Grow Your Own: The Future of Vertical Farming
We are currently using 80% of the earth’s arable land, to grow our food. This amounts to a chunk of land, the size of South America. With current farming practices, by 2050, we will need an more land, larger than Brazil, to feed the additional 3 billion+ people that will be living on earth. What does all this mean? That we all, collectively, have a problem. Dr. Dickson Despommier writes about some creative solutions in his book, “The Vertical Farm, Feeding the World in the 21st Century”.
We are currently standing on a farming precipice, peering over the edge, wondering what to do. Even here, in expansive Canada, we are not immune to the problem. This is especially since much of our food, especially meat, comes from the Global South, where arable land is running out. We are behind the times, in a solution that is popping up around the globe: Vertical Farming.
Vertical Farming
Currently, in Canada, we are being left behind as the world outpaces us in vertical farming. The most impressive versions exist in South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Japan has created a hydroponic vertical farm that doesn’t require soil and uses significantly less water than traditional farming. Most vertical farms use less water than traditional land-based farming. Sweden has a 17-storey vertical farm and the Netherlands has a three-storey, underground garden, that is experimenting with lighting possibilities. Even the U.S is getting on board, with vertical gardens springing up in Chicago and Wyoming.
Why We Dig Vertical Farming
At Edison Institute, we are committed to vertical farming and encourage our students and graduates to spread the word. This is for many great reasons:
- It is environmentally-friendly
- It is impervious to droughts, and other negative farming weather conditions
- It makes better use of our precious fresh water
- It doesn’t steal land from our wilderness
Vertical farming can also be created modularly; then shipped to areas after a natural disaster or civil unrest.
We know that the quality of food has declined due to soil depletion, unsustainable farming practices, overproduction of crops, and the use of pesticides and herbicides. We can no longer count on fresh produce providing all of the vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and phytonutrients needed by eating a multitude of fresh produce. This is even if you are eating organically. Not surprisingly, a calorie today will provide you less nutrition than a calorie from 100, or even 50 years ago. Vertical farming techniques can put that nutrition back into the food.
We also recommend vertical farms because they are an excellent way to connect with nature and grow our own food at home.
Our Contribution
At Edison Institute, our goal is to inspire innovation, by familiarizing our students with concepts like vertical farming and encouraging sustainability, such as growing food at home. We are big advocates of a revolutionary product, called the Tower Garden. Tower Gardens are small, vertical, container gardens that can be used to grow vine-ripened fresh produce, with up to 20 plants per garden. The Tower Garden can be used to grow fruits and vegetables; such as, lettuce, vine-ripened tomatoes, strawberries, and fresh herbs for a start. The sky’s the limit.
We encourage all of our students and graduates to get involved with growing their own produce. Whenever possible, inspire your nutritional clients to do the same. Just think what a dramatic impact this could make on our future, if we all played a more active role in cultivating our own food.
Earn a diploma in holistic nutrition. EIN strives to provide you with the knowledge to live well and stay healthy. We are an internationally recognized school offering online nutrition training. If you’d like to learn more about any of our programs, call us today at or contact us online.
