‘A growing machine’: Scotland looks to vertical farming to boost tree stocks
It is a long way from the romance of a sun-dappled Highland glen. Picture instead a white cube equipped with the computer-controlled automation you would sooner expect to see in an Amazon or Ikea warehouse.
Scotland’s state forestry agency believes this prefabricated structure, erected at an agricultural research centre near Dundee, could play a significant part in its quest to help combat climate heating by greatly expanding the country’s forest cover.
Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) wants to plant tens of millions of new trees in the coming years – conifers such as Norway and sitka spruce, douglas fir and Scots pine, and broadleaf varieties such as oak, alder and birch.
This white cube, held up by steel ribs and girders, can help it do so at a remarkable speed and efficiency, producing saplings six times faster than it takes to grow them naturally outdoors. In the open, it would take about 18 months to bring a tree seedling up to 40-50mm in height; in these units, that growing time is about 90 days.
“Essentially, this isn’t a building. It’s a machine; it’s a growing machine,” said Georgia Lea, a communications manager for Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS), the Edinburgh-based firm that has designed the system.
The “vertical farm” uses hydroponics, where plants are grown indoors in very tightly controlled conditions. The type of light, temperature, humidity and nutrition can be tailored for each plant, far more so than in a greenhouse or polytunnel. “It’s better than a summer’s day. It’s totally an optimal environment,” Lea said.
In the IGS unit at the James Hutton Institute, an agricultural sciences research centre at Invergowrie, technicians use iPads to control stacks of tightly packed shelves held in a cluster of
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