The future of vertical farming: necessary advances in precision technology, crop selection and market sector development

Vertical farming in indoor controlled environments is increasingly recognised as an essential component of resilient and secure national-level food production, but varied challenges across technology and crop development, economic potential and market sector status conspire to prevent rapid adoption. Indoor food production in controlled environments, where the environment and production approaches can be optimised to enhance production outcomes, and which are unaffected by the negative impacts of extreme weather, offers a means to reinforce and future-proof traditional food production approaches, to ensure future food security, yet this sector has struggled to achieve economic parity with traditional field-based approaches and successful business models are rare. In this review we consider the status and developments needed across vertical farming technologies and crop options, to improve production efficiencies, and future market sector developments needed to address the economic challenges presented by this approach to food production, to ensure successful development of the essential indoor food production sector. We highlight four key areas that need to be addressed, namely: energy and production efficiency; delivery relative to economic scale; and deficit compared to traditional agriculture, whilst also suggesting potential solutions within each area.