Is a technique of cultivate crops on vertically inclined surface instead of utilize a large land area for

single layer of crops farming, stack of crops in an upward direction. It is an approach to promote
sustainable agricultural practices rather than conventional farming, that embraces systems with
heavy irrigation, and excessive usage of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. According to Allegaert
(2019), the vertical farming concept has continuously grow, from the concept of stacked greenhouse
to a modern concept clearly focus towards indoor and controlled agricultural environment. Brin et
al. (2016) outlines that vertical farming facilities are able to manage the humidity, temperature, and
several farming environment variables needed to increase agriculture production Other scholars
have different 10 perspectives on the vertical farming concept. Kozai et al. (2015) defined vertical
farming as indoor plant factories with artificial lighting, while Thomaier et al. (2015) interpreted
vertical farming from a more green urban architecture perspective and referred to it as zero-acreage
farming.

Problem Statements

The increasing number of populations has led to higher food demands. With the increase in
population, food production also increased. As for agricultural sector, the demands of fresh
vegetables demanding for more open land and resources for forming activities. Such problem has
been faced by Mr Basri who is the owner of Basri Farm who has recently having face such issues as
he could not expand his farming crops due to scarcity of land as he has been growing his farm in the
midst of urban city development.

The changes in rain patterns and temperature could diminish …….

Additionally, Malaysia is a tropical country that is known with higher rainfall tabulates, become the
main caused to landslides and floods that usually occurs especially in year end due to monsoon
transition.

The rapid development and population growth has caused the arable of land slightly reducing
despite the growing demands of food and fresh vegetables. Zasada et al. (2017) suggested that in
order to cope with current issues of scarcity of arable land in cities, it need for sustainable urban
farming to slightly reduce downside of such issues as well as the increasing of population density and
food stress.

Overall, vertical farming technology aimed to reduce the environmental issues such as deforestation,
biodiversity loss, soil erosion and desertification and water shortage.

e. Some scholars argue that agricultural area has occupied approximately 40 percent of the world's
arable land, and the continuous expansion of agricultural area has caused an increase in water
pollution, generated enormous amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, and increased the
biodiversity losses (Benis and Ferrão, 2017; Cederberg et al., 2019). Moreover, the food supply chain
in traditional agriculture is long. The agriculture production in traditional agriculture is located in
rural areas, while the primary consumption of agricultural products is in the urban areas. It caused
more food waste and more emissions because of the long distribution and transportation channels
for agricultural products (Benis and Ferrão, 2017). Based on these problems, vertical farming can be
a potential solution by moving agricultural production into closer locations in urban areas (Benis and
Ferrão, 2017; Pinstrup-Andersen, 2018; Weidner et al., 2019). Therefore, consumers can access
locally produced agricultural products and transform agricultural production into a more sustainable
approach by decreasing dependency on soil and water use, reducing the distances of crops supply
chain, and bringing crops closer to the consumer (Benis and Ferrão, 2017; Martin and Bustamante,
2021). It is done in constant monitoring and adjustment of productions such as temperature,
lighting, nutrients, irrigation and air circulation.

Limitation

Building urban vertical farm initially need large amounts of resources for building and construction.
The light required to grow 500 grams of wheat that 1 loaf of bread contains would costs at current
prices

However, vertical farming is not a silver bullet and perfect solution for agriculture. Vertical farming
has a lot of challenges and disadvantages. One of the challenges in vertical farming is high electricity
consumption, especially for lighting and temperature regulator (Graamans et al., 2018; Pinstrup-
Andersen, 2018; Romeo et al., 2018). The other challenge is limiting the plant types that can be
cultivated in a vertical farming method. Currently, the plants cultivated using the vertical farming
method are vegetables, leafy greens, herbs and microgreens. Those types of vegetables are suitable
for vertical farming because most of those plant parts can be sold and consumed, while many other
plants have leaves, roots and branches that are inedible (Chance et al., 2018; Pinstrup-Andersen,
2018). One other significant challenge is high capital expenditure (CAPEX). The price of land in the
metropolitan area has increased in the last decade (Gale et al., 11 2001; Knight Frank, 2014). It
caused the vertical farming initial cost might be expensive and caused difficulties in building large
scale vertical farms in large cities due to high cost and limited availability of buildings and spaces in
the big cities. Moreover, the cost of vertical farming technology is also still relatively high, though
some scholars and practitioners admit the cost of vertical farming technology is decreasing (Martin
and Bustamante, 2021). Moreover, the vertical farming also required significant amounts of energy
for its operation. Since many layers of plants have to be covered properly with lighting, the
electricity bill will grow rapidly.

Despite that, over 785 million people are suffering from the lack of fresh water access worldwide
where 70% of water usage has been sourced towards agricultural activities that consequently
become the largest contributor to water scarcity. Therefore, in order to overcome the water
shortage, compared to regular farming, the vertical approach of farming only consumes lees than 5%
of the water. It uses hydroponics, aquaponics, and aeroponics methods in which water
circulates in a closed-loop so nothing is wasted.
Other than that, all arable land on earth has been already used for agriculture, and
expanding farming operations is not possible without cutting down the forests to create more
space for plants to grow horizontally. That causes huge deforestation problem which in turn
contributes to worse quality of the air we breathe in. Over 24 million hectares of forest are
cut down each year, an area comparable to that of Great Britain.
Besides, this technology also only suitable for certain kinds of plants, thus there will be fewer
varieties of foods and vegetables as not all plants and vegetables suitable in limited spaces
and controlled environment.
REFERENCES

Zasada, I., Schmutz, U., Wascher, D., Kneafsey, M., Corsi, S., Mazzocchi, C., . . . Sali, G. (2017). Food
beyond the city–Analysing foodsheds and self-sufficiency for different food system scenarios in
European metropolitan regions. City, Culture and Society.