Sustainable Vertical Farming: Leveraging Machine Learning and IoT for Energy Efficiency and Productivity

Vertical farming as an idea has emerged as a helpful strategy to mitigate problems related to food production throughout the world, less land available, and climate changes. Through the use of controlled environment agriculture, vertical farming consists of growing food in layers and within the vicinity of consumers, hence decreasing the need for conventional agriculture. One of the precision framing efficient crop growth practices that easily integrates machine learning (ML) technologies, and the Internet of Things (IoT) is vertical framing. Various technologies are used, including robotics, machine learning, big data analytics, drones, and IoT sensors in gathering data on crop growth, environmental conditions, and weather patterns. For this reason, energy efficiency is regarded as a significant parameter that determines the economic sustainability of vertical farms if not their environmental impacts. This article explores energy efficiency within vertical farming systems highlighting how technology, better practices, and the use of clean energy sources help counter the high energy needs of vertical farms. The paper also looks into energy-efficient systems and designs such as LED lights which consume lower electric power and are designed to produce light like natural sunlight, energy-efficient HVAC systems which operate with less energy, systems for recycling water and nutrients and minimize usage of these resources.