As the name suggests, it is a method for growing plants indoors, in a highly-controlled and monitored environment without using any pesticides or fertilizer at all. Instead, the plants are nourished via sophisticated nutrient delivery systems called hydroponics or aquaponics. But why is this so important and why is a shift from fertilizers and pesticides necessary?

Why are Fertilizers and Pesticides Bad?

The issue with fertilizers is that at least some parts of them end up washed away into a river or lake of some kind, resulting in the so called “dead zones” which are harmful for the fish. As for pesticides, their full effect on the human body is actually not completely known, but long exposure to such substances results in symptoms such as hand tremors and headaches. Simply put, pesticides and fertilizers help us produce both a larger quantity and better looking food, but might impact our bodies and certain wildlife negatively.

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Despite a global decrease in the usage of these substances in recent years, the number is still pretty high: the amount of pesticides used in agriculture for 2007 was a jaw dropping 877 million pounds.

As you might have already concluded, all of us have probably had our fair share of pesticide-rich meals, but luckily indoor farming offers another alternative where mass produced food can actually be free of any harmful additives.

What Makes Indoor Farming a Better Alternative?

Let`s examine the indoor farming process in order to illustrate not only why the produce is free of any harmful substances, but also more environmentally friendly in general. An indoor farm called Bowery Farming is among the top innovators in the field with their so called post-organic produce. They grow plants in vertical rows, without using any harmful additives, while monitoring every growth stage and controlling exactly how much light and nutrients the plants receive.

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Indoor farming is a form of agricultural science that addresses most of the challenges traditional agriculture has.

For more in-depth information about Bowery Farming and the way they produce food, you can watch this video.

The Environmental Benefits of Indoor Farming

Indoor farming can be incredibly space and resource efficient, using close to 95% less water and much less land. Bowery manages to be 100 times more productive than a regular farm of the same size, while producing clean, pesticide free products.

Furthermore, indoor farms provide superiority in terms of transportation, as they can be located in almost any urban location, drastically decreasing costs.

There is a term called food miles, which describes the distance food travels before reaching your plate and the associated carbon emissions that were generated by it. Estimations show that a typical American meal travels a distance of 1500 miles!

According to a paper called “Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States,” 17% of all food related emissions are attributed to transportation, while the rest are related to production.

Implementing indoor farming close to densely populated cities can drastically shorten the distance food needs to travel before reaching the end consumers and thus generate a smaller carbon footprint - your meal would have to travel no more than 50 miles to your plate.

Furthermore, by growing plants in a controlled environment every process can be tailored and adjusted according to specific needs, which makes the overall system very efficient and also results in fresh and healthy produce.

What Makes Indoor Farming Produce So Clean?

Conventional farming is a messy business with lots of dirt, insects, pests, uneven sunlight and water involved. Indoor farming is the exact opposite and consists of carefully calculated and adjusted processes, undisturbed by bad weather conditions and without CO2 emissions from tractors. As mentioned earlier, plants are often grown without soil, suspended in mid-air by using a hydroponic nutrients delivery system.

What truly makes the process shine, though, is the equipment used to replace the function of the sun. Advances in full spectrum LED grow lights make it possible to provide plants with the exact color spectrum they need for each stage.

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LED grow lights help the plants grow healthy and good looking, ensuring quality consistency among the different batches without any genetic modifications. This is not only good environmentally,  but also responds to the public`s opinion and interests.

Living and Eating Healthy

The 21st century has seen an unprecedented global shift towards a healthier lifestyle, and people are paying more attention to what they eat and how their food is produced. Naturally, countries putting the most efforts into indoor farming development and producing clean organic food are the ones where the environmental and food quality issues are most serious.

Specifically in Asia, where there has been news of melamine in baby food and bad meat being served in fast food restaurants, there is a rising demand for clean food, which in turn stimulates the indoor farming sector. As stated in a report called ‘The Rise of Asia’s Indoor Agriculture Industry’ - “Combined, these trends favor indoor growers whose vegetables are typically grown without pesticides and in at least semi-clean room conditions.” Furthermore, some governments provide support for stimulating indoor agriculture, such as subsidies or favorable loan conditions.

Conclusion

With the rising importance of issues such as climate change and poor food production techniques, indoor farming has the potential to bring major positive change. Although it might not be perfect at the moment, it is drastically improving and will continue to get more environmentally friendly and resource efficient, saving energy and cutting back on CO2 emissions while producing tasty plants.

Author’s Bio: Luis Rivera

Bowery Farming ("Bowery" or "the Company"), the largest vertical farming company in the United States, has secured $300 million in additional funding in a round led by Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, with significant follow-on investment from existing investors GV (formerly Google Ventures), General Catalyst, GGV Capital, Temasek, Groupe Artémis (Pinault-owned), as well as new participation from Amplo and Gaingels, ...

Bowery will use the funds to continue expansion of its network of smart indoor farms across the United States, to further accelerate its technological leadership, support ongoing research and product innovation efforts to bring crops beyond leafy greens to market, and recruit top talent to meet the explosive consumer and retail demand for its reliable supply of pesticide-free Protected Produce.

The Company has secured more than $472 million in funding to date, underscoring its commercial and category leadership, and bringing its valuation to $2.3 billion. Now in over 850 grocery stores, Bowery has experienced more than 750% growth since January 2020 at brick-and-mortar retailers like Albertsons Companies (Safeway and Acme), Giant Food, Walmart and Whole Foods Market, and more than quadrupled e-commerce sales through e-commerce platforms, including Amazon Fresh.

Bowery's proprietary farm design and technology, which have been a key priority since its inception, are at the heart of the Company's efficient and scalable business model. The BoweryOS, the central nervous system of the business, integrates software, hardware, sensors, computer vision systems, AI and robotics to orchestrate and automate the entirety of operations. Each new farm comes online in record speed, collectively benefiting from the power of the network and its billions of data points that would have taken traditional farmers hundreds of years to gather. The funding will provide resources to accelerate advancements in farm design and the BoweryOS, enabling more and more communities access to a reliable supply of locally-grown produce, year-round. In January 2021, Injong Rhee (formerly VP at Google and CTO of Samsung Mobile) joined Bowery as Chief Technology Officer to oversee the seamless integration and ongoing development of technology across the growing network.

The Company is currently transforming an industrial site in Bethlehem, PA into its largest, most technologically advanced and sustainable farm yet, expanding its reach further into the Northeast and Pennsylvania region. Bowery will be breaking ground on additional large-scale commercial farms this year, and is actively engaged in identifying new farm locations in the United States with an eye towards global expansion.

Bowery's world-class agricultural science team has been innovating from seed to shelf since day one, and this new capital will help advance its product innovation efforts. Earlier this month, the Company announced the opening of Farm X, its state-of-the-art innovation hub for plant science in Kearny, N.J., which expanded R&D capacity by 300%. Home to a first-of-its-kind in-house breeding program and research lab, Farm X enables the Company to accelerate the commercial timelines for bringing next generation crops to consumers, from strawberries and root vegetables, to tomatoes, cucumbers and more.

Image: Bowery Farming produce grows in an indoor, controlled environment at their Nottingham, MD location. Credit: Victor Llorente for Bowery Farming.

Source: Bowery

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Patrick James Miller visited Bowery Farming to photograph their engineers, farmers and employees behind the vertical farming company. Bowery Farming uses 95% less water than traditional farming methods, zero pesticides and are known for delivering produce within a few days of harvesting.