The Indoor Farming Market

Indoor farming is a part of modern agriculture for growing crops in a controlled environment. The market for Indoor farming is growing globally and is catalyzed by the rising world population and a consequent demand for building secure and consistent food supplies. Conventional agriculture is locationally tied to areas with sufficient land and water, which are decreasing at a very rapid pace. As the amount of vacant arable land and water to support conventional agriculture is dwindling, the demand of indoor farming is increasing as it is decoupled from such needs and can be located closer to end consumption such as urban environments.

Because of the water efficiency (more than 90%), limited land use, being closer to end consumption (thus also reducing the need for storage & transportation) and benefits of controlled farming without any climate change, the indoor farming market is poised for growth. The introduction of indoor farming has sparked global worries about the environmental consequences of traditional farming practices. Indoor farming is utilized to enhance local food supplies and provide consumers with fresh, nutritious veggies. The food produced using this method is particularly healthy since this sort of farming optimizes plant-fertilizing nutrients. A vast variety of crops, such as leafy vegetables, herbs, vegetables, fruits, microgreens, and flowers, can be grown inside. Controlled environment agriculture produces organic food free of agrochemical pollution. These are the key driving factors behind indoor vertical farming, together with rising customer demand for pesticide- and herbicide-free vegetables. 

Growing Demand for Nutritious Food - People are adopting healthy, active lifestyles and pesticide-free produce globally. The demand for these products has increased indoor farming as new system integrations help raise yields, efficiencies, and costs. According to the UN, ten billion people will live in cities by 2050. This growth, combined with rising incomes in developing countries is projected to lead to a Global food demand increase between 59% to 98% by 2050.

The pentagon took on the climate change related mass disappearance of agricultural land as a matter of national and international security over 20 years ago. The reason for this, as Stewart Brand and Harvard Archaeology professor Steven Leblanc  also eloquently explain: Humans have throughout history had a tendency of exceeding the Carrying Capacity of their natural habitat. The Carrying Capacity of our habitat being exceeded resulted in acts of territorial disputes and conflicts between humans such as wars, invasions and even cannibalism. 

We are projected to lose over 32% of our current agricultural land by 2050, and on top of this it’s projected that the demand for agricultural goods will increase globally by 70% in that period. This may mean that we are very quickly exceeding the Carrying Capacity of our environment once again.  A guarantee that we can build against this outcome is controlled environment agriculture and automation. This is a shield against the negative impact of climate change on agricultural production if scaled properly. And the best tool to scale properly is automation that can also increase production and input efficiency in agriculture . Thus adding to our habitat’s Carrying Capacity, as opposed to subtracting from it.

On the topic of water - Over 70% of the world’s water consumption comes from agriculture. Our services can boost the yield of an indoor farm by more than 25% while reducing emissions, water usage and wasted valuable minerals in fertilization. To put it in perspective: the adoption of indoor farming and Vertum Technologies’ solution DIO can help reduce water consumption in agriculture by more than 95%.

We did our research and after talking to nearly 200 farmers we’ve discovered that more than 80% of indoor farms experience crop loss and expect to lose more than 25% of their crop in a year of production. This equates to roughly 20% loss within an indoor farming market that is projected to be worth more than $100bn by 2030 that we can return as value.