Advancing automation helps vertical farms achieve profitability

Supporters of vertical farming claim it could revolutionize global food production, practically eliminating food miles by enabling crop growth right next to urban population centers. The traditional agriculture market is associated with a notoriously complex supply chain, with fruits and vegetables often traveling thousands of miles to reach consumers. Recent disruptions to supply chains caused by the pandemic and geopolitical issues have only served to highlight the flaws of this system. Vertical farming could help overcome these issues by disrupting the highly centralized model for fresh produce while capitalizing on the broader consumer trend towards local production. Additional drivers for the vertical farming industry, such as the effects of rising oil prices and diminishing arable land, along with an in-depth analysis of industry drivers by geography, are discussed in the IDTechEx report "Vertical Farming 2022-2032".

However, the industry faces many challenges. Among these is a large amount of manual labor required; human intervention is required for many aspects of the farm, ranging from crop monitoring to system maintenance, and the labor requirements only increase with the sizes of the facilities. As many vertical farms are built-in environments not designed for growing crops, such as inside shipping containers, this can present operational challenges and require significant manpower. This results in higher running costs and thus contributes to the high prices commonly associated with vertically farmed produce.

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Photo by Petr Magera on Unsplash

Source: HortiBiz