Maximum Yield Australia/New Zealand November/December 2018 | Page 44

SUNQIAO, Shanghai, China
sasaki.com
SKY GREENS, Singapore
skygreens.com
Among the first commercial indoor farms in the world, in
the famously densely-populated city-state of Singapore,
Sky Greens sowed its first seeds in 2012 and now produces
up to 10 tons of leafy veg every day — a lifeline for an
island with a chronic scarcity of green space.
The same (recycled) water that irrigates the plants is
used to power a hydraulic system, like giant water wheels
carrying trays of Chinese cabbage, lettuce, and spinach up
and over 30-foot high A-frames. They’re planted, unusually,
in soil rather than hydroponics to improve the flavour, and
turn evenly through the sunlight as they go, hardly any
LEDs required, adding up to an almost zero-carbon system.
Not so much a vertical farm as a whole district of them, Sunqiao
is a vision of the future. China’s second city is intensely urban,
eight times bigger than New York City, and home to 24 million
people. The Sunqiao Urban Agricultural District, designed by
US-based architects Sasaki, is China’s solution to feeding all
those hungry mouths.
A 20-year building program began last year to create a 250-acre
residential complex studded with vertical tower greenhouses
dedicated to growing kale, spinach, and lettuce for local people.
Plants grow along looping rails, rotating to make the most of
natural light; watered with collected rainwater, while nutrients
are delivered from fish tanks in an aquaponics room.
SPREAD, Kyoto, Japan
spread.co.jp
Following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami which all but
destroyed the nuclear plant at Fukushima, irradiating fresh
produce for miles, food security took on new meaning in Japan.
Though Spread’s massive vertical farm in Kameoka, Kyoto
Prefecture, had been producing fresh greens since 2007,
consumers remained suspicious of food grown without soil or
sunshine. That all changed when vertically farmed vegetables
became the only ones guaranteed free of nuclear fallout radiation.
Now they’ve opened an even bigger facility in nearby Keihanna.
Tended mainly by robots, it covers nearly three acres and
produces 30,000 heads – three tons – of lettuce every day.
URBAN CROP SOLUTIONS, Kortrijk, Belgium
urbancropsolutions.com
Maarten Vandecruys was still a student at business school when
he came up with his big idea. He found himself an investor and
an old carpet factory and two years later, Urban Crop Solutions
had its first prototype, turning out 400 crops a day.
Vandecruy’s off-the-shelf plant factories are completely closed
environments, gardened by robots using a crate system in up to
24 layers. They are designed to slot seamlessly into any build-
ing. The most recent models are smaller-scale container farms,
fully-roboticized miniature plant factories that fit comfortably
inside a city-center basement.
Vertical farming is unlikely to replace conventional farming any
time soon, if only because set up costs run into the millions, and
the range of foods is largely restricted to leafy greens (larger
vegetables like potatoes take too much light and energy to
produce economically). But it is increasingly looking like a viable,
sustainable solution to some of the toughest challenges in feeding
a growing world. For this technology, surely, the only way is up.
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