Again, to begin with

Con­cep­tu­al foun­da­tions for upcom­ing R&D-projects (e.g. UFA - Urban Food Agents)

Although it is no longer audi­ble, we must con­tin­ue to dis­cuss it until observ­able changes occur. The rad­i­cal reduc­tion of land use[1] [2]  in the under­stand­ing of pro­duced ener­gy con­tent for human food sup­ply per square meter is a sim­ple to fol­low val­ue. This is reached with opti­mum growth con­di­tions which meet the ide­al require­ments pro spe­cif­ic pro­duce and there­for the increase in yield or more crop rota­tions, the guar­an­teed annu­al pro­duc­tion prac­tice (which can’t be addressed by con­ven­tion­al farm­ing) inde­pen­dent from cli­mate zones and weath­er con­di­tions[3] and the option to use stack­able cul­ti­va­tion- and pro­duc­tion meth­ods. In addi­tion, food gets pro­duced on already sealed sur­faces or addi­tion­al food gets pro­duced with­out chang­ing nat­ur­al land to pro­duc­tive land – in an impres­sive glob­al scale through deforestation.

[1] Orsi­ni, F. et. al.. sus­tain­able use of resources in plant fac­to­rys with arti­fi­cial light­ing (PFALs), Eur. J. Hor­tic. Sci. 85(5), 297–309, p. 302

[2] Pod­mirseg, D. “up! Con­tri­bu­tion of Ver­ti­cal Farms to increase the over­all Ener­gy Effi­cien­cy of cities”, p. 321 ff.

[3] Annu­al dam­age bal­ance for hail, draught and frost, Aus­tria only

As a the­o­ret­i­cal mod­el, set up by the ver­ti­cal farm insti­tute in 2019, the imple­men­ta­tion of 11.000 build­ings in the size of a 70 m-high rise build­ing[1] would be enough to sup­ply all cit­i­zens of Vien­na[2] with need­ed kilo­calo­ries – in being autarchic. The con­ven­tion­al agri­cul­tur­al prac­tice today leads to land use equiv­a­lent to the fed­er­ate state of Bur­gen­land. And by encoun­ter­ing the glob­al hectares of today’s agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices in addi­tion the area of Low­er Aus­tria would be need­ed[3]. 11.000 build­ings might sound a lot, but it only encoun­ters 8% of the build­ing stock[4] of the municipality.

This num­ber doesn’t have to be under­stood as a pro­claimed goal, because it would lead to numer­ous addi­tion­al chal­lenges which not only are relat­ed to a rad­i­cal increase in ener­gy demand[5]. But it high­lights poten­tials relat­ed to area- or bet­ter space use effi­cien­cy poten­tial of cities or met­ro­pol­i­tan regions in general.

We must dis­tin­guish between the need­ed growth con­di­tions of food pro­duce (com­pa­ra­ble to the lev­el of com­fort of build­ing pro­grams like res­i­den­tial, offices, indus­tri­al etc.). The required ide­al tem­per­a­ture, rel­a­tive humid­i­ty and pho­to­syn­thet­ic active radi­a­tion, pho­ton flux den­si­ty and day­light inte­gral dif­fer strongly.

By neglect­ing that the pow­er demand and there­for (depen­dent from the pow­er mix of spe­cif­ic cities or regions) the CO₂-emis­sions per kJ (kilo­joule) of food sup­ply reach num­bers which coun­ter­act the up-men­tioned self-evi­dent fun­da­men­tal advan­tages, this leads to one of the pri­ma­ry rea­sons why some of front run­ner Star­tups failed with­in the past ener­gy crisis.

[1] Equivalent to the volume of Uniqa Tower at Schedenplatz, Vienna

[2] 2023: 2.000.000 inhabitants

[3] FAO Food Balance Sheets / own calculations: 2.054 to of food supply of which 1.491 t (optimistic est.) directly get consumed.

[4] Courtesy of Magistratsabteilung 23 and Stadtbaudirektion

[5] For the reason that this number represents all vegetal and animal products of the FAO-listed food items and of course, if talking about new constructions, the amount of embodied energy for building materials.

With this said we’re touch­ing a prin­ci­pal mis­un­der­stand­ing or per­haps sup­pres­sion of one of the cen­tral, essen­tial com­po­nents of the con­cep­tion of built envi­ron­ments opti­mized for food pro­duc­tion: the pro­vi­sion of ener­gy to meet the ide­al growth conditions.

This issue, though, is known from the very begin­ning of our research activ­i­ty and should have been acknowl­edged and con­sid­ered in busi­ness mod­els or request­ed by investors. It goes back to the very ear­ly pio­neers work of the first ver­ti­cal farms, for­mer­ly defined as Phy­to­tow­ers which emerged in the first six­ties and got export­ed world­wide until the ear­ly 80ies.[1] In cur­rent debates most­ly the dis­cus­sion is refer­ring to the pow­er con­sump­tion by sub­sti­tut­ing sun­light with arti­fi­cial light­ing.[2] But this is valid just for one posi­tion of one pro­duc­tion con­cept for one spe­cif­ic busi­ness model.

The solu­tion to this prob­lem in the dis­cus­sion on indoor farm­ing in gen­er­al lies in a very sim­ple, yet com­plex endeav­or – the focus on the over­all ener­gy per­for­mance of func­tions- and space pro­grams includ­ing all struc­tur­al ele­ments of the food sys­tem and sub­se­quent­ly in the inte­gra­tion of it in exist­ing build­ings[3] or new con­struc­tions with­in the urban envi­ron­ment. “The Ver­ti­cal Farm is a build­ing typol­o­gy where its func­tions pri­mar­i­ly focus on the urban food sup­ply chain through con­trolled envi­ron­ment agri­cul­ture. The build­ing is a struc­tur­al ele­ment of the urban ecosys­tem.”[4] Only the sys­temic com­par­i­son of CEA-prac­tices and con­ven­tion­al farm­ing high­light poten­tials in address­ing exist­ing and upcom­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals.

The rad­i­cal reduc­tion in land use[5] has already been high­light­ed. Besides that, ener­gy con­sump­tion might be the stum­bling block in the imple­men­ta­tion for two reasons:

1. The obvi­ous increase in pow­er con­sump­tion by sub­sti­tut­ing all nat­ur­al para­me­ters, includ­ing sun­light for pho­to­syn­thet­ic active products
2. Mis­lead­ing and embell­ished num­bers com­mu­ni­cat­ed direct­ly by Star­tups them­selves which at the begin­ning cre­ate false expec­ta­tions and lead to mis­trust after eval­u­a­tion activities.

[1] With the company Ruthner Industrieller Pflanzenbau we can say that Vertical Farming is an Austrian invention. After an abrupt end of the company’s expansion owed to the death of the inventor, the idea was forgotten due to a lack of publication and processing. Recently the vfi started with the setup of the archive and the documentation of min. 22 phytotowers constructed in Austria, Europe, USA, the Arabic world and Asia (ongoing project).

[2] For the simple reason because this energy position easily can represent 30% of the operative costs of plant factories producing photosynthetic active products such as lettuces, herbs or microgreens (Phase 1-products).

[3] Approx. 400 km² of unused indoor space exist in Austria only. Courtesy of Hagelversicherung and Umweltbundesamt. Also retrievable here.

[4] This definition is the basis of the discussion all around the contribution to reach sustainable development goals of urban local food production and supply and it radically distinguishes its intention and practice to plant factories, which in the vfi’s paradigm are falsely defined as vertical farms. The attached nomenklatura should help to clearly differentiate between practices, systems and types of urban farming.

[5] “The land area required for vegetable production is about one-hundredth that of open fields, and there is no damage by weather, pest insects, worms or wild animals.” Kozai, T.. Towards sustainable plant factories with artificial lighting (PFALs) for achieving SDGs, p. 35.

In this con­text one must under­stand that we won’t save the world by pro­duc­ing let­tuces.[1] But we can con­tribute our efforts in plan­ning and research by expand­ing our prac­tices to devel­op solu­tions for indoor food pro­duc­tion which meet – on a dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed lev­el – request­ed growth con­di­tions for more food items.

By clas­si­fy­ing them into pho­to­syn­thet­i­cal­ly active, pro­tein deliv­er­ers and pro­duce in lab­o­ra­to­ry envi­ron­ments (PA, PD, L) we see, that the ener­gy con­sump­tion for the pro­duc­tion enti­ty itself meets com­pet­i­tive and arguable val­ues which in some cas­es are even low­er than con­ven­tion­al func­tions such as offices or res­i­den­tial. A long list of mush­rooms or insects, trop­i­cal fruits, cell-based meat and oth­er prod­ucts of cel­lu­lar agri­cul­ture or biotech­no­log­i­cal pro­ce­dures are part of this cat­e­go­ry. A short­ly con­clud­ed exten­sive fea­si­bil­i­ty study of a new build­ing typol­o­gy for a 100.000 m² urban devel­op­ment area in Berlin not only deliv­ers absolute num­bers in ener­gy con­sump­tion (kWh/m²/a)[2] but also demon­strat­ed the syn­er­gy poten­tials between the dif­fer­ent con­ven­tion­al pro­grams and ver­ti­cal farm­ing func­tions both ener­gy and resource-wise.[3]

[1] Regardless the low energy performance / energy conversion of plant factories which can be criticized, the past decade made remarkable contributions on a scientific level all around growth conditions (lighting recipes, HVAC-considerations, air flow, nutrient recipes or other aspects of cultivation- and production methods

[2] (…) demonstrating the differences between PA, PD and L-products

[3] Results of recent feasibility studies for uban development areas

Regard­less of the fail­ure of sev­er­al Star­tups in the past decade for neglect­ing the ener­gy issue, this busi­ness field con­tributed to a boost in knowl­edge-gen­er­a­tion, indus­try- and infra­struc­ture inno­va­tion. New sub-eco­nom­ic net­works were estab­lished, process lines got short­ened and opti­mized and remark­able steps for­ward have been test­ed and estab­lished in the field of IoT, automa­tion and robot­ics. In con­crete terms, this means that trans­porta­tion net­works have implod­ed. This ensures that the neg­a­tive effects of the exist­ing food sup­ply chain are min­i­mized. This approach is cen­tral to opti­miz­ing the dis­cus­sion, as it inevitably leads to a reduc­tion in CO₂ emis­sions through reduced oil con­sump­tion, among oth­er things.[1]

Projects such as Ver­ti­cal Har­vest[2], found­ed in 2013 and built in 2015, also sus­tain­ably demon­strate the extent to which the direct, inclu­sive involve­ment of the pop­u­la­tion in pro­duc­tion, pro­cess­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion has an impact on the respon­si­ble use of food. The pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty in Jack­son, Wyoming, has become a “pub­lic hotspot”, a pub­lic space that has estab­lished a cen­tral sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ty in the heart of the city. Men­tal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly chal­lenged indi­vid­u­als are giv­en assigned respon­si­bil­i­ties in a dig­ni­fied work envi­ron­ment. This facil­i­ty is the demon­stra­tor for much larg­er facil­i­ties cur­rent­ly under con­struc­tion and design (Mayne and Detroit).

In par­tic­u­lar, the facil­i­ty in Port­land, Mayne (which will open in Novem­ber this year), is the result of the fur­ther devel­op­ment of the build­ing and cul­ti­va­tion sys­tem. It fol­lows the goals of most plants with a sim­i­lar con­cept, which aims to close the water cycle as best as pos­si­ble through intel­li­gent con­trol sys­tems, there­by lead­ing to a sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion in macronu­tri­ents such as phos­pho­rus, potas­si­um and nitrogen.

In addi­tion to reduc­ing land use and fresh­wa­ter con­sump­tion[3], this also address­es a third major lim­it of our plan­e­tary sys­tem: the reduc­tion of bio­geo­chem­i­cal flows[4]. The lat­ter also con­tribute to almost 10% of the pri­ma­ry ener­gy require­ments of the food sec­tor, with phos­pho­rus, for exam­ple, being extract­ed by large min­ing oper­a­tions[5] [6].

UFA is estab­lish­ing mul­ti­ple Grow Labs, which con­cep­tu­al­ly in the long-term vision of the project con­sor­tium rep­re­sent nine ver­ti­cal farms. These labs aim to cre­ate and devel­op an AI-sup­port­ed algo­rithm with advanced food-ded­i­cat­ed sim­u­la­tion process­es. This algo­rithm will not only man­age ener­gy and resource streams between dif­fer­ent build­ing spaces but also opti­mize urban food pro­duc­tion units through mutu­al fed­er­at­ed learn­ing. By con­sid­er­ing weath­er fore­casts, yield, qual­i­ty, and cost pre­dic­tions, the sys­tem will help achieve Glob­al Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals, account for cities’ ener­gy and cli­mate tar­gets, and respect plan­e­tary boundaries.

[1] The author is not aware of any studies that have investigated the negative effects of the food value chain longer and more precisely than DEFRA.

[2] Vertical Harvest in Jackson, Wyoming

[3] “While several benefits are reported for CEA facilities compared to traditional agriculture including vastly reduced land by up to 300%, water use up to 95%, and pesticide requirement, a number of challenges remain for a wider deployment of CEA.” Engler, N., Krarti, M.. Review of energy efficiency in controlled environment agriculture, p. 9

[4] Planetary boundaries from 2009 – 2023, Stockholm Resilience Center

[5] SMIL, V. 2008. Energy in Nature and Society, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.

[6] Podmirseg, D. “up! Contribution of Vertical Farms to increase the overall Energy Efficiency of cities”, Diagram on p.87

Why do we talk about build­ing typolo­gies? Actu­al num­bers on land use, depen­den­cies on hydro­car­bon ener­gy, soil degra­da­tion for mas­sive fer­til­iz­er use and changes in fer­til­i­ty for cli­mate change effects draw a clear pic­ture – for decades now – that world con­ven­tion­al agri­cul­ture is under a deep pres­sure to sup­ply earth­lings with food. 30% of the land mass is reserved for food pro­duc­tion today, until 2075 an addi­tion­al sur­face equiv­a­lent to Aus­tralia must be con­vert­ed from nat­ur­al land to pro­duc­tive land. On the oth­er hand, this prac­tice which slow­ly moves into a resilient sys­tem for food sup­ply, could be dis­bur­dened from its pres­sure by crit­i­cal­ly reflect­ing to what extend ener­gy in terms of kcal need­ed for humans could be direct­ly pro­duced next to them. Today’s food sup­ply chain is a com­plex glob­al net­work con­nect­ed by ener­gy con­sum­ing traf­fic, stor­age-, refrig­er­a­tion- and pro­cess­ing ele­ments which con­tribute to 30% of TPES and an equiv­a­lent per­cent­age of CO₂eq on green­house gasses.

There is no need to say, that live­stock pro­duc­tion takes a big part in land use and emis­sions, but to wait for polit­i­cal deci­sions on a glob­al scale to rad­i­cal­ly reduce its con­sump­tion is rather naïve and incom­pat­i­ble with dai­ly real-politic pres­sures. That’s why the dis­cus­sions on alter­na­tive pro­teins are expo­nen­tial­ly grow­ing with­in the last years, although already by the begin­ning of the 20^th cen­tu­ry T. Baron Rus­sell (1905) pre­dict­ed a future where plant-based foods would replace ani­mal prod­ucts due to eco­nom­ic and eth­i­cal rea­sons. In addi­tion, today, what Rus­sell couldn’t pre­dict, addi­tion­al chal­lenges emerg­ing with cli­mate change.

Super­im­posed econ­o­my and ethics: By look­ing at the FAO’s FBS[1] and com­par­ing data from the 50ies to today, pro­teins from soy, pea, lentils, nuts etc. got replaced by ani­mal pro­teins in indus­tri­al coun­tries. Emerg­ing mar­kets of lab-grown meat from ani­mal cells, the pro­duc­tion of Myco­pro­teins, (edi­ble) Algae and a grow­ing num­ber of dif­fer­ent types of insects are head­ing for sub­sti­tut­ing ani­mal pro­teins with pro­teins which a remark­able reduc­tion of the food foot­print[2]. All these food items can be pro­duced in with­in the city lim­it with a low­er ener­gy demand of most con­ven­tion­al programmes.

On a small-scale UFA will con­tribute to expand knowl­edge on this issue with Phase 2 and Phase 3-prod­ucts[3] (PD and L – Grow Labs). On a big­ger scale from the per­spec­tive of the author this soci­etal chal­lenge must be addressed respec­tive­ly. This touch­es edu­ca­tion, cur­ric­u­la of cross-fer­til­iz­ing prac­tices of acad­e­mia and uni­ver­si­ties and the sup­port of emerg­ing voca­tion­al fields.

TPES world­wide is still ris­ing and emis­sions of the food sec­tor, too[4]. This fact should not be mis­led by hyper­local or region­al improve­ments. UFA aims for con­tribut­ing to this dis­cus­sion with a broad­er per­spec­tive by deliv­er­ing infor­ma­tion and visu­al­iza­tion of actu­al ener­gy- and resource flows, its inter­de­pen­den­cies and syn­er­gy poten­tials by com­bin­ing PA, PD and L-prod­ucts in indoor envi­ron­ments in the heart of the city.

[1] Food and Agriculture Organization, FAOSTAT, FBS (Food Balance Sheets)

[2] Emerging studies and policies EU-Parliament Think Tank

[3] Within the research community recently the discussions on Vertical Farming in general started to get classified when it comes into indoor food production. Additional information on Phase 1, 2 and 3-products see attachment “UFA Nomenklatura and Definitions.pdf”

[4] International Energy Agency, Carbon Brief Organization