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| A grower inspects kale at 80 Acres Farms. (Washington Post photo by Maddie McGarvey) |
Tech advances in light-emitting diode lighting are driving a revolution in indoor agriculture. "In agricultural applications, LED lights are used in ways that seem to border on alchemy, changing how plants grow, when they flower, how they taste and even their levels of vitamins and antioxidants. The lights can also prolong their shelf life," Adrian Higgins reports for The Washington Post. "Compared with other forms of electrical illumination, light-emitting diodes use less energy, give off little heat and can be manipulated to optimize plant growth."
Greenhouses are increasingly using the lights with traditional high-pressure sodium lamps, and will likely continue to shift toward LEDs as technology advances make them cheaper and more efficient. "LED light shipments to growers worldwide are expected to grow at an annual average rate of 32 percent until 2027, according to a market report by analysts with Navigant Research in Boulder, Colo.," Higgins reports. "Shipments of LED lights will overtake those of legacy lights starting next year, says Krystal Maxwell, who wrote the report with Courtney Marshall."
Traditional greenhouse operations aren't the only ones taking advantage of the new LEDs. High-tech indoor grow operations that use LEDs only have been springing up across the U.S. and the world in the past few years, Higgins reports.
One of them is a Cincinnati hydroponic operation, 80 Acres Farms. Its CEO, Mike Zelkind, says crops can be grown more quickly by fine-tuning the amount and quality of light plants receive; spinach, for example, can be grown in a quarter of the time it takes outdoors and half the time it takes in a greenhouse, Higgins reports. The operation, housed in what used to be an abandoned warehouse, produces 200,000 pounds of microgreens, leafy greens, vine crops, and herbs. The company is so named because it would require 80 acres of land to produce what they produce in a 12,000 square foot building.
LED farming “has its critics, however, who see it as an agricultural sideshow unlikely to fulfill promises of feeding a growing urbanized population,” Higgins reports. They point out that indoor grow operations aren't a cure-all, since staples like corn, wheat and rice can't be grown indoors on the scale required. Zelkind acknowledges that, but argues that places like 80 Acres should be part of a wider push to improve farming practices: "He says his stacked shelves of crops are fresh, raised without pesticides and consumed locally within a day or two of harvest. They require a fraction of the land, water and fertilizers of greens raised in conventional agriculture," Higgins reports. "He doesn’t need varieties bred for disease resistance over flavor or plants genetically modified to handle the stresses of the field. And his harvest isn’t shipped across the country in refrigerated trucks from farms vulnerable to the effects of climate change."
LED farming “has its critics, however, who see it as an agricultural sideshow unlikely to fulfill promises of feeding a growing urbanized population,” Higgins reports. They point out that indoor grow operations aren't a cure-all, since staples like corn, wheat and rice can't be grown indoors on the scale required. Zelkind acknowledges that, but argues that places like 80 Acres should be part of a wider push to improve farming practices: "He says his stacked shelves of crops are fresh, raised without pesticides and consumed locally within a day or two of harvest. They require a fraction of the land, water and fertilizers of greens raised in conventional agriculture," Higgins reports. "He doesn’t need varieties bred for disease resistance over flavor or plants genetically modified to handle the stresses of the field. And his harvest isn’t shipped across the country in refrigerated trucks from farms vulnerable to the effects of climate change."
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