grow crops with greater uniformity and shorter growing cycles, leading to less wastage at harvest and delivery to meet fluctuating market demand
Using innovative technology to change our systems
Vertical farming has the potential to support a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, minimise waste, and provide more efficient use of resources, all while growing high-quality, nutritious food.
With the potential to complement traditional farming and reduce emissions and waste in food supply chains, vertical farming is a proven solution to some of the environmental challenges we face today.
About IGS
IGS is an award-winning vertical farming technology provider with over a decade of experience helping growers across the world. We bring together crop science, engineering, software, agronomy and other disciplines, creating what we call Total Controlled Environment Agriculture.
Want to learn more about how vertical farming could fit into your operations? Get in touch.
