Food Grown Home: indoor vertical farming

What is Indoor Vertical Farming?

Indoor vertical farming refers to the practice of conducting climate-controlled agricultural production inside buildings that are located within metropolitan areas.

Indoor vertical farming can help to address the growing demand for food: the world’s population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, requiring food production to increase by 70 percent. With industrial agriculture posing serious threats to our environment and a lack of cultivable land to meet this expectation, indoor vertical farming can strongly support existing agricultural production while diminishing environmental impact.

At Food Grown Home, we believe in the power of indoor vertical farming to help increase access to nutrient dense foods, especially in urban areas. Stable access to nutritious food is dependent on our local food systems, but when these systems are damaging our environment and ultimately reducing the quality of our produce, its time to reimagine food-growing.

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See how Food Grown Home is advocating for the implementation of indoor vertical farming technology in Montgomery County Public Schools!

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Benefits of indoor vertical farming

Benefit #1: Increases Access to nutritious food and lowers food miles

Requiring less land allows indoor vertical farms to be operated closer to urban areas, effectively reducing “food miles,” shortening supply chains, and improving the traceability of produce. This increased accessibility can also serve to address urban food deserts.

Benefit #2: Crops have superior nutritional quality

Benefit #1: Increases Access to nutritious food and lowers food miles

As indoor vertical farms produce crops in controlled growth environments through the use of cutting-edge technology (and therefore require little to no pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides), items grown in such conditions have been proven to have superior nutritional content than traditional farm products.

Benefit #3: decreasing health disparities in urban areas

Benefit #1: Increases Access to nutritious food and lowers food miles

Benefit #3: decreasing health disparities in urban areas

With copious amounts of fast food restaurants located in metropolitan areas, more individuals are consuming unhealthy foods that contribute to weight gain and obesity. Increased access to healthy food can help alleviate obesity-related health challenges such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, and various forms of cardiovascular disease.

Benefit #4: Uses significantly less resources

Benefit #6: Higher and more predictable crop yields

Benefit #3: decreasing health disparities in urban areas

Due to its climate-controlled environment, use of artificial grow lights, and hydroponic cultivation practices, crops grown in indoor vertical farms can be cultivated without the use of sunlight, soil, pesticides, and fungicides. This is far healthier for the environment as it eliminates the need for costly land usage as well as the risk of water and soil contamination from run-off.

Benefit #5: Year-round produce cultivation

Benefit #6: Higher and more predictable crop yields

Climate-controlled growing environments allow indoor vertical farms to cultivate produce items year-round, without concern for external weather, season, or the impacts of climate change. As a result, the cumulative annual agricultural productivity of indoor vertical farms is significantly increased.

Benefit #6: Higher and more predictable crop yields

Indoor vertical farms have the ability to grow crops year-round in three dimensions rather than two and accelerate growing cycles through the utilization of Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) technology. Thus, more food can be produced annually in much smaller spaces than traditional farms, and successful growing conditions can be replicated for consistency.