Environmental Assessment of Vegetable Production with Urban Vertical Farming System

Abstract

The expansion of world population has given the agricultural system the pressure to provide food in sufficient quantities to meet the demands. On the other hand, traditional agriculture has been proven to have a negative impact on the environment due to land clearing and the use of pesticides. Urban agriculture has been identified as a possible way to solve the increasing food demands while minimizing the requirement for agricultural land. Vertical farming model can be one of the visions of future agriculture since the system requires less water, less land, eliminates the need for transportation of corps distribution from farms and customers in cities, and does not use pesticides. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the potential environmental impacts of the vertical farming cultivation method and to identify areas from the process or phase that makes the dominant contribution to environmental impacts. The environmental performance of a vertical farming has been evaluated using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. The results show that the top five processes which contribute most to the final impact are LED lamp production (45%), phenolic resin used for growing medium (27%), polyfoam production for tray cultivation (6%), polymer foaming used in growing medium (5%), and distribution (4%).