Maximum Yield Australia/New Zealand November/December 2018 | Page 42

WORLD FOOD BUILDING, Linkoping, Sweden
plantagon.com
This vision in glass and steel is still being built, but it’s
already one of the most exciting vertical farms in the world.
The award-winning $40-million World Food Building, by
Swedish food-tech company Plantagon, is a 16-storey,
200-foot high plantscraper capable of feeding 5,000 people.
Racks of vegetables extending the height of the building
benefit from natural sunlight as well as LED lights,
dramatically cutting a major cost of vertical farming,
while robots take care of much of the sowing, planting,
and tending. The building is set to open by 2020.
INTELLIGENT GROWTH SOLUTIONS,
James Hutton Institute, Dundee, Scotland
intelligentgrowthsolutions.com
Britain’s first automated vertical farm opened this year,
but this is no conventional commercial operation churning
out lettuces for restaurants. It’s a life-sized, $3.3-million
research lab, experimenting with new ways to grow more
efficiently under LED.
The facility is based on the grounds of Scotland’s respected
agricultural research hub, the James Hutton Institute. Planned
trials include testing automation systems and experiment-
ing with how different colour spectrums affect crop growth.
It’ll also be working on expanding the range of fresh produce,
potentially opening the way for fresh, pesticide-free straw-
berries and tomatoes, grown in Scotland all year.
PLENTY, Seattle, USA
plenty.ag
Silicon Valley start-up Plenty Inc. has big ideas. The
masterplan is to build vertical farms in every major city
(they’re already getting involved in projects in China
and the Middle East).
For now, though, they’re starting with Kent, near
Seattle, where they’ve opened their second
100,000-square-foot vertical farm, designed to produce
4.5 million pounds of greens each year. The plants —
mainly leafy greens like kale and mustard greens —
grow sideways on 20-foot towers in walls of unbroken
greenery with water and nutrients delivered by (energy-
free) gravity instead of pumps.
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