Defining The Vertical Farm

One of the purposes of my blog agritecture.com is so that I can speak from my heart. This post will share my thoughts regarding a fundamental, and sometimes confusing, aspect of our trade: Defining Vertical Farming.

As someone who is reading this post, you are almost assuredly a city farming pioneer who has struggled with which term to use to describe a given business situation. You have probably grappled with choosing between verbiage like:

• Urban Farming
• Indoor Agriculture
• Vertical farming
• Agritecture
• City Farming
• AgTech
• Building Integrated Agriculture (BIA)
• Etc…

This topic may seem like frivolous semantics to some, and during many points in my career, I would have had to agree. However, a recent debate with an honorary board member of the Association for Vertical Farming has escalated around this very topic. Since people look to me and the trade group that I co-founded for direction on how to communicate the essence vertical farming, I feel obligated to comment on this issue. 

Before I get into the debate and my opinions, I want to state my goal for this article. The goal is to provide my colleagues reading this blog with useful guidance for determining what terminology to use in your daily professional conversations. Your discussions are the engine that power our industry’s growth, and thus they must be as fluid as possible - as opposed to being bogged down by confusing lexicon.

So without further ado, here is a summary of my debate with Dr. Dickson Despommier, and here are my thoughts on defining our practice.

Sincerely,

Henry (Currently in Brooklyn, NYC - preparing for #NYCagtechweek 2016)

A brief history

I first met Dr. Despommier in 2013 while attending Columbia University. He is a hero of mine for inspiring a generation of vertical farmers (including myself) and guiding me through his vision of the future of cities, united by ecological-super-towers.

In 2013 Dickson introduced me to Max Loessl, and he encouraged us to found The Association for Vertical Farming. Max and I took his advice and have since made tremendous progress laying down the stepping stones towards Dickson’s vision of the future.

A Lunch Debate Escalates

Recently, I had lunch with my mentor Dr. Dickson Despommier at our favorite spot, Calhoon’s pub. The pleasant lunch quickly became a heated debate about the definition of vertical farming. Dr. Despommier was reminding me that a vertical farm is a 2-story or higher high-tech greenhouse and nothing else, ever.

His opinion is validated in this recent blog post he conveniently posted soon after our lunch which was playfully titled “Cleaning up muddy waters”.

Here is an excerpt:

“A vertical farm is nothing more complex in concept than a high-tech greenhouse that is stacked on top of itself, transforming it into a multi-storey growing space. Certain single-storey buildings also meet that criteria, as well, but are not divided inside to reflect floors. For example, some re-purposed warehouses with inside growing spaces that frequently exceed 30 feet in height also count as vertical farms (for examples see: Aerofarms, Green Sense Farms, Green Spirit Farms, FarmedHere, Spread). Single-floor buildings with a ceiling height of 10-12 feet are greenhouses, regardless of what goes on inside them. They have been around a long time, and while the strategies for growing indoor crops have evolved, many into to multi-layered systems (e.g., hydro-stackers, Tower Garden), i.e., “vertical farming” methods, the basic concept of a greenhouse has not changed much over the last 30 years. I do not include any version of them in my vertical farm concept.”

Source: Cleaning Up Muddy Waters

Fact checking: For those of you who don’t know, both Green Spirit Farms is not a multi-story warehouses and so, despite Dickson’s claim in his post, it is not a “vertical farm” according to his own definition. See image below:

Green Spirit Farms - Does this facility fit Dr. Despommier’s definition of a vertical farm?

It’s not all about “Vertical Farming”

During our lunch debate, I told Dickson (something like) this in response to his point about what is and what is not a vertical farm:

“Why be so restrictive in your definition of vertical farming? Shouldn’t the goal, above all, be to improve food security, water security, and overall human resilience to climate change?”

My issue with Dr. Despommier’s definition of vertical farming is that it only directs itself towards the aspirational vision of skyscrapers that integrate agriculture into their design. While this is an aesthetic and sanguine dream, skyscraper vertical farms are not practical today in 2016, and won’t be for some time.

Sure this vertical farm is stunningly beautiful, but please explain to me the economics and how it will be built?

I would argue, and did argue, that it is more pragmatic to focus on the steps to achieving our goals. We can get to your utopian-like vision of vertical farming one day, but first we need to foster solutions across the entire spectrum of urban agriculture - Or else we risk excluding the majority of the vertical farming pioneers in the world…

This is why the Association for Vertical Farming developed the following definition (by democratic consensus from its membership) for vertical farming:

Vertical farming is the practice of growing plants in vertically stacked layers, vertically inclined surfaces and/or integrated in other structures.

This definition would include facilities like Green Spirit Farms, Farm.one, Verticulture, Edenworks, MIT CityFarm and many other single-story LED lit hydroponic system with multiple levels of cultivation. Furthermore, we can learn from rooftop greenhouses, vertical and cylindrical systems, living walls, and even growing underground - so let’s encourage these practices too!

These Tower Gardens are beautiful and productive, but not vertical according to Dr. Despommier.

This field is farming vertically, not vertical farming according to Dr. Despommier.

How will we advance lighting, automation, labor, land access if we don’t start small?

Furthermore, this is how we eventually get to the aspirational idea of skyscraper vertical farms. Technology innovation doesn’t happen by forcing it into a narrowed definition.Thus, we must foster solutions across the entire spectrum of urban agriculture.

How the debate will be settled

Clearly, Dickson and I strongly disagree on the definition of vertical farming. The disagreement during our lunch escalated to the point that Dickson implied that he may disengage from the AVF unless it abides by his definition. He has insisted that the name of the Association for Vertical Farming be changed, something that I explained to him is out of my power.

I informed Dickson that if he would like the AVF to rename and thus rebrand itself, it must be done so through a motion and a vote by the AVF members themselves. Thus, Dickson notified me that he will appear at the AVF General Meeting @ Aerofarms Corporate Headquarters in New Jersey on Sept. 22nd to state his case. I highly respect that Dickson is pursuing his request using the appropriate democratic process.

While Dickson is perfectly entitled to do so, I will be there to actively push for the counterpoints. The AVF has 80+ business members and is making progress on a number of fronts. Our project groups are developing:

• A sustainability certification program
• A standardized method to develop plant recipes
• An educational initiative
• Content to inform and inspire
• An RFP platform to funnel leads to our members

So why should the AVF slow down all of this progress for a petty rebranding effort? I sincerely feel this would be an inappropriate use of AVF volunteers’ time and as well as an inappropriate use of AVF members’ dues.

Regardless of what I think, if you’re an AVF member attending the general meeting on Sept. 22nd, your input will determine the outcome of this debate. 

Addressing Dickson directly

7 years ago you wrote about the future of agriculture and you named it "Vertical Farming”. This set off a chain of events that inspired countless hearts and minds, for which our industry will forever be grateful.

Yet now we are bogged down in this negative debate, and I for one am quite sad about this argument with you, my mentor.

When visiting your website, the browser header reads “The Problem”. To me, the problem is that we are wasting our time and brainpower arguing over definitions when we should focus all of our energy on taking a look at the City and considering on how we can improve its resilience through vertical farming practices.

As the concept has spread across the globe, vertical farming has been realized in new ways. Isn’t it more practical to focus our definition on actual developments? Artistic renderings of beautiful skyscrapers are great for inspirational picture books and movies, but the practices that exist now or will exist in the near future will continue to be my focus.

Thus I will continue to defend the definition of vertical farming that embraces the entire spectrum of urban agriculture technologies.

Your “Cleaning up Muddy Waters” blog post and your recent calling me out publicly on your podcast are not productive.

Dickson, if you are reading, I hope this clears up those muddy waters for you.

PS: You might enjoy this (basic) 10 minute PPT I shared at to the City of Paris last year about the spectrum of urban agriculture projects in NYC. It demonstrates the value of each approach and also trade-offs. Be sure to download it and read the speaker notes!