Vertical farming is mastered by Elon Musk’s brother

Budrigannews.com – Vertical farming is a type of indoor farming in which crops are grown in layers and frequently without soil. As the number of people living in cities skyrockets and the amount of available farmland decreases, the practice is growing in importance and popularity.

These eco-friendly indoor farms are now rapidly expanding, despite the fact that vertical farming is not a novel concept.

In 2016, Elon Musk’s younger brother Kimbal Musk founded Square Roots, an indoor urban farming company based in Brooklyn. In 2017, the World Economic Forum named him the “Global Social Entrepreneur of the Year.” The goal of Square Roots is to encourage younger generations to get involved in urban farming and bring fresh, local food to cities all over the world.

Musk, Square Roots’ co-founder and executive chairman, stated, “When I was a kid, the only way I could get my family to sit down and connect was by cooking the meal.”

Musk stated, “I wouldn’t change anything about those experiences, but my passion has always been food.” “Getting involved with the internet, especially in the late 90’s, was very exciting.” I knew I wanted to pursue food and become a trained chef as soon as Elon and I sold Zip2, our first internet company. He went to the International Culinary Center after moving to New York.

According to Musk, the company intends to open a Square Roots “Super Farm” in less than three months, complete with 25 climate-controlled shipping containers, cold storage, biosecurity infrastructure, and everything else required to manage a large-scale vertical farm.

Square Roots has grown more than 120 crops, including strawberries, greens, and vegetables, since its inception.

There have been others before this one. The market is also beginning to be dominated by startups like Plenty, which was founded in Silicon Valley in 2013 and is supported by Jeff Bezos.

Kheir Al-Kodmany, a professor of sustainable urban design at the University of Illinois at Chicago, stated in a report, “Environmentalists, urban farmers, architects, agronomists, and public health experts, among others, have been joining this mini revolution as they partner to work out a way to salvage a food-scarce, ultra-urbanized future.”

It uses a variety of methods, like hydroponics, which uses mineral nutrient solutions in water as a solvent; aquaponics, in which plants are grown in water using aquatic organisms like fish and snails; and aeroponics, which uses the air to grow plants.

According to microbiologist Dickson Despommier, an emeritus professor of public and environmental health at Columbia University, rapid climate change won’t affect vertical farmers in terms of job creation. On the other hand, millions of traditional farmers will go out of business as a result of climate change.

Despommier has recently made vertical farming more popular, despite the fact that it was first introduced at the beginning of the 1900s. He started teaching a class at Columbia called Medical Ecology more than 20 years ago.

With his students, Despommier spent a decade indoors growing crops. He noted that LED grow lights have vastly improved farming efficiency over the past five years, making indoor growing cheaper and more reliable. Ten years ago, there were no vertical farms.

According to Square Roots CEO Peggs, “people want local food because they’ve lost trust in the industrial food system that ships in high-calorie, low-nutrient food from thousands of miles away with little transparency as to who grew the food and how.”

The global population is simultaneously expanding and rapidly urbanizing. According to Peggs, climate change is putting existing food supplies in jeopardy, necessitating that the industry devise brand-new methods for rapidly growing food.

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Peggs is hopeful that money will be raised for vertical farming. He stated, “A lot of smart money and capital are entering the space.” These indoor systems can now produce food of at least the same quality as the best organic food you can buy from the field.

According to Despommier, indoor farms within the city limits will eventually be able to produce “all they can eat.” He stated that if an outdoor farm fails, the farmer cannot begin again until the following year. Although indoor farms also fail, the indoor farmer can restart within weeks.