The Disadvantages Of Vertical Farming

Vertical Farming

Agriculture has long been with people since the past century and now people need more food than ever before. It is expected that by 2050, the demand for both food and land will increase since many lands and soils that use for growing food will be unusable, and agricultural productivity has its limited (LeBlanc, 2017). As the more population grows, the more arable lands that needed to grow food is losing because the industrial development and urbanization are taking places. If agriculture needs to continue feeding the world, it needs to be more advanced like manufacturing. Fortunately, in these day, experts, entrepreneurs and farmers have been working together to address the upcoming food crisis facing humanity. The

Following are the major limitations of vertical farming. Firstly, due to vertical farming based on many appliances, it requires many of investment. According to LeBlanc (2017), the cost of vertical farming construction combined with many technologies such as lighting, heating and so on could be over $100 million which might more than getting the benefits of productivity, and the more location close to cities, the more price of estates is increasing. Secondly, vertical farming depends too much on technology. The entire process of vertical farming relies on various technologies for maintaining appropriate conditions for plants. To clarify, if the farm loses electric power for just one day, it can affect production process and cause a huge loss of productivity and profit (LeBlanc, 2017). Lastly, there are some detractors who not agree with the innovation and point to the indoor farming's inefficiencies. Stan Cox, a former USDA biologist, mentioned that the amount of energy, resources, and the scale use in vertical farming will never be capable and sufficient to supply any percentage of food needs (Stella, 2017). Also, since most vertical farms have planned to construct in cities, urban people can easily access a food, and people who live on farms and rural communities might be disregarded. Consequently, traditional farmers might lose their profits from the movement of urban food (Cox,

Due to a limit of crop species, traditional farmers still continue growing crops for urban people. Moreover, vertical farming focuses on a high value and rapid-growing, so those slow-growing crops are not profitable in a commercial vertical farming system (Birky, 2016). The benefits of vertical farm toward humanity are various than its drawbacks. As the production through the controlled systems is not susceptible to variation of any factors such as climate, insects and disease, the innovation can increase crop yields in year-round production with high quality and quantity without using herbicides or pesticides. Additionally, vertical farming can take advantage of low-value land or unavailable for food production. Due to using indoor farming and growing crops upward, it can save more areas than traditional farming which enlarge crops outward in large areas. Besides those advantages, owing to involve the construction of food production in urban centers, it can reduce energy consumption for transportation and food miles (“The vertical farm essay”, n.d.). Furthermore, the innovation can be a solution for some countries with a climate of extreme such as Antarctic. It is the country which always has winter season so that growing food outdoors is impossible and has to ship from overseas. The business insider reported that now Antarctica can harvest its own crops by the