Vertical farming doesn't seem to be doing so well at the moment. In Europe, VF companies are filing for bankruptcy and laying off staff, and in the US it seems expansion in the industry is far more cautious now than it once was. Was this inevitable? Well, many in the VF community are blaming the energy crisis, which, wasn’t inevitable (thanks Mr. Putin), and so we could say, ‘no’, this didn’t have to happen. But I disagree - this was whole inevitable, and it's a great thing it has happened.
Since I started researching and working in the VF industry, I have been saying that we are living in the hype days. The Gartner Hype Cycle curve lays it out plainly - the hundreds of startups, and even some of the industry leaders, are doomed to fail. Most of them will shut down, and we will be left with either the lucky ones or the ones that really understand how the industry should work. We are currently in free fall. But, this is a good thing.
The VF industry has always promised a lot, and so people have been right to be skeptical. There is, of course, no silver bullet. The cost to set up and operate a VF is extreme, and, energy usage is so high as to destroy any chance of turning a profit, or actually fulfilling the environmental claims that the technology aimed to meet. But, I don’t think this is permanent. I still believe that VFs have an important role to play in the future of our food production systems.
Operations // Why be a brand when you can just be a farmer
Last time you bought a cucumber or a bag of spinach from the supermarket, did you inspect the label to see what company produced your vegetables? Who owns and runs the farm or greenhouse where your tomatoes were grown? In most cases, you can't even find out even if you wanted to - veggies either aren't labeled or are sourced from a wide range of suppliers and sold under a house brand. And honestly, most people don’t even care. So why have VF companies been so intent on creating a brand? I think this has been seen as necessary in order to justify the higher price. But this can be done without a brand - you don’t know who grew your organic bell pepper, so why should you need to know who grew your vertical farm chili? This obsession with being a brand complicates operations and adds so much unnecessary cost through marketing. There just isn’t the brand loyalty that there is with, say, clothing, or technology, as there is in raw foods. If anything, there is a loyalty to the production method - people like to stick to buying organics.
I think this is where the industry should head towards. Being true producers of food, not trying to be a brand, because I honestly just don’t see people caring about buying branded food. VF companies should produce food and distribute it just like all other farmers, saving time and money.
Energy, and truly environmentally friendly production
In 2018, Tsao, Jeffrey Y., et al. published a paper called The electrification of energy: Long-term trends and opportunities, in which they present a compelling argument that the vast majority of energy used in the future will be in the form of electricity and it will be cheap, abundant, and efficiently generated, distributed, and used in a dynamic grid. Some may call this hopeless optimism, even naivety, but I see a future where electricity is so abundantly generated in sustainable ways, that the way we think about energy use will change entirely. Whole industries that are held back because of high energy costs are suddenly viable. Vertical farming falls perfectly within this scope, allowing for the maximum potential of VFS to be expressed.
It is undeniable that vertical farming has the potential to mitigate a vast array of negative environmental impacts that open-field agriculture has on our planet. It is also undeniable that at this moment, these benefits are completely destroyed by the vast amounts of energy that are used to power VFS, and the harmful ways this energy is generated. This energy is also expensive, making growing basically all crops prohibitively expensive, except in unique circumstances. In the future with cheap, abundant electricity, these issues fade away and allow the benefits of VF to shine.
What will really happen?
The current jolt to the VF industry, where we are seeing many companies fall apart or reduce their operations, is a sign that the way we are doing it right now is not sustainable. The industry must integrate itself more into the food production system, and accept its place as a food producer, not a brand that can scale and fulfill the starry-eyed dreams of silicon valley investors if VF is to become all it promised to be. No more brand, no more unnecessary marketing, and distribution, just pure, sustainable, farming.
It also hinges on a future where energy is cheap enough to create a situation where the land saved (and converted back to wild lands), the water saved, the pesticide runoff prevented, and the reduction in distribution emissions, will be worth it to justify spending all that energy growing crops. Should we give up and just wait for this to happen? No. We need to invest time and research into working out how best to grow these crops, building the technology, and breading the ideal crops, so that when these conditions are finally right, we are ready to make the best use of them. We should get to work but know why we are doing what we are doing. We aren’t trying to become the next big company on the stock market. We are preparing for a world where we can produce fresh, sustainable food on demand, betting on the conditions being correct enough for it to happen. Because if it works, it's huge, and we need huge to get ourselves out of the mess is in.
References:
Tsao, Jeffrey Y., et al. "The electrification of energy: Long-term trends and opportunities." MRS Energy & Sustainability 5 (2018).