'Growing year-round and 24/7 with vertical farming'

Vertical farming is growing food in stacked growing layers, in a fully controlled environment. Light, energy and water are controlled to grow as efficiently and sustainably as possible, without outside influences. This allows indoor cultivation in any possible location, such as a factory hall or an office building.

Pim de Jong is involved in the development of vertical farming systems at Codema, where his fascination with complex systems brought him. "Before this, I worked in solar energy and energy storage. When I joined Codema, I was amazed at how advanced horticulture already was, it seemed like a nice challenge to come up with more and better systems for that. Our Research & Development team deals with different questions. My natural reflex is towards energy, which I find very interesting. And in vertical farming, I saw a challenge in that."

The benefits
In a vertical farm, the grower has complete control over the growing space and the growing process. This allows the grower to guarantee a reliable supply of fresh produce all year round. In the closed environment, there are naturally no outside influences and space, energy and raw materials are used as efficiently as possible. This not only saves water and nutrients, but also results in higher food production with a lower impact on the environment. Vertical farming enables local production, which requires less transport and can further reduce emissions. Due to this combination of factors, vertical farms are cited as an important way to meet the growing demand for safe food in the future.

"Vertical farming offers solutions for places where it is too hot, too cold or too crowded for food production. And for places where the soil is not suitable for farming. Look at Los Angeles, Oslo or Mumbai, for example. Big cities with large populations where growing food is difficult. With vertical agriculture, it is possible to make the chain from production to consumption much smaller and provide the population with fresh, healthy food all year round," says De Jong.

The main challenge
The flow of produce is currently the biggest challenge in vertical farms. Organising the vertical farm in such a way that plants are ripe at the right time and can be delivered. "With heat and CO2, we can influence the growth cycle of plants. A nursery therefore usually works with different departments and temperatures for different stages in the production phase. Even in a vertical farm, we can plan in this way that the plants mature at the right time. Important developments in this are lamps where we can adjust the light spectrum and software that allows us to control."

An advantage of vertical farming is that you can produce all year round, without depending on the seasons, weather and daylight. As a result, the production process continues 24 hours a day, an important element in ensuring throughput. "The advantage of a fully automatic system is the continuous flow, with our software we can plan this and ensure the flow of mature produce."

Modular vertical farming system
"Vertical farming is wrongly seen as a pioneer market, while several companies are already operating in it. With its knowledge and experience in water management, lighting, air circulation, climate control, cultivation systems, logistics, software and engineering, Codema has everything to apply in a vertical farm." With its various areas of expertise, Codema is developing a fully automated, modular system to make vertical farming scalable. With this, Codema provides the grower with all the tools for complete control over food production. Codema's innovations in water management, logistics, climate control, lighting, cultivation systems, software and engineering offer food producers worldwide new answers to business questions.