Agriculture 4.0: how is food grown on vertical farms?

Agriculture is constantly developing, already actively using drones for pest control and automated tractors for harvesting. Industry 4.0 technologies such as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data are increasingly being introduced into agriculture. Let’s see how this works for vertical farms.

Vertical farms are highly automated agro-industrial complexes housed in specially designed buildings. At its core, a vertical farm is a multi-tiered greenhouse in which plants are grown at multiple vertical levels.

Why vertical farms?

The main reason behind such projects was the constant growth of the planet’s population, climate change and the lack of agricultural land. Some vegetables and fruits are also difficult or expensive to transport to remote regions with poor transport infrastructure.

An alternative to growing vegetables and fruits on open ground or greenhouses is growing plants in any closed building. For example, some companies make use of old warehouses or factories.

What can be grown there?

The main crops for growing on vertical farms are greens: various types of lettuce, kale, microgreens, basil, spinach, parsley, dill, onions, and more; vegetables, such as cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, bell peppers, cabbage, and radishes; and berries: strawberries, honeysuckle, wild strawberries, raspberries, and others.

In addition to vegetables and herbs, vertical farms can grow flowers, including edible ones, such as marigolds, cloves, matthiola, snapdragons, violets, viola, and others.

A business can also be built on growing medicinal herbs or green animal food. The latter is very promising because harvested silage and hay significantly lose their useful properties after three months of storage. And the technology of vertical farms allows growing fresh grass for livestock at any time of the year, regardless of weather conditions.

When using the Aquaponics method, in addition to plants, you can also breed fish, such as tilapia, perch, catfish, and carp.

How do vertical farms work?

In order for the plant to grow, its root system needs to be supplied with water, good lighting, and ventilation.

There are several methods to supply water. Usually, hydroponic or aeroponic methods are used.

The hydroponic method is a method of growing plants in soilless artificial environments, in which plants are nourished from a water solution with nutrients. This method guarantees the saturation of the root system of plants with all the necessary building elements and more intensive plant growth, in comparison with the soil method. The main shortcoming of the hydroponic method is that the solution’s natural oxygen levels may be inadequately low, which can lead to the development of pathogenic flora and the plants dying.

The aeroponic method is the process of growing plants in the air, also without using soil. Nutrients are delivered to the roots of plants in the form of an aerosol. This method provides better plant access to oxygen and carbon dioxide than others. But it also has a weakness: such a system requires regular and complex equipment maintenance.

The methods are sometimes combined to achieve greater efficiency.

The less common aquaponics method combines fish cultivation with soilless plant cultivation. Waste from fish or shrimp acts as the nutriculture for plants, which in turn purify the water. The main challenge in aquaponics is the precise maintenance of the delicate balance of different but interdependent characteristics of water — a living environment for animals, plants and bacteria.

To provide adequate lighting to crops, instead of sodium gas-discharge lamps and fluorescent lamps, LED lamps with a certain spectrum, luminous efficacy and color temperature are used. These lamps also generate less heat.

For ventilation and air conditioning, the farms use: temperature lowering/increasing circuits or removal of cold/warm air masses through ventilation channels. Dehumidifiers are also used because large plants release a lot of moisture. After purification, this moisture can be reused to water the same plants.

All units on the farm are controlled by an automation system. There are also rooms for staff, planting seeds and packaging crops.

Vertical farm advantages

· Fresh vegetables and greens can be grown in areas with a shortage of land and transport problems.

· Harvesting all year round, regardless of weather conditions.

· Closed air cycle and controlled microclimate inside a vertical farm eliminate the use of pesticides.

· Water consumption is significantly lower compared to traditional cultivation in soil.

· Almost zero emissions of harmful gases into the atmosphere.

· Dozens of times higher yield compared to soil cultivation.

· Ensures independence from supplies of vegetables, berries, and herbs from other countries.

· Can be used for educational purposes.

Vertical farm disadvantages

· Setting up and running a vertical farm requires a large initial investment.

· Massive rent, electricity, and water bills.

· Not all plants are profitable to grow at vertical farms.

· Like any other business, the payback period of a vertical farm is 3–5 years.

So what about Agriculture 4.0?

Let’s take a look at iFarm technologies as an example.

In agriculture, drones have long been used to monitor agricultural land. iFarm joined forces with developers from Azoft to solve the same problems, but inside the closed space of vertical farms.

The growing area on vertical farms is usually over a thousand square meters, and it takes a long time to inspect each plant. Employees can spend 150 to 800 hours a month regularly inspecting a 1,000 square meter farm. Drones connected to an Artificial Intelligence system can do it much faster.

The drones are equipped with cameras and have a marker-based positioning navigation system combined with position hold technology.

The data received from a camera of an autonomous drone is immediately processed by Artificial Intelligence based on neural networks. AI determines the weight of the plant from the image and finds deviations in the growth schedule and diseases in the early stages of plant development.

If a farm employee sees a plant that looks unhealthy, they can take a photo of the plant and send a message to a Telegram bot. The neural network will determine if there are matches in its database and respond accordingly, helping to identify problems at an earlier stage.

The neural network can already determine:

· a healthy plant;

· a sick plant;

· sporulation in the affected areas;

· edge burn of the plant;

· type of crops.

The farm is managed by an automated system, but to increase its efficiency, a combination of AI with the Cloud solution and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) can be used. For example, iFarm has created the SaaS platform iFarm Growtune (SaaS stands for software as a service). It solves many problems for the vertical farm owner and reduces the cost of running the farm. The platform collects data from sensors across the farm, sends it to the Cloud. Artificial Intelligence algorithms then streamline equipment performance and plan employee actions.

The SaaS platform enables to:

· reduce the number of qualified and highly paid specialists physically present at a farm (saving 40–60 % of all costs);

· use a library of instructions on plant growing;

· automatically calculate the necessary parameters for equipment operation and organize employees’ work;

· predict the yield and volume of future sales based on Big Data analytics.

Some companies automate and robotize many operations to reduce the number of employees and ease their work. Pallets with plants are installed on mobile platforms that move along a conveyor. For more complex operations, robots are used. They can move heavy pallets and pack harvested goods.

Applications for augmented reality glasses are also being developed to help farm workers complete their daily tasks faster. Information will be displayed in an overlay over the image of real crops.

Vertical farm examples

Unit 84 is the UK’s first vertical aquaponics farm. Located inside an industrial warehouse in East London, it produces 20 tons of greens and salads annually, as well as fish. All products are shipped in bulk to local restaurants and shops. Video presentation.

In 2017, Badia Farms opened in the United Arab Emirates. The installation takes 790 sq. m and produces 18 types of leafy vegetables, including arugula, mustard and mint. The cultivation process uses no chemicals and pesticides. Over time, the company plans to completely change the food supply system in the UAE. So far, about 80 % of vegetables, fruits and herbs are imported into the country. On average, they travel 5,000 km to reach store shelves and restaurant kitchens. Video presentation.

The Infarm large indoor urban vegetable garden in Europe is housed in a giant warehouse at the Metro wholesaler. Infarm owns 1,200 vertical farms producing vegetables, fruits, herbs and herbs. Cloud solutions and Big Data are actively used in their operation. They help adapt the level of light, temperature, pH and nutrient composition individually for each plant variety, supporting up to 1,200 individual crops per a 2 sq. m module. Video.

In Finland, Exsilio Oy engineers designed vertical farms with the size of a shipping container by placing multi-tiered beds in a 13-meter module. Harvesting can be done all year round anywhere in the city when connected to a water supply and electricity network.

There are several companies in Russia that produce and grow plants on vertical farms. For example, iFarm offers several options starting from industrial farms of more than 1,000 sq. meters and ending with a small module for growing greenery, designed for installation directly in the facilities of retail chains and restaurants. Video footage showing iFarm at work.

Mirai Corp is located in the Miyagi Prefecture in eastern Japan and is the largest vertical farm in the country. Its area is 25,000 square feet (2,323 square meters). Greenery is grown on 18 racks and is illuminated by 17,500 LED lights. The farm produces 10,000 units of lettuce per day. Video.

A round-shaped farm has also been built in Japan. Grandpa Dome is a smart hydroponic farm with a pivot system. Greens are planted in the center of a rotating circle, moving plants further from the center as they grow. When the plant has moved from the center of the circle to the edge, it is available for harvesting. Plants take 30 days to mature. The unusual approach has impressed the local farmers so much that the company made a special video presentation for them before the farm opening.

Designers from South Korea have proposed the concept of a vertical farm taking an entire skyscraper — the Circular Symbiosis Tower. It may seem like a distant dream to some, but you never know what will be common in the future. The proposed farm is a skyscraper tower around which there are grass fields. The concept assumes the use of the symbiosis of plants and animals. Several floors are dedicated to the cultivation of grass and animal breeding: cows, sheep, and chickens. It is also planned to house a restaurant, offices, and residential apartments in the building.

Of course, vertical farms will not replace traditional farming anytime soon. But the development and mutual complementation of vertical farming technologies and Industry 4.0 will improve agriculture in general, as well as feed people with fresh vegetables, herbs, berries, and fish.