Vertical Farming: Resilience Towards Climate Change

Climate change is nearly irreversible aspect of futuristic progression. Research undertaken globally to understand the implications of greenhouse effect in past few decades suggests that the accumulation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) including major concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) is responsible for global warming and other significant climatic changes. Climate change is responsible for changing weather patterns and the resultant impact in the form of rising surface temperatures, worsening droughts and other forms of natural disasters. The social and economic impacts of increase in frequency of natural disasters are adding to the existing set of challenges that includes distressed population, wretched infrastructure and appalling agricultural and food systems. In addition, climate change impacts are increasingly adding to the risk of Global Food Insecurity that in turn may require early warning systems and effective development programs for increased resilience of urban settlements. United Nations’ Report released in 2015 (UN in Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2015) projected the world’s population count to touch 9.7 billion by the year 2050. With worldwide acceptance for increasing population, changes in climate patterns and urbanization trends are already leading to alarming situations. Referring to basic human needs, food security is under threat due to series of interrelated concerns including but not limited to depleting water aquifers, top soil erosion and increasing urban sprawl on arable land. As much as is the need to provide shelter to increasing population, so is the need to arrange for their nutrition. As the scarcity of land is creating challenge to provide for the essential requirements of humans, therefore, it is desirable to develop innovative, sustainable and integrated solution finding approaches for built environment and farming activities. The focus area is to develop consistent, high-quality production alternatives for farming in built environment, with optimized usage of resources. In the defined scenario, the model of vertical farming has evolved as a multidimensional approach to support urban farming as well as other global challenges, viz. urban heat island effects, carbon emissions, depletion of non-renewable resources and waste management, to name a few. A newer concept in India, but well adopted in countries like Japan, Korea and Netherlands, vertical farming has opened up new avenue to address many challenges through one solution (Maheshwari and Garg in Sustainable Cities: A New Outlook; Reflections from Past to Reinforce the Future. Roorkee, 2015). The Vertical Farm System developed by Dickson Despommier in 1999 was based on conventional techniques of hydroponics and aeroponics to produce farm yields at a consistent rate (Bourne in Nat Geogr 215(6):26–59, 2009). The paper intends to review and discuss the impacts of climate change and usefulness of vertical farming as a suitable technique to meet the global food requirements with energy efficiency in indoor environments and suggestive waste management approaches for built environment.