


“Our container farms can host up to 13,000 plants at one time!”įounded in 2010 by a team of scientists and engineers who were looking into ways to drive sustainability forward in an urban context, Kalera describes itself as the “global leader in vertical community farms.” It now has working vertical farms in Orlando, Atlanta, and Houston, with additional vertical farms under construction in Denver, Seattle, Columbus, Honolulu, St. “Not only is it smaller and lower in cost, but produce can really be packed inside of a vertical farm, making the most of every square inch of space,” the company states on its website. Growing inside widely available shipping containers allows farms to exist in areas that couldn’t support traditional agriculture. Vertical farms can take disparate approaches to agricultural production.įreightFarms uses a container farm approach, which they say is much more cost-effective than other options. They say that the high yield over conventional farming signals an increasing marketplace interest associated with vertical farming, as do advancements in light-emitting diode (LED) technology and year-round crop production - irrespective of weather conditions. With the ability to precisely control both environmental and cultural factors to produce crops consistently at any time of the year, vertical farms have great potential.Īdditionally, the demand for nutritive and organic vegetables has increased significantly in the last few years due to the growing health consciousness among consumers, according to. To many, it is a very promising method of agricultural production. Vertical farming offers an alternative to traditional farming, as it reduces the amount of land required for agricultural production. We find ourselves at a moment in time when consumer access to food abundance is inhibited by supply chain disruptions. However, there are no common metrics or industry standards to vertical growth design, especially when the goal is more specifically to provide food production from indoor sources. Thousands of plants, flower gardens, and green thumbs go into making Allure of the Seas’ expansive Central Park come to life.


The effect is an oasis of green that soothes the stark surrounding vista of the towering cruise ship. A hidden irrigation system assures proper watering, and access to plants exists behind the containers outside of guests’ view. I learned that the plants are stacked in vertical rows reaching up to 3 stories high. When I was on a Royal Caribbean cruise last autumn, I toured the ship’s vertical gardens with its lead horticulturalist. However, as with any growth industry, there are also obstacles to viable, large scale vertical farms. The vertical farming market now is expected to expand from $3.1 billion in 2021 to $9.7 billion by 2026 with a compound annual growth rate of 25.0% during the forecast period. While versions of vertical farms existed before, it wasn’t until 2015 when a drop in price in LED lights made this type of agriculture practical. Consistent supplies for stores and restaurants. Rather than do this via third party collaboration tools and video chats, we were able to host project meetings inside the virtual environment itself.Living green walls overflowing with leafy lettuces, tender cilantro, rainbow chard, hardy parsley, feathery dill, and microgreens. When working on something as complex as this, all of these teams needed to push forward collaboratively while still working remotely. Our design process leveraged many different core competencies – creative ideation, 2D concepting and design, 3D design/animation, and interactive experience development. Frogs would croak in warning, a bear would rear up and groan, deer would crane their necks and dart into the wilderness. Users entering an area would trigger animation in the flora, fauna, and sound design of the environment. We also wanted interactions within the environment to feel intuitive and unique, so we implemented “trigger zones” throughout. We wanted attendees to feel like they were occupying the same space to really promote camaraderie at the event. This allowed us to leverage our extensive experience using Unity for 3D content creation, user interaction, networked multiplayer, and audio design, while allowing event participants to just open a web page and login.Įffortless communication between users was key, so we implemented both voice and text chat functionality. After testing several options, we chose to use Unity’s WebGL platform and deploy via WebAssembly.
#Illuminate the farm software
In order to remove barriers to entry, we opted for a browser-based experience that required no plugins or third party software installation.
