How to start vertical farming in India (West Bengal) || vertical farming concept and its future in India

The world is soon going to face a huge problem i.e. food crisis. As the human population is steadily increasing so as the food demand increasing but with the climate change and natural disaster, agriculture growth is gradually decreasing year by year. Now a day big cities completely rely on village for food supply. According to global hunger index in between 2050 most of the countries will suffer from food crisis and India is one of them in their report. Agriculture experts and scientists are always trying to find a way to solve this problem and they have found a great solution for this problem. The solution is vertical Farming. Vertical farming is also known as Urban Farming. This tutorial will help you to get a clear idea about vertical farming.

Why vertical farming is needed in India?

As we know India has world’s second highest population over 120 crore and this growing faster than our thought. Scientists have given estimation that if this population growth continues like this way India may face a great problem in near future. As we know cities always rely on village for food source. Cities are now being overpopulated and demand for food is growing rapidly but our agricultural growth is not growing that much to fulfill that demand. To overcome this problem cities need to implement their own agriculture system i.e. Vertical Farming. As you already have read that India is under hunger Index so India need to think this matter seriously.

Vertical Farming concept

As the name suggest vertical farming means doing farming vertically. In vertical farming is done vertically i.e. stacking vegetables. At present no soil is used in vertical farming, instead of that liquid solution is used for planting. In vertical farming less space is required as farming is done in stacked order. You can see stacking farming in below image. In vertical farming if you cultivate within green house you have to arrange some extra light (Red and blue lights are mostly preferred) which will increase the growth of the plant. Red and Blue lights increase the photosynthesis rate in Plants.

Crops you can cultivate in vertical farming

According to scientists opinions almost any plant can be cultivated in vertical farming. Scientists are always trying to cultivate different crops in vertical farming. Suitable conditions are very very needed in Vertical farming. You you already know that vertical farming do not use soil so plants which do not require soil to grow (instead of soil water and mineral are used) are the major crops in vertical farming. Green leafy vegetables can also be cultivated in vertical farming such as (1) Letuce (2)Mustard greens (3) Tomatos (4) Basil (5) Spinach (6) Mint (7) Cilantro (8) Parsley (9) Rosemary etc.

Merits and demerits of vertical farming

As you already know from this tutorial that vertical farming is currently under experiment mode and in some cases it has been implemented practically.

Merits:

1. You already know vertical farming is also known as urban farming. Using this technique future city can be independent.
2. It requires less space as cultivation is done vertically in stacking order. So huge crop can be cultivated with little land.
3. With the help of this technology huge demand of food can be fulfilled.
4. low production cost with that less worry about natural disaster as it is done within planned building.
5. More than 30% of the food demand can be fulfilled with vertical farming.

Demerits:

1. At present all type of vegetables can’t be produced in vertical farming. Green leafy vegetables are currently produced at present.
2. Energy requirements is the biggest concern in vertical farming. As we know sunlight is needed for photosynthesis and all trees do not get same amount of light so to solve this problem artificial light need to be arranged.