Vertical farms and the urban environment

Chris Davies (centre) at the Last Mile Conference in London, October 2023

The vertical farming industry often talks about what goes on inside the facility - the irrigation, the lighting, the crops - but less often do we look at the outside, the building actually housing the farm.

It may seem like the less exciting part of story, given that most vertical farms are put in large grey boxes - warehouses that property developers affectionately refer to as 'sheds'. But it's important that vertical farmers talk to developers, architects and landowners, because availability of suitable properties, in the right places, is essential to the development of the industry.

Our CEO, Chris Davies, spoke at Last Mile Conference this week, in the plush surroundings of the Bafta headquarters in Central London. The conference brought together investors, developers and architects from across London and the South East, and it was clear that demand for properties, like the ones commonly used by vertical farms, is hot.

The industry says that the use of these type of warehouses is changing, accommodating a broader range of companies, including small ones like artisan workshops, and having to be more integrated with residential.

There are many different models of controlled environment agriculture, and urban agriculture can serve more purposes than simple growing large volumes (as community projects, for example), but we've always argued that to make the kind of change to the food system we want, vertical farming needs scale.

Chris spoke of the importance of co-locating vertical farms with energy generation, and this was strongly echoed by other speakers from property development and architecture firms. Solar panels on the roofs of warehouses now come as standard, and the industry is expecting electrical vehicle charging points to become widespread as companies move their fleets in that direction.

There are always challenges - residential doesn't always sit well with production and manufacturing uses, and prices will always be higher in cities. There is however, a lot of potential for more urban, or near-urban, food production, bringing tastier, longer-lasting, fresh produce right to where most people live.

If you want to talk to us more about the needs and potential of vertical farming, email info@harvest.london.