Vertical Farm: perspective of development

INTRODUCTION 
A unique concept for different realities 
   
Strictly speaking, the concept of "vertical farm" refers to the practice of producing 
food in vertical, integrated or not in other facilities specially built or preexisting. In 
this perspective the vertical farm is therefore predominantly urban agricultural 
company, or placed in urban areas, which develops vertically and uses specific 
cultural, organizational and commercial techniques. 
Recent trends, however, tend to extend the concept to many and different production 
methods, which share the choice of using the space vertically, to four fundamental 
and incontrovertible evidences: 
➢ the deterioration of agricultural soils, linked to intensive production 
techniques; 
➢ the growing demand for food due to the steady growth of the world population, 
which increases at the rate of 80 million people a year; 
➢ the continuing growth of the urban population: it is estimated that in 2050 
nearly 80% of the earth's population will reside in urban centers, resulting in 
exponential expansion of soil artificialisation; 
➢
the rapid climate change, which causes the increase of desertification and the 
rising of sea levels, which could decrease the arable land. 
Therefore fall into the category of vertical farm also all those cultivation methods 
based on the exploitation of the vertical dimension, as the vegetable gardens on the 
rooftop, green wall and vegetable gardens implemented on balconies or terraces of 
varying width. 
Said that, each of them requires owns techniques and organizations, responding to 
different needs and a different historical and operational development, in the present 
work we take into consideration their specific problems, with particular attention, 
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however, to the industrial vertical farms, trying to put light on whether and to what 
extent they can be a real sustainable response to the growing need for food, as their 
most important theoretical, the American Dickson Despommier, states. The illustrious 
professor of microbiology and Public Health at Columbia University in New York, 
with his book The Vertical Farm (2010), laid the theoretical foundations of the 
innovative urban vertical farming methods designed to «feeding the world in the 21st 
Century». 
The question is whether the enthusiastic optimism Despommier can find concrete and 
advantageous embodiment and if the vertical farm can actually become «the next big 
thing for food and tech», as defining the business television channel CNBC, capable 
of representing a possible solution of the problems highlighted, or remain a 
fascinating, but not sustainable idea. 
PREMISE 
The "philosophical" presuppositions of vertical farm 
1. The soil consumption 
While the world's population could reach 8.5 billion people in the year 2030 (UN 
estimates) and 11 billion at the end of this century, the availability and fertility of the 
soil for agricultural production will be alarmingly reduced. As the vice president 
CONAF Rosanna Zari has shown opening the World Day of the Soil held in Rome on 
5 December 2015 , the fertile soil area available for global agricultural productivity is 
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just 11%, a percentage that is rapidly decreasing because of climate change, 
desertification, erosion, salinization (of soils and irrigation water) and 
artificialisation. These aspects affect agriculture in a way that it loses 10 million 
 Event organized by the Consiglio dell’Ordine dei dottori agronomi e dei dottori forestali (CNAF), AISSA, ISPRA, 
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European Commission (JRC), Slow Food e Legambiente.
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hectares of arable land each year, to which are added 20 million hectares abandoned 
because the quality of the soil is too degraded, largely because of intensive 
agricultural techniques and the consequent loss of organic substances necessary for 
physical, chemical and biological soil fertility . 
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Great part in the erosion of agricultural land is also the urban sprawl, the exponential 
growth of urbanization. A report of UN estimates that in 2014 metropolitan areas 
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lived 54% of the world population (compared to 30% in 1950), with a growing trend. 
The dynamic that induce more and more people prefer to live in urban areas is also 
found in Italy, as evidenced by the data provided by ISTAT, confirming the gradual 
decrease of the population living in rural areas in our country . 
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To get an idea of soil consumption trends, just consider that while between 1950 and 
1981 the total cultivable area increased from 587 million hectares to 732 million 
hectares, in 2000 the acreage has dropped to 656 million hectares, against a constant 
increase of the population (2.5 billion in 1950 to 6.1 billion today). 
Soil consumption is accompanied by the reduction of fertility, the deterioration of 
biological, chemical and physical properties of agricultural land, which is manifested 
by reduced availability of nutrients and decreasing soil water retention capacity, 
resulting from the destruction of its structure, determined mainly by intensive 
processing. It is evident that land degradation affects the growth of plants and hence 
agricultural production in quantity, quality and biodiversity. 
 For organic substance, considered a key component of a healthy soil, means all living organisms in the soil and the 
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remains of their ashes in different stages of decomposition, rich of organic carbon. The sources for organic matter are 
crop residues, animal and plant compounds and fertilizers. The decline in organic matter, the main cause of land 
degradation, is generated by the reduced presence of decaying organisms, or by the increase in decomposition rate 
determined by the alteration of natural or anthropogenic factors. 
 Consultable in: http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/trends/Concise%20Report%20on
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%20the%20World%20Population%20Situation%202014/en.pdf. In it we read also: «More than half of the world’s 
population now lives in urban areas. While the number of large urban agglomerations is increasing, approximately half 
of all urban dwellers reside in smaller cities and towns. The number of young people has grown rapidly in recent 
decades and is expected to remain relatively stable over the next 35 years. In contrast, the number and proportion of 
older persons are expected to continue rising well into the foreseeable future».
 See: http://www.istat.it/it/files/2012/01/Allegato-statistico-DEF.pdf?title=Consumo+del+suolo+-+23%2Fgen
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%2F2012+-+Allegato+statistico.pdf; http://www.camera.it/temiap/temi17/suolo13_istat.pdf.Usefull also data provided 
by ISPRA: http://www.isprambiente.gov.it/files/pubblicazioni/rapporti/Rapporto_218_15.pdf.
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2. The "natural capital" 
The analysis of the Vertical Farm first theorist, Dickson Despommier; is included in 
the observation that currently the nature has become "natural capital", as well as the 
man became "human capital", resulting in the monetization of both . Even ecology, 
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he stresses, has assumed considerable economic value: «... it is estimated that all the 
ecological service on earth may be worth as much as 560 trillion».
 
 
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However, there are many financial analysts and management complaining 
insufficient financial and economic attention to the "natural capital", as is clear, for 
example, from the report Accounting for Natural Capital (2014) of the British 
Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA): «While accountants have 
developed ever more sophisticated ways of accounting for financial capital, and the 
efficiency with which a business is able to transform this into commercial value, 
natural capital is still largely hidden from view and absent from the corporate 
narrative. This situation is no longer acceptable if organizations are to become truly 
sustainable. […] We lack the frameworks and systems needed to account for the 
relationship between natural capital and business strategy and performance». 
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 Beyond the ethical aspects linke to the monetization of nature, the hoarding the last 
meter of land and the last drop of available water, Despommier points out that today, 
to the point we have arrived, it is crucial to invest in the preservation of the 
 
The British Ecological Society define the Natural Capital in this way: «Natural capital refers to both the living (e.g. 
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fish stocks, forests) and non-living (e.g. minerals, energy resources) aspects of nature which produce value to people, 
both directly and indirectly. It is this capital that underpins all other capital in our economy and society. Natural capital 
can often be confused with ecosystem services. However, whilst similar concepts, they are fundamentally different. 
Natural capital refers to the actual stock (living and non-living parts) that provides value whereas ecosystem services 
refer to the flow of benefits that this stock provides. Essentially, natural capital is about nature’s assets, whilst 
ecosystem services relate to the goods and services derived from those assets» In http://
www.britishecologicalsociety.org/public-policy/policy-priorities/ecosystem-services-and-valuing-natural-capital/
 D. Despommiers, The Vertical Farm, Feading the World in the 21 st Century, Picador, New York 2010, p. 140. 
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 In http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/Accounting-for-natural-capital/$File/EY-Accounting-for-natural-
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capital.pdf.
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environment and in reduction of the exploitation of the nature: «Some who feel the 
need to put a dollar figure on the very processes that keep us alive». 
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The need for action to restrain the exploitation of ecological resources appears 
confirmed by the calculations of the Global Footprint Network, which give an idea of 
its size and its growth rate introducing the concept of Ecological Debt Day (EDD), 
also called Earth overshoot Day, the day on which humanity exhaust global nature's 
budget for the year, set for the 15th of August 2015 ( it was the 17th of August in 
2014, the 20th of August in 2013 and so on until the 23rd of December in 1970). 
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Even putting a grade of incertitude on the calculations, it remains clear that 
humanity's consumption of earth's natural resources has reached alarming levels, such 
as to endanger the earth's capacity to regenerate them. 
Among the most significant factors in the overexploitation of land resources is 
undoubtedly that of soils, previously put in evidence, that fits between the causes of 
what Desmonnier defines as a true "suicide" of civilization. Hence the need to 
increase «the capacity of adavanced reasoning and creativity, ad use these two 
intellectual attributes to invent farming, and eventualy the rest of tecnology-driven 
world».  
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3. The verticality as a solution: a piece of history 
It has been estimated that in order to meet the food needs of the growing population, 
the arable land should raise by about 10 billion hectares. 
To this basic critical points are added those of an ecological nature, that have 
stimulated the search for sustainable agricultural strategies - such as biology and bio-
dynamic farming, permaculture and “kilometer 0” - oriented to the preservation of 
the soil and the organic value of the products, but also to a rationalization of the 
 D. Despommier, cit. p. 140. 
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 For further details, please refer to:  
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http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/ (web site of Global Footprint Network)  
http://www.overshootday.org/about-earth-overshoot-day/ (web site illustrating the calculation methodology of EDD) 
 D. Despommiers, cit. p. 139-140.
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distribution with the reduction of transport costs (environmental and economic) from 
rural production areas to urban centers. 
Trying reacting to this requirement, since the Sixties-Seventies the architecture began 
to design urban multi-storey buildings equipped with roof gardens, in which it 
became possible to grow vegetables, as well as ornamental plants, in order to increase 
the urban verse with undoubted positive effects on the quality of urban air. All 
projects that inevitably recall the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (Figure1), one of the 
seven wonders of the ancient world, the ziggurats of ancient Mesopotamia (4th 
millennium BC-600 BC), the Villa dei Misteri in Pompei, which had an elevated 
terrace where plants were grown, and the Renaissance roof gardens, which had both 
decorative and functional purposes, refreshing and perfuming air with medicinal and 
aromatic plants. 
              
  
Figure 1: Reconstructions of Hanging Gardens of Babylon 
To go back to a more recent epoch, among the first and most significant multi 
accomplishments provided with roof gardens, we can remember Habitat 67 (Figure 
2), a housing complex built in Montreal (Canada), designed by architect Moshe 
Safdie and built for the Expo 1967, and Les Etoiles (figure 3), designed by architect 
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Jean Renaudie in Ivry (France) between 1969 and 1982, in which the large terraces 
allowed even limited food self-production together with ornamental plants. 
 
Figure 2: Figure 2: Habitat 67 di Moshe Safdie a Montréal (Canada)  
 
                                                                          
Figure 3: Les Etoiles di Jean Renaudie a Ivry (France) 
Goes in this direction also the installation of vertical gardens, whose originator is 
considered the Parisian botanist Patrick Blanc. After his first speech that dates back to 
1994, when he introduced the green wall at the Festival International des Jardins de 
Chaumont-sur-Loire, and the subsequent green walls for the Parc Floral in the Bois 
de Vincennes, his operations in the urban space have multiplied, decorating also 
public buildings of Paris, the Orangerie of the Palais du Luxembourg, the Musée du 
Quai Branly (Figure 4) and the latest Living Wall in the oasis of rue d’Aboukir. 
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