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“As climate change gets worse, more countries says Vandenbussche. Robots inside the operation
and farms will have to grow indoors, because monitor and move the plants, and the company
the areas where we have abundance of afford- is optimizing energy use.
able food based on the climate and the soil will The key to making vertical farms sustainable is
become limited,” he predicts.
reducing energy consumption, particularly the
After energy, labor is the highest cost for the lights and the air conditioning systems, he says.
facilities, he says. Both those costs have been “The thing that is constraining many of these
coming down, but there’s still a lot of potential vertical farms is they were not designed to be
to reduce energy usage. energy efficient.”

“There are huge opportunities still to reduce Through a smart, microgrid system, his com-
the carbon footprint of these farms,” says pany is able to pay less by using energy during
Grant Vandenbussche, chief category officer at low-peak periods, and forgo energy use during
Fifth Season, a leafy greens vertical farm near peak periods.
Pittsburgh. “We don’t have people scheduling and con-
The market is growing. A recent trolling our operations,” Vandenbussche says.
research report from the firm IDTechEx “So at 3 a.m. our lights in some cases will auto-
predicts the global market for vertically-farmed matically turn on because that’s when energy is
produce will increase from $781 million in being used the least on the grid.”
2020 to $1.5 billion by 2030, a compound Fifth Season’s greens are pesticide-free and the
annual growth rate of 6.85%.
company says it uses 95% less water and 97%
But questions about its potential to become less land than conventional agriculture.
carbon-neutral have been pushed aside because The variety of products grown is currently
of the excitement around vertical farming, limited. Vertical farming at this point can only
Gordon-Smith says. “A lot of the hype has been provide microgreens, leafy greens and herbs at a
pushed by the technology companies and the commercial level, Gordon-Smith says, but straw-
operators themselves, but it blinds us” from berries and tomatoes are on the way.
asking deeper questions about sustainability.
“There’s much more work that needs to be “Every year, there’s more advanced technology
done,” he says. which is allowing more variety, but it’s not that
fast,” Gordon-Smith says.
There are operations that are pushing their
climate credentials. Dream Harvest in Houston Urban farming, involving large greenhouses,
advertises itself as carbon-negative, because it can grow a wider variety of products, including
only delivers locally and is powered by 100% melons, peppers, cucumbers and potatoes.
Texas wind energy. One company, BrightFarms, is growing lettuce,

Another operator working to make his vertical spinach, arugula and basil hydroponically in
farm carbon-neutral is Vandenbussche’s Fifth regional greenhouses and distributing the crops
Season, located in a 60,000-square-foot indus- through Walmart and Kroger stores and other
trial space, which was able to produce 500,000 supermarkets in the East and Midwest.
pounds of leafy greens in its first year. “Greenhouses are incredible,” Gordon-Smith
“I’m investing everything into this business said. “There’s really nothing you can’t commer-
because I believe it has the ability to shape a bet- cially grow in these facilities — it just depends
ter climate, shape a better world for all of us,” on the climate and the scale.”

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