Vertical farms
When you think about where vegetables come from, you immediately have in mind that farmer with beefy hands spending all day in the fields. In truth, agriculture is taking a turn important from a technical and technological perspective.
Those vegetables that we buy in supermarkets - for the most part - are produced by a farmer who has a tablet connecting to the internet and knows more about handling technology than we do ourselves.
But among all the technological revolutions that are changing traditional agriculture and the way of working the garden, the Farmscrapers, that is, the vertical farmsIt is the technique that can most forcefully change the way of understanding the field.
And today, we have the most representative news; Denmark will produce 1,000 tons of vegetables per year with vertical farming techniques.
A new vertical farm is being built on the outskirts of Copenhagen inside a building with almost 7,000 square meters. Plus, will run solely on renewable wind energy (See articles on why solar panels work so well with crops.)
What's more, it is no longer just a huge amount of vegetables that will be produced in Denmark. According to the reference article published in Fast Company … "If the approach is correct, it is possible to drastically reduce imports of vegetables from Spain, Italy or even Kenya".
Obviously, and although this is the first facility in Europe to grow vegetables in large buildings. We are facing the first brick that can change the famous phrase "the garden of Europe is in Spain."
We are facing the first news that can change the famous phrase "the garden of Europe is in Spain"
The facility will use the hydroponic technique: a technology that grows food with little water, and does not require the use of pesticides, adding more value to "healthier" vegetables and greens.
And, although we do not realize it, we are facing a approach similar to that of Kilometer 0 and seasonal foods, for those countries that cannot produce certain vegetables, with palpable benefits in the face of climate change.
In addition, controlling the growing vegetables within a building implies other advantages; from being able to control environmental conditions (temperature, humidity, etc.) to fewer possible pests (the plants are in a controlled environment) and fewer operators - farmers managing the farm.
But… Are they all advantages? Initially and according to some experts, the vegetables and greens do not have the same quality, and the business is not always profitable (It is necessary to take into account the maintenance, technological costs and the need for semi-artificial lighting, they are high).
Although I suppose that all this will be a debatable topic, it must be described that this farm in Denmark is being built by Nordic Harvest (a Danish company) and by YesHealth Group, an Asian technological benchmark in the construction of vertical farms.
And if we focus on the international scene in search of the world's largest vertical farm… .
Crop One Holdings from the United States is working with Emirat Flight Catering to build the world's largest vertical farm inDubai, with an area of about 12,000 square meters.
And vertical agriculture is not only related to large buildings. There is also the "vertical garden" for supermarkets, in the style of a home urban garden, but within a food supermarket to be able to buy and consume the freshest vegetables and greens.
The image above is from a supermarket in Germany that piloted a vertical farming system with the help of INFARM, a company specialized in technology for produce fresh vegetables in your own supermarket.
According to Ray Kurzweil, Director of Engineering at Google, "This year will be the decade of the vertical agricultural revolution." We are facing a sharp revolution in the agriculture sector, because we do not know! But what we do recognize for sure is that the small farmer will be the most affected.
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