Hundreds of millions of people around the world do not have access to sufficient food. With the
global population continuing to increase, the global food output will need to drastically increase
to meet demands. At the same time, the amount of land suitable for agriculture is finite, so it is
not possibly to meet the growing demand by simply increasing the use of land. Thus, to be able
to feed the entire global population, and continue to do so in the future, it will be necessary to
drastically increase the food output per land area.
One idea which has been recently discussed in the scientific community is called Vertical Farming
(VF), which cultivates food crops on vertically stacked levels in (high-rise) buildings. The Vertical
Farm, so it is said, would allow for more food production in a smaller area. Additionally, a
Vertical Farm could be situated in any place (e.g. Taiga- or desert regions, cities), which would
make it possible to reduce the amount of transportation needed to deliver the crops to the
supermarkets.
The technologies required for the Vertical Farm are well-known and already being used in
conventional terrestrial greenhouses, as well as in the designs of bioregenerative Life Support
Systems for space missions. However, the economic feasibility of the Vertical Farm, which will
determine whether this concept will be developed or not, has not yet been adequately assessed.
Through a Concurrent Engineering (CE) process, the DLR Institute for Space Systems (RY) in
Bremen, aims to apply its know-how of Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) Technologies
in space systems to provide valuable spin-off projects on Earth and to provide the first
engineering study of a Vertical Farm to assess its economic feasibility
