Vertical Farming to Improve UK Food System Resilience (VF-UKFSR)

Our changing environment, political unrest and the threat of further pandemics all place risk on how we ensure continued access to high quality nutritious food. Vertical farming (VF) is a means of producing food in a totally controlled environment utilising soilless technology and artificial lighting. This innovative approach to agriculture offers an additional tool to increase UK food system resilience, through higher yields, greater land- and resource-use efficiency, year-round production and a decoupling from weather systems. This project will use a whole-system approach to quantify how VF can address key vulnerabilities in the UK food system, whilst co-creating a pathway for innovators to fulfil this potential.

DEFRA have concluded that climate change impacts are the biggest medium- to long-term risk for UK domestic food production. These are not limited to the UK, but also affect global food supply chains, upon which we are heavily reliant. Relying on imports brings associated risks from volatilities in energy prices, global conflict or civil unrest, all impacting both food supply and prices. There is fierce debate about the future of food and farming policy: how do we strike a balance between biodiversity, food security and Net Zero goals, in the face of competition for land from renewable energy, land-based greenhouse gas removal, and urbanisation/development. With the UK at its highest ever level of risk, and a food system which is precariously balanced, there is a pressing need to understand how to sustainably increase domestic production on land which suffers the impacts of climate change and is in competition with other uses. VF can help overcome such challenges.

The project focuses on the supply of nutritious leafy greens, essential for a healthy diet and the main foodstuff currently cultivated in VF. We will also look to the future, to understand how VF can supply local, diverse and culturally appropriate foodstuffs given the technical ability to cultivate a much wider range of crops. To date, there has not been such detailed mapping of the cascading risks facing the supply of leafy greens in the UK, nor a detailed interrogation of the benefits/trade-offs VF can offer to the UK food system, nor a roadmap to exploit this potential at scale.

To meet the aims of this call, the outputs will be co-created with farmers, industry, government and the community to ensure a focus on real-life and immediate benefits.

The research objectives are:

To map and quantify current and future risks in the UK food system, and how VF can address these (WP1)
To develop an open access, spatially explicit decision-making tool to quantify the impacts of VF expansion on food supply, land sparing potential, environmental impacts and socio-economic benefits/trade-offs, and to optimise the expansion of VF through a whole-systems approach (WP2/3)
To create a comprehensive framework of social conditions under which transition towards VF can be achieved (WP4)
To co-create a resilience framework, along with a policy and industry-relevant roadmap to support VF expansion in the UK (WP5).
Our core interdisciplinary team, made up of whole-system, environmental and social scientists, UK Urban AgriTech (industry association) and five farm partners (FlexFarming, Innovation Agritech Group, Farm Urban, GrowPura, LettUs Grow), will provide concrete evidence for the role VF has to play in future UK food systems, and provide a visionary co-created roadmap to resilience for a more sustainable future.