By deploying LED lighting, agricultural activities can be carried out in places with difficult environment conditions for providing food locally and diminishing the food miles. Vertical farms have been established worldwide with the aim of producing food with more efficiency and less resource waste.

(Image: IGS)

In Scotland, the agritech company Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS) has unveiled the first vertical farm of the area and claimed it to be the world’s most advanced indoor farm with the company’s patented power and communications technologies. According to IGS, the vertical farm can be monitored with a platform consisting of patented electrical, electronic and mechanical technologies managed by a SaaS & data platform using AI. The solution will help to reduce energy usage by 50 percent in comparison with other indoor growing environment.

Vertical farming was designed to cut down the water wastage, eliminate the use of pesticide and shorten the food miles by allowing fresh vegetables to be grown locally and on demand, leading to 90 percent food waste reduction. IGS’s vertical farm is located at James Hutton Institute which is a crop research facility where the researchers will partner with the team of IGS to explore the effects of different growing lights for enhancing the yield and quality of the crops.

(Image: Oasis Biotech)

Meanwhile in Las Vegas, Oasis Biotech, a startup company, has turned a vacant industrial property into one of the biggest indoor vertical farms in the U.S. The vertical farm has been providing its corps to the restaurants in Vegas since its opening in July. With LED lighting system installed and the controlled indoor environments, the farm can grow fresh vegetables year-round.