WinterGreen Research announces that it has published a new study: Vertical Farming, Plant Factory Market, Shares, Strategies, and Forecasts, Worldwide, 2014 to 2020. The 2014 study has 455 pages, 233 tables and figures. Worldwide markets are poised to achieve significant growth as the food supply for the world starts to adopt automated process. Grow lights have become more sophisticated and less expensive to run as solar and wind energy are adopted by greenhouses and plant factories.
Plant Factory (PF), vertical farming is a closed environment in which plants are grown under lights in shelves stacked one on another. All the elements needed for plant growth are artificially controlled, a process that removes detrimental influences such as pesticides and poor weather conditions. Traditional agriculture lives at the mercy of the elements. A plant factory is run based on science. Science is used to produce plants based on carefully controlled spectrum best for plant growth, to produce plants of a fixed quality, quantity, cost, time to harvest, and tuned to control the sale price.
Plant factory weed control is able to achieve crop-yield increases. Robot technology is deploying machines for weed control, promising to improve crop yields. Robots make the crops safer by eliminating or virtually eliminating herbicides. Downstream processing system solutions and robots achieve automation of process. Robots meet stringent hygiene and safety regulations, work tirelessly 24 hours a day, and relieve human workers of physically arduous tasks. Robots contribute to the freshness, variety and quality of food. Projects are ongoing.