"Vertical farming" to help feed the world

Added on 22 February 2022

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Farming in cities could help NZ - and the world - meet looming food crisis. In the next 30 years, the world will have to grow as much food as it has in the last 10,000 years. That sobering statistic means that, while climate change may be humanity's biggest challenge, another daunting crisis looms alongside it: even if we manage to control the planet's environmental decline, how do we feed all the world's people?

Experts agree time is running out and, for one man tackling the problem head-on, the situation could not be more stark: "Over 800 million people live in serious poverty and in my lifetime the global population has risen from around four billion to between seven and eight billion," says Scot David Farquhar.

"With population growth at that rate we are going to have to grow as much food in the next 30 years as we have in the last 10,000," he says.

Farquhar is CEO of Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS), a company based in Edinburgh but now coming to New Zealand. It has developed technology which it believes will provide part of the solution to both crises - one that is likely to see 'farms' springing up in city precincts.

Known as vertical farming, it uses smart technologies to grow vegetables and fruits indoors in a remote, but highly controlled environment. Seedlings are positioned on trays inside modular multi-level structures IGS calls "growth towers".

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