Editor’s Note: This is the third post in a three-part series that looks at the vertical farming industry and the role engineers can play in developing the technologies to make it more scalable, inspired by the element14 Community’s new Vertical Farming Design Challenge. Read part one and part two for more. In the first post of our vertical farming series, we took a look inside this growing subsect of urban agriculture aimed at preventing food shortages by harvesting crops in unused industrial spaces. Lighting, energy and automation remain the three biggest issues to establishing and maintaining a vertical farm. In our second post, we examined how those same issues also apply to home-based vertical farms, which have flourished in recent years thanks to out-of-the-box solutions, small-scale engineering systems and a thriving community that provides support for vertical farmers of all experience levels to succeed. Also See: Meeting Today’s Fresh Food Challenges While we’ve looked in detail at the applications and technological innovations that have paved the way for more vertical farms, what do those applications and innovations look like in practice? In our third and final post of the series, we tour some of the most compelling examples of vertical farms from around the world. Deliscious: The Netherlands Deliscious has established a nearly 50-year-old reputation for growing some of the freshest root ball lettuce in the world. Twin brothers Roy and Mark have married a love for good produce with technical know-how that puts Deliscious at the cutting edge of vertical farming. Deliscious is the first Dutch company to use a mobile channel system where lettuce grows in water channels filled with nutrients critical to a young plant’s development. With support from Philips’ LED lighting formula, the team at Deliscious designed four sealed climate chambers that cultivate the seeds […]