Advancing Vertical Farming for Food Security and Sustainable Nutrition

Abstract

Vertical farming (VF) has become an exciting answer to solving problems of growing food production in heavily populated urban areas using controlled environment agriculture and vertically stacked growing layers. With hydroponic, aeroponic and aquaponic methods, VF manages to save a lot of resources in terms of water consumption, consuming as little as 95 percent less water than traditional agricultural techniques, and yielding up to 80 times more of some crops like leafy greens. With traditional agriculture struggling due to climate change, the decreased soil fertility, and increased global food consumption, VF has a solid and sustainable alternative that can be harvested throughout the year. This review focuses on the new technological developments in VF such as lighting optimization using LED, automation and climate-control, and closed-loop cycle of nutrients. In spite of all these advantages, VF still has to deal with significant problems, which include high energy consumption, high costs of installation and operation, and the necessity of specific technical knowledge. New solutions, such as the integration of renewable energy, innovative materials in water harvesting, conversing biowaste into energy, and scalable design solutions are considered due to their ability to reduce costs and enhance sustainability. The review also includes the role of VF in enhancing the quality of nutrition by manipulation of the environment in controlled ways and ability to decrease the level of environmental degradation by minimizing the use of pesticides, land, and carbon emissions. All in all, this paper emphasizes the existing constraints, prospects, and research gaps needed to streamline the vertical farming systems and make them more globally viable in the long term to have food security.