Vertical farming flourishing thanks to digitalization

80 Acres Farms has made supplying fresh food for a growing population its mission. How? With fully automated, indoor vertical farming. As it turns out, controlled environment agriculture is also more sustainable than traditional farming methods.

Who said the plants we eat must be grown outdoors? All over the world, city populations are increasing in size. At the same time, more and more consumers are demanding clean, locally grown food. Metropolitan agricultural efforts seek to combine these trends with controlled environment agriculture.

A leader in this area is 80 Acres Farms, which grows everything from salad, microgreens, and herbs to tomatoes and baby cucumbers. Siemens supports the industrialization and scaling of the company's proprietary Loop platform from 80 Acres Farms’ technology-focused subsidiary Infinite Acres. This comprehensive solution encompasses crop management software, algorithms, environmental controls, robotics, and automation.

A typical vertical farm is stacked high with layers of plants. Picture fields stacked on top of fields lit with LED lighting at each level, efficiently utilizing the vertical space and significantly increasing food production. The conditions in a vertical farm are monitored around the clock to ensure the plants have the perfect amounts of light energy, carbon dioxide, nutrients, air, temperature, and humidity they need.

At the beginning of 2023, Siemens and 80 Acres Farms officially announced their collaboration to industrialize and scale the proprietary Loop system from Infinite Acres. Siemens and 80 Acres Farms are partnering to apply innovative solutions, such as crop management software and algorithms, environmental controls, robotics, and automation. These are just some of the many concrete technologies Siemens is supplying:

Siemens is providing smart power distribution equipment and building management technologies within the facilities to help monitor fire and life safety, security, and the power distribution systems themselves – all from a single interface. Moreover, Siemens’ suite of advanced industrial automation technologies and edge devices will help automate the production line, while edge devices and human-machine interfaces monitor and update the farms’ control systems.

To take a deeper look into operations, Siemens and 80 Acres Farms are collaborating on a digital twin that simulates the plant growth and the production process. Thus, it will be possible to predict plant growth under diverse conditions and better coordinate growth cycles with shipping schedules.