Vertical Farms: A Sustainable Solution to Urban Agriculture Challenges

Abstract

Vertical farms are considered to be a powerful response to the shortage of future agricultural cultivation space, which can achieve higher agricultural output in cities and alleviate food shortage. This paper focuses on the characteristics of vertical farms, takes the Plant vertical farm in Chicago as an example, describes its design and performance, analyzes its advantages and design principles, and raises some problems that need to be solved. Vertical farms can expand the yield of crops and simulate the environment required for crop growth and development. The success of The Plant is mainly due to the following aspects of the design: saving raw materials and waste disposal costs through the use of waste, staggered electricity consumption and the use of insulated structures to maximize the savings in energy costs, and ultimately enabling the vertical farm to achieve the ability to compete with traditional agriculture. The vertical farm finally achieved the ability to compete with traditional agriculture. It is worth noting that although the small-scale pilot projects of vertical farms have achieved some success, there are still many constraints to be overcome in expanding the scale of vertical farms because of their high construction and operation costs and high technical level.