Vertical Farming Sustainability and Urban Implications

Abstract: Meeting current and future demands for food is one of the biggest problems facing the world today. Despite the positive correlation that exists between food production and urban food demand, food systems remain separate and excluded from cities. Vertical farming has been proposed as a solution projected to address these issues in a sustainable way. This study aims to determine the sustainability of a vertical farm operation and its perceived value to food security and urban systems. This study implements a qualitative approach and case study research design useful for small, applied research studies, where data is collected via a literature review, emails, and semi- structured interviews. Systems theory is used to frame the phenomena at hand since it allows for a holistic systems view, and the study’s results are analyzed using emergy theory and a conceptual framework based on urban political agroecology. A vertical farm was selected as the focus of the case study, with the vertical farm sustainability serving as this study’s unit of analysis. Contrary to existing information, the results indicate that the vertical farm studied is unsustainable due to its dependence on imported resources. Additionally, an assessment of vertical farm impacts through a conceptual framework on urban political agroecology determined that vertical farming is incompatible with agroecological principle, provides few positive impacts to urban systems, and makes most of its contributions to urban food security rather than food sovereignty. For the sustainable development of vertical farms and urban systems, emergy theory stresses that inputs into the system must be local renewable inputs (i.e. natural inputs located within the system boundaries), and that successful systems should create and implement reinforcing feedbacks. Nonetheless, vertical farming systems are quite immature and carry great potential for change; this study presents recommendations for vertical farming systems reorganizing more sustainably.