Indoor Agriculture Technology

While growing crops, whether it be maintaining fertile land, having the right amount of water and sunlight, or coping with drought or frost, at this time farmers face many challenges. But by moving the farms indoors such hurdles could be avoided.

That’s the idea behind AeroFarms of Newark, N.J., which opened indoor facility in a 6,400-square-meter warehouse. Its new facility is that now it is the largest indoor farm in the world and it based on how much it can grow. The capacity of it is that it is able to harvest nearly 1 million kilograms per year of leafy greens and herbs.

In the indoor farming, to the crops LED lamps are provide instead of sunlight, sensors are used to monitor temperature, humidity, oxygen and more to check and ensure that the plants are growing in optimal conditions. Indoor Ag Tech Farms use less water than traditional operations.

Indoor Ag Tech AeroFarms are also the indoor farms so it have crops bask under an array of LED lamps instead of sunlight, and sensors monitor oxygen levels, temperature, humidity and more to ensure the plants are growing in optimal conditions. Marc Oshima, who helped found the company said that, The farms also use about 95 percent less water than traditional operations. In the next five years AeroFarms plans to open facilities on four continents.

In Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, the indoor farm Mirai was created in response to a food shortage after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. Mirai now produces 10,000 heads of lettuce per day.

Oshima says “This is a new way of farming. We’re marrying horticulture, engineering, and data science. It’s farming where we take the volatility of Mother Nature, and the challenges of growing outdoors, and we stabilize it.”

Because indoor farming can continue year-round, it can be up to 75 times as productive as traditional methods. In indoor farming leafy greens can grow in as little as 12 days, while in out in a field it could take 45 days to harvest leafy greens

Indoor Ag Tech inevitably will play a growing role in food production, making engineers critical to the future of sustainable farming as indoor farms continue to expand.

Source: http://theinstitute.ieee.org/