Growing Up: How Vertical Farming Could Be the Next Big Thing in Agriculture
Vertical farming is not a silver bullet for the world’s agricultural challenges, but it offers a glimpse of what’s possible when technology meets necessity.
Picture this: it’s 2050, the world population has hit nearly 10 billion, and most of us are packed into urban jungles. Feeding this bustling crowd will require a staggering 70% increase in global food production. Yet, with farmland shrinking due to climate change and urban sprawl, traditional agriculture is struggling to keep up. Enter vertical farming—a revolutionary approach poised to reshape how we grow food.
Big Ambitions in Small Spaces
Vertical farming—essentially skyscrapers for crops—is no longer a niche concept. Take Plenty, for example. This South San Francisco-based company runs an 8,100-square-meter vertical farm that claims to grow as much produce as a traditional farm 300 times its size. Over in Newark, New Jersey, AeroFarms operates a massive facility inside a former steel mill, producing greens with minimal water and zero pesticides. In Dubai, the world’s largest vertical farm, a joint venture between Crop One and Emirates Flight Catering, spans 330,000 square feet and supplies fresh produce to Emirates Airlines. Meanwhile, China’s ambitious plans include developing entire urban neighborhoods, like those in Shanghai, around vertical farming hubs.
These farms are rethinking agriculture at every level. Instead of fields of soil, crops grow in stacked rows, using either aeroponic systems (feeding roots with nutrient-rich mist) or hydroponic systems (immersing roots in nutrient-laden water). This soil-free approach uses far less water than traditional methods, eliminates the need for pesticides, and produces no fertilizer runoff. Some setups even integrate aquaponics, where plants and fish support each other in a closed-loop ecosystem—a model of circular sustainability.
Lights, Data, and Efficiency
Sunshine isn’t a requirement for vertical farms. Instead, they rely on LED lighting, tailored to provide the precise wavelengths of light plants need to thrive. While energy costs are a challenge, technological advances—guided by Haitz’s Law, which predicts that LED efficiency improves twentyfold every decade—are making these systems more cost-effective. For instance, AppHarvest, based in Kentucky, combines efficient LED lighting with solar power, further reducing its carbon footprint.
What makes vertical farming especially intriguing is the level of control it offers. With precise regulation of light, temperature, and nutrients, these facilities create optimized environments for plant growth. High-value crops, like herbs and leafy greens, are the focus for now due to their quick growth cycles and high market demand. Companies like Infarm, headquartered in Berlin, take this a step further by embedding modular vertical farms directly into grocery stores, ensuring produce is harvested at peak freshness just meters from the consumer.
This level of control requires data—a lot of it. Sensors monitor and analyze everything from humidity levels to plant health, enabling constant optimization. Anya Rosen of Square Roots, a vertical farming company in Brooklyn, describes these facilities as “big robots that grow plants inside.” While it may lack the earthy charm of traditional farming, the results speak for themselves: consistent quality, reduced waste, and year-round production.
Challenges and Critics
Despite the promise, vertical farming faces significant hurdles. High energy costs for lighting and climate control mean profitability remains elusive for many companies. Investors, however, are betting big on the future. Plenty has raised over $541 million, and AeroFarms recently went public. But the industry’s long-term success depends on scaling up while keeping costs down. And so far, being profitable has been the real challenge.
Critics also point out that vertical farms primarily produce high-margin crops for affluent urban markets. Staples like wheat, rice, and corn—the backbone of global food security—are unlikely to be grown vertically at scale anytime soon. For this reason, some environmentalists argue that the improvement of traditional farming methods should be a priority and that vertical farming only seeks to cater to a wealthy market rather than a real solution to the problem of food insecurity.
Yet, vertical farming’s potential extends beyond its current limitations. By encouraging innovation and experimentation, these high-tech farms are challenging conventional practices and inspiring new ways to think about food production. For instance, Bowery Farming, another leader in the space, is exploring how artificial intelligence can further enhance efficiency and sustainability. Using video and sensor monitoring, AI analyzes plant by plant in real time to identify and manage the right amount of moisture and temperature to maximize yields.
Looking Ahead
Vertical farming is not a silver bullet for the world’s agricultural challenges, but it offers a glimpse of what’s possible when technology meets necessity. Plenty of investors will misjudge when to jump in and which firms to back. And even if some investors make it big, their companies will, in the near and medium term, remain a niche industry, catering to urban consumers willing to pay a premium for fresh, local produce. However, as renewable energy becomes more accessible and technology continues to advance, the vision of energy-efficient, climate-controlled skyscraper farms feeding the masses could become a reality.
For a world getting richer and more urbanised, that is a good business to be in, and it may be good for the environment, too, if only at the margins. But things could go further. Farming has a long history of, in effect, trading land for energy. Just as tractors and fertilizers revolutionized agriculture in the 20th century, vertical farming could redefine it in the 21st. But just as 20th-century farming would have been unrecognisable to the 19th century farmer, so 21st-century farms may, eventually, outgrow today’s in productivity, in environmental friendliness - and in height.
