Vertical farming takes off in Japan
New technology takes high-rise food gardens in cities to new levels
● High-rise indoor farms for vegetables are spreading across the world.
In a suburb of Kyoto, in Japan, surrounded by technology companies and start-ups, Spread is preparing to open the world’s largest automated leaf-vegetable factory. It’s the company’s second vertical farm and could mark a turning point for vertical farming, bringing the cost low enough to compete with traditional farms on a large scale.
For decades, vertical farms that grow produce indoors without soil in stacked racks have been touted as a solution to rising food demand in the world’s expanding cities. The problem has always been reproducing the effect of natural rain, soil and sunshine at a cost that makes the crop competitive with traditional agriculture.
Spread is among a handful of commercial companies that claim to have cracked the problem with a mix of robotics, technology and scale. Its new facility in Keihanna Science City, known as Japan’s Silicon Valley, will grow 30,000 heads of lettuce a day on racks under custom-designed LED lights. Sealed rooms protect the vegetables from pests, diseases and dirt. Temperature and humidity are optimised to speed growth of the greens, which are fed, tended and harvested by robots.
“Our system can produce a stable amount of vegetables of a good quality for sale at a fixed price throughout the year without using pesticides and with no influence from weather,” Spread president Shinji Inada said in an interview at the company’s facility in Kameoka.
Inada expects the new factory, called Techno Farm, to more than double the company’s output, generating ¥1bn (about R129m) in sales a year from growing almost 11-million lettuces.
About 60% of indoor-farm operators in Japan are unprofitable because of the cost of electricity, says the Japan Greenhouse Horticulture Association. Most others turn a profit only because of government subsidies or by charging a premium to consumers.
Spread sells lettuces for ¥198 (R25) a head, about 20% to 30% more than the normal price for conventionally grown varieties, according to Inada.
Consumers pay the premium because the pesticide-free vegetables are increasingly seen as an alternative to often more expensive organic foods, which must be grown outdoors in soil. Japan’s hot summers and high humidity also make them more vulnerable to insects and diseases, said Yasufumi Miwa of the Japan Research Institute.
“Producing organic vegetables requires farmers’ extra-hard work and that should be reflected in the prices,” said Takumu Okuma, spokesman for online food supplier Oisix ra daichi. “Pesticide-free vegetables are seen as safe by consumers and accepted as a substitute for more expensive organic ones.”
Small-scale vertical farms have been operating in Japan since the 1970s, niche players that took advantage of high prices for fresh food in cities in a country that imports about 60% of its food.
But it wasn’t until 2010 that the sector began to expand rapidly with the adoption of energy-saving LED lights and a government programme to support innovative farming with subsidies, according to the association.
Spread’s Inada founded his company in 2006 and opened his first facility the following year. The company spent years refining systems for lighting, water supply, nutrients and other costs, and the plant finally turned its first profit in 2013.
Its new Techno Farm, expected to open early this month, will push efficiency further, yielding 648 heads of lettuce a square metre annually compared with 300 heads at its Kameoka farm and only five in an outdoor farm. It will use only 110ml of water a lettuce, 1% of the volume needed outdoors, as moisture emitted by the vegetable is condensed and reused.
Power consumption per head will also decrease, with the new factory using custom-designed LEDs that require about 30% less energy. A collaboration with telecoms company NTT West on an artificial intelligence program to analyse production data could boost yields even further.
Spread doesn’t disclose the cost of producing lettuce at its farms but Japanese researcher Innoplex estimates the cost to make one head of lettuce at its existing Kameoka building is about ¥80, among the lowest in the world. The Japan Research Institute expects production costs at the new Techno Farm to come close to parity with outdoor farms within about five years.
But extreme weather events and climate change are making vertical farming competitive even sooner. Japan’s hottest-yet summer this year sent supermarket lettuce prices soaring to more than double the level at which Spread retails its products.
“Climate change is affecting food production almost everywhere and the economics of growing and selling produce is affecting everyone,” said Dickson Despommier, emeritus professor of public and environmental health at Columbia University. “If we don’t do something soon to reduce the rate of climate change, vertical farming may be our last hope of getting food on the table for all those who live in cities.”
Around the world, many vertical farms are located in climates that are inhospitable for vegetable farming and have high transport costs to import fresh produce, or in places where pollution concerns create a demand for “clean” food, such as in China.
In Antarctica, where weather conditions prevent shipments of supplies for much of the winter, scientists at Germany’s Neumayer Station III harvested their first batch of indoor lettuce, cucumbers and radishes this year to feed staff. And in space, astronauts grow food on the International Space Station in a mini farm nicknamed Veggie.
Some commercial ventures have targeted wealthy countries in the Middle East as prime candidates for vertical farms because of the high cost of importing fresh produce.
Dubai’s Emirates Flight Catering plans to begin construction next month of a 12,077m² vertical farm to supply airlines in a joint venture with California-based Crop One Holdings. The $40m (R583m) facility is expected to deliver its first vegetables to airlines and airport lounges in December 2019.
Other high-rise farms have appeared in office towers or condos as part of the design. In Tokyo’s Ginza shopping area, stationery retailer Itoya tends a vertical farm on the 11th floor of its 12-storey building to supply lettuces exclusively to its cafe at a cost that would be uncompetitive with vegetables grown in outdoor farms.
One of the biggest challenges to the wide adoption of vertical farms is the rise of massive greenhouse operations outside cities that employ many of the same technologies, such as the UK’s Thanet Earth. Though these farms need more land, they harness natural sunlight, reducing power costs.
In Japan, where the workforce is ageing and many companies have relocated production overseas, vertical farms can also be built in idled factories.
The real race, though, is to go global. Spread plans to export its farming system to more than 100 cities worldwide, competing with companies such as Crop One, Softbank-backed Plenty of the US, and Sanan Sino-Science of China. Inada said Spread had signed an agreement with a food producer in the United Arab Emirates to supply its system and is holding talks with about 300 other companies. “We are targeting countries where fresh vegetables cannot be produced because of scarce water or other natural conditions,” he said.
If we don’t do something to reduce climate change, vertical farming may be our last hope of getting food for all those who live in cities
Dickson Despommier
Professor of environmental health, Columbia University