Could this be the future of farming? Inside Europe’s biggest vertical farm
Outside it is the bleak midwinter. We are smack bang in the middle of some of the country’s best agricultural land.
But inside the cavernous warehouse where we’ve come, you wouldn’t have a clue about any of that: there is no daylight; it feels like it could be any time of the day, any season of the year.
We are at Fischer Farms – Europe’s biggest vertical farm.
The whole point of a vertical farm is to create an environment where you can grow plants, stacked on top of each other (hence: vertical) in high density. The idea being that you can grow your salads or peas somewhere close to the cities where they’re consumed rather than hundreds of miles away. Location is not supposed to matter.
Farm 2 of Fischer Farms
So the fact that this particular one is to be found amid the fields a few miles outside Norwich is somewhat irrelevant. It could be anywhere. Indeed, unlike most farms, which are sometimes named after the family that owns them or a local landmark, this one is simply called “Farm 2”. “Farm 1” is to be found in Staffordshire, in case you were wondering.
Farm boss’s dizzying ambition
These futuristic farm units are the brainwave of Tristan Fischer, a serial entrepreneur who has spent much of his career working on renewable energy in its various guises. His ambition now is dizzying: to be able to grow not just basil and chives in a farm like this but to grow other, trickier and more competitive crops too – from strawberries to wheat and rice.
Only then, he says, can vertical farming stand a chance of truly changing the world.
The idea behind vertical farming itself is more than a century old. Back in 1915, American geologist Gilbert Ellis Bailey described how it could be done in theory. In theory, one should be able to grow plants hydroponically – in other words with a mineral substrate instead of soil – in a controlled environment and thereby increase the yield dramatically.
In one sense this is what’s already being done in greenhouses across much of Northern Europe and the US, where tomatoes and other warm-weather-loving vegetables are grown in temperature-controlled environments. However, while most of these greenhouses still depend on natural light (if sometimes bolstered by electric bulbs) the point behind vertical farming was that by controlling the amount of light, one could grow more or less everything, any time of the year. And by stacking the crops together one could yield even more crops in each acre of land one was using.
The tunnels are 12 levels high and bathed in bright LED lights
Look at a long-term chart of agricultural yields in this country and you start to see why this might matter. The quantity of crops we grow in each acre of land jumped dramatically in the second half of the 20th century – a consequence in part of liberal use of artificial fertiliser and in part of new technologies and systems. But that productivity rate started to tail off towards the end of the century.
‘Changing the equation’
Vertical farming promises, if it can make the numbers add up, to change the equation, dramatically increasing agricultural productivity in the coming decades. The question is whether the technology is there yet.
And when it comes to the technology, one thing has certainly changed. Those early vertical farms (the first attempts actually date back to the 1950s) all had a big problem: the bulbs. Incandescent bulbs were both too hot and too energy intensive to work in these environments. But the latest generation of LED bulbs are both cool and cheap, and it’s these bulbs you need (in vast numbers) if you’re going to make vertical farming work.
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The farm is growing basil but the ambition is to grow much more than simple herbs
Here at Farm 2, you encounter row after row of trays, each stacked on top of each other, each carrying increasingly leafy basil plants. They sit under thousands of little LED bulbs which are tuned to precisely the right spectral frequency to encourage the plant to grow rapidly.
Mr Fischer says: “We’re on this downward cost curve on LEDs. And then when you think about other main inputs, energy – renewable energy – is constantly coming down as well.
“So you think about all the big drivers of vertical farming, they’re going down, whereas compared to full-grown crops, everything’s going up – the fertilisers, rents, water is becoming more expensive too.”
Just over a month after the basil was seeded, it is now fully grown and trays of the crop are moved to the harvesting machine
This farm – which currently sells to restaurant chains rather than direct to consumers – is now cost-competitive with the basil shipped (or more often flown) in from the Mediterranean and North Africa. The carbon footprint is considerably lower too.
“And our long-term goal is that we can get a lot cheaper,” says Mr Fischer. “If you look at Farm 1, we spent about £2.5m on lights in 2018. Fast forward to Farm 2; it’s seven and a half times bigger and in those three years the lights were effectively half the price. We’re also probably using 60 to 70 percent less power.”
Farm boss Tristan Fischer speaks to Sky’s Ed Conway
It might seem odd to hear a farmer talk so much about energy and comparatively less about the kinds of things one associates with farmers – the soil or tractors or the weather – but vertical farming is in large part an energy business. If energy prices are low enough, it makes the crops here considerably cheaper.
But here in the UK, with power costs higher than anywhere else in the developed world, the prospects for this business are more challenged than elsewhere. Still, Mr Fischer’s objective is to prove the business case here before building bigger units elsewhere, in countries with much cheaper power.
In much the same way as Dutch growers came to dominate those greenhouses, he thinks the UK has a chance of dominating this new agricultural sector.
Shares in meal delivery platform Deliveroo have surged by 17% as investors react to news of a £2.7bn takeover proposal.
The company revealed after the market had closed on Friday that it had been in talks since 5 April with US rival DoorDash.
Deliveroo suggested then it was likely the 180p per share offer would be recommended, though full terms were yet to be agreed.
Money latest: Vet hits back at critics of prices
At that price, the company’s founder and chief executive, Will Shu, would be in line for a windfall of more than £170m.
Deliveroo further announced, before trading on Monday, that it had suspended its £100m share buyback programme.
The opening share price reaction took the value to 171p per share – still shy of the 180p on the table – and well under the 390p per share flotation price seen in 2021.
Deliveroo’s shares have weakened nearly 50% since their market debut.
The deal is not expected to face regulatory hurdles as it provides DoorDash access to 10 new markets where it currently has no presence.
But a takeover would likely represent a blow to the City of London given the anticipated loss of a tech-focused player.
Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “If the deal is done at that price, the company will fail to shake off the ‘Floperoo’ tag it was saddled with after its disastrous IPO debut in 2021.
“Even though Deliveroo has finally broken through into profitable territory, the prolonged bout of indigestion around its share price has continued.
“The surge in demand for home deliveries during the pandemic waned just as competition heated up. Deliveroo’s foray into grocery deliveries has helped it turn a profit but it’s still facing fierce rivals.”
She added: “The DoorDash Deliveroo deal will be unappetising for the government which has been trying to boost the number of tech companies listed in London.
“If Deliveroo is purchased it would join a stream of companies leaving the London Stock Exchange, with too few IPOs [initial public offerings] in the pipeline to make up the numbers.”
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