Vertical Farming Could Yield Greater Yields Than Fields However Challenges Still Need Solutions
People interested in greening farms to reduce chemical harm may be interested in pursuing large-scale vertical indoor gardening. At first glance, vertical indoor gardens may seem like a great idea, especially in parts of the world with a shorter growing season. However, surprisingly, growing food indoors in vertical gardens could have some serious environmental impacts.
Visual Capitalist published the following interesting sponsored infographic on the topic of vertical farming recently that may be of interest to you if indoor vertical gardening is something that may interest you.
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| Advantages of Indoor Vertical Gardening InfoGraphic from visual Capitalist |
The article on Visual Capitalist shows studies suggest that growing food indoors on multiple floors has a huge appeal over growing crops in outdoor fields. However, there are some surprising and puzzling environmental costs to growing lettuce indoors.
First, let us look at the good news about growing lettuce in indoor vertical farms.
By growing lettuce indoors in a vertical garden, farmers can eliminate the need for using so many pesticides. This could greatly reduce the costs of growing crops.
Next, indoor vertical gardens are shown to give much higher yields. A traditional one-acre field planted with lettuce yields 16 tons whereas a one-acre vertical garden yields almost 10 times as much - 126 tons!
Third, a vertical indoor garden uses about 95% less water per ton of lettuce than the traditional outdoor farming method.
However - the CO2 or carbon dioxide emitted by lettuce grown indoors is astronomically larger, so much so that it seems questionable. How on earth can it be that lettuce grown indoors in a vertical garden could produce so much more gas? A ton of lettuce grown outside produces almost 40% less CO2 than lettuce grown in an indoor vertical garden? What on earth could be the cause of this increased production of carbon dioxide?
Two other challenges facing the use of indoor vertical gardens for growing food are the need for artificial lighting and the need for copious amounts of water - two things usually naturally supplied when lettuce is grown outdoors in a field.
One thing I did not see covered in this article was how the nutritional value of the lettuce compares between the two growing methods. For me, the nutritional value and taste of the food are the most important aspects to be considered when determining whether to pursue a farming method. If lettuce grown indoors in vertical farms had a higher nutritional value, then it would be worth the investment of time and energy to find solutions to challenges facing indoor vertical farming - otherwise, it is not a viable proposal.
What do you think?
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About This Author
Sister Su is grateful to God for keeping her alive. She writes on several blogs, has a YouTube channel and is most easily reached through Twitter @Sister_Su
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