Looking back into human history thousands upon thousands of years ago, the advent of agriculture is what ultimately gave way for the human population to grow more rapidly than ever before; this eventually led to the world we know today. In other words, agriculture has been an essential part of the human race’s success since the beginning of time. That being said, that doesn’t mean even now, years and years later, it’s the most effective process.
Sure today, the world depends on far fewer farmers than it once did due to constant improvements in agricultural technology – modern farmers have greater yields per acre of land than any farmer of yesteryear. One thing has stayed the same since the dawn of agriculture, however – farmers have always used land as the foundation that their figurative grain silos of success are built on. Today’s agriculture sector benefits from countless modern marvels that make today’s farming relatively easy. Society also gets better-tasting food than our ancestors due to domesticated strains of plants.
Agriculture’s greatest minds bestowed upon modern farmers an idea.
Vertical farming is a relatively new method of farming that uses large metal racks that hold countless trays of miniature farms – in a sense, at least. The earth only has so much land space, though vertical farming is expanding the available room to farm tenfold at a minimum.
Vertical farming isn’t just a theoretical pipe dream of a practice – here’s a company that has been practicing it for years.
AeroFarms is a startup in the realm of vertical farming. The field isn’t the hottest in Silicon Valley, New York City, or Los Angeles, per se, though New Jersey’s own AeroFarms is certainly doing well for itself.
The agriculture technology startup employs precisely 120 people at its Newark-based warehouse. Its facility is essentially the same thing as packing acres of farmland under one roof; one wide-open farmland’s worth of vegetables, grains, other plants, and fungi is packed inside the middle of the city of Newark.
Being able to grow so much food without being forced to buy or rent many acres of land in a far-away rural area is also highly convenient. AeroFarms further finds itself able to sell its product throughout the city of Newark; just about all of the stores with produce in them within a few miles of AeroFarms use its products – that’s market domination.
Believe it or not, AeroFarms’ indoor crops’ yields are 400 times that of traditional, farms. Is vertical the next step into the farming future?
Elite Farms 