Agricultural Innovation Helps Controlled-Environment Farms Scale Up (and Up, and Up)
The majority of CEA food production is still done in greenhouses, but an increasing amount of food crops are being grown in vertically stacked layers in indoor vertical farms. While greenhouses have the benefit of growing with natural sunlight, indoor vertical farms have the ability to deliver the exact environmental conditions required by specific plants, including the optimum temperature, humidity, and light levels –– and allow producers to multiply their crop outputs significantly without expanding their physical footprint. CEA operations can produce more food using fewer resources while reducing dependency on arable land.