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Answer» - Current farming methods are often wasteful in terms of space, water and money. However, vertical farms, which grow crops in trays stacked in tall towers, could help to reduce food waste by up to 90%. They would help to grow produce locally and on demand, and the growing process could allow farmers to control the environment whatever the season, changing the intensity and length of exposure to light, temperature, humidity, water irrigation, nutrients and carbon dioxide levels to create OPTIMUM conditions in which crops can thrive. In the future, these vertical towers could replace greenhouses at about half the cost, and with increases in savings and a reduction in space used.
- This agricultural revolution is not a new concept; in 1909, Life magazine published one of the earliest drawings of a vertical farm. In the 1950S and 60s, prototypes were first produced. In 1999, the idea was reintroduced by Dickson Despommier, a professor of environmental health sciences and microbiology at Columbia University, who speculated that a 30-floor farm could provide food for 50,000 city-dwellers. While many of his ideas have been challenged, vertical farms are now a reality in the US, Europe and Asia, where they are popular in cities where space is at a premium. In 2016, there were 2.3 million square feet of indoor farms across the globe, and this is expected to grow to between 8.5 million square feet and 16.55 million square feet by 2021. However, the UK’s vertical farm industry has previously been DESCRIBED as ‘underdeveloped’ as only a few crops, including lettuces, are grown in a few operational vertical farms. But the UK does have Europe’s largest vertical farm owned by Jones Food Company, which is 17 storeys high.
- MANAGING POWER CONSUMPTION
- To overcome the challenge of energy consumption, IGS designed a power-management system that flexes with the grid in real time, so that it responds to external influences such as grid stability and power AVAILABILITY, importing power when cheap or exporting it when costly. This means that the facility effectively acts similarly to a large battery where the energy is converted into food. The use of industrial Omron SYSMAC PLCs within the facility allows automatic recovery from power loss events and means that individual towers and sites get the power they need, meaning that none of the systems need to be reset, reprogrammed or manually repositioned. Each tower has a baseline power consumption of 60 kilowatts (kW), which can be rapidly increased to 105 kW or reduced to 30 kW for short periods to optimise grid stability, while the impact on growing is managed by the control system’s AI MONEY MATTERS
- The UK’s agri-food supply chain accounts for an ANNUAL turnover of £96 billion with revenues of £10 billion, accounting for 6.4% of the UK’s gross value added according to a Defra report published in 2018. The agri-tech industry, supporting farmers and growers with machinery and other kinds of technology, is a multibillion pound sector in which the UK has a 4% to 5% share of the world market. Vertical farming technology could potentially make the UK a leader in this area.
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