Sustainable Fruit Production Operation

The United Kingdom aims to reach its carbon neutral target by 2050, and all sectors have started planning and implementing strategies to achieve this goal. The food production industry is responsible for approximately 26% of global Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, of which 27% result from crop production. To achieve the industry's net-zero emission target for agriculture by 2040, a transformation is required in both the farming and energy production sectors, and especially in their interaction and collaboration.

However, global pandemics, natural disasters and human conflicts put food production at risk. A report published by the London School of Economics outlines how COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated how deeply the UK's food security is dependent on import, while more than 80% of farmers experienced profits fall in 2020\.

The farming sector is focused on increasing the productivity of food production processes by integrating electrification, automation and digitisation into operations and using indoor farming. This will enable farmers to have more granular visibility and control over their operation in real-time and harvest crops year-round as it is not a weather or season dependent process. However, this requires more energy to support the operation effectively and hence, increases the operations energy cost.

By 2025, it is anticipated that the agricultural technology sector will be worth more than £136 billion globally. This includes over £129 billion in the Autonomous Farm Equipment Market and over £7 billion in the Precision Farming Market.

The Sustainable Fruit Production Operation (SFPO) project aims to promote indoor farming using Total Controlled Environment Agriculture (TCEA) and develop an energy system which integrates into food production operations to deliver zero-carbon products. The technology ensures the required power is supplied from renewable resources at an affordable price in order to reduce OpEx and provide products with competitive prices to become a mainstream supplier to the consumer market.

Such an energy management system has the potential to be installed in sites around the world as a key part of an innovative transformation of food production, with positive consequences in feeding the world's population in a way that also addresses challenges associated with climate change.