A Better Way to Grow
How Vertical Farming Can Tackle the Triple Crisis of Water, Food, and Carbon
A Brief Caveat Before We Begin
Before launching into this piece, let me offer a quick personal note. I write this not as an outside observer, but as someone who has spent the past decade in the trenches of agtech, advocating for controlled environment agriculture (CEA), developing solutions with Intravision Group, and yes, pitching our story, our systems, and our mission to just about anyone who would listen. That includes governments, researchers, and investors.
In that process, I’ve used buzzwords. I’ve shared impact metrics and forecasts designed to impress. That’s part of what it takes to raise awareness (and funding) in a world awash with noise. But I also believe that behind the necessary hyperbole there’s something very real and urgent here, something worth distilling, examining, and, ultimately, acting on.
So, while this article explores how vertical farming might help us navigate a rapidly evolving global landscape, it does so with both enthusiasm and a good measure of realism. This is not about “feeding the world with salad.” It’s about carving out meaningful, science-backed roles for technology in a much bigger, much more complicated picture.
A New Era of Agricultural Challenges
It’s no longer controversial to say that the world’s agricultural systems are in crisis. Between climate shocks, soil degradation, freshwater scarcity, population growth, geopolitical instability, and shrinking arable land, we are approaching what some now refer to as a “Triple Crisis” – a convergence of pressures around water, food, and medicine.
By 2030, global freshwater demand could outstrip supply by 40%, according to the United Nations. That shortfall intensifies as we move closer to 2040, accelerated by climate volatility and the need to double food production by mid-century. Add to that the surging demand for plant-based pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals, and the pressure on agriculture becomes even more acute.
In this environment, controlled environment agriculture (CEA), including vertical farming, isn’t a silver bullet, but it is a potent tool. And tools matter, especially when they help us build systems that are more efficient, resilient, and sustainable.
The Intravision Approach: Efficiency Without Illusions
At Intravision Group, we’ve approached this challenge from a science-first perspective. The vertical farming systems we’ve developed aren’t about headlines or moonshots. They’re about outcomes. Our GravityFlow™ technology, for instance, can achieve up to 250 kg of produce per square meter annually, nearly double that of industry competitors, while using up to 98% less water per kilogram of lettuce than field-grown equivalents.
Just as critically, we’ve achieved energy-use reductions that push our system below 9 kWh/kg for leafy greens. These gains, when paired with renewable energy integration, translate into greenhouse gas emissions as low as 0.48 kg CO₂-eq/kg. That’s not just theory, that’s audited, real-world performance.
We recognize that in this space, performance metrics are often treated with skepticism, and rightly so. Too many numbers have been tossed around without grounding in reality. But we didn’t arrive at ours through marketing spin. We arrived at them through partnerships, patience, and science. These numbers hold up not because we claim them but because our collaborators, clients, and auditors have verified them.
Not a Revolution. A Course Correction
The temptation in agtech is to oversell. To imply that high-tech farms alone can feed the planet. But the truth is more nuanced. Vertical farming is not the future of agriculture. It’s part of it. It’s a tool for growing certain types of food and plant-based products in a more controlled, sustainable way. That’s it.
It’s not a replacement for traditional farming. It’s not going to magically make droughts disappear or restore global equity in food distribution. What it can do is produce high-quality crops; leafy greens, herbs, berries, nutraceuticals, even pharmaceutical-grade compounds, in places where water, arable land, or climate stability is in short supply.
And that’s not nothing.
The Real Environmental Impact
One of the less glamorous but most important impacts of vertical farming is its ability to reduce pressure on the land itself. By growing more with less, we free up non-arable or degraded land for potential regeneration. A return to carbon-sequestering practices, whether forest restoration or regenerative agriculture, becomes possible when land is no longer required for intensive mono-cropping.
In fact, modeling shows that restoring just a fraction of land freed by vertical farming to native ecosystems could sequester gigatons of CO₂. Meanwhile, CEA eliminates the need for toxic pesticides, reduces chemical runoff, and lowers post-harvest waste due to its proximity to urban centers.
The Limits and Promise of Technology
No one technology is going to “fix” agriculture. But some technologies will help stabilize it, especially in an era when environmental, social, and economic shocks are becoming more frequent and more severe.
In this respect, vertical farming isn’t an answer, it’s a capacity. A way to give communities more control over their food and medicine supply. A way to grow premium crops with a lower environmental burden. A way to future-proof against a system that, let’s face it, was never designed for 10 billion people on a heating planet.
It’s not about replacing soil. It’s about choosing the right tool for the right job and scaling what works, where it works.
Parting Thought: Real Progress Requires Real Tools
If you’ve made it this far, thank you. This is a subject I care about, but it’s also one that suffers from both overexposure and under-explanation. Vertical farming has been heralded as a revolution and mocked as a salad startup fantasy. The truth, like most things, lies somewhere in between.
We should hold bold ideas to account. We should question grand claims. But we should also pay attention to the quiet, methodical progress happening in places like Intravision and its partner networks—because it’s here, in these labs and facilities, that we might just be planting the seeds for a more resilient agricultural future.
Let’s grow from there.
This piece is adapted from a white paper co-authored with Dr. Nadeem Khan, Senior Plant Scientist at Intravision. All interpretations, opinions, and reflections shared above are mine alone.