LED Lighting Vertical Farms Can Also Be Built In Tunnels

Source: LEDinside

In recent years, plant factories and vertical farms have gradually sprung up in various places, and they are constructed in various ways. Vegetables can be grown on the ground, underground, in the air, at sea and in containers. Recently, vertical tunnel farms have also appeared.

An old tunnel in South Korea has been transformed into a vertical farm using LED growth lights to grow vegetables and fruits to solve problems caused by extreme weather, agricultural land and labor shortages.

An indoor farming company, NextOn, has rented a closed tunnel in South Korea and transformed it into a smart farm using water cultivation and LED lighting to grow crops by erecting vertical stacks. The company said it was the first indoor vertical farm built in a tunnel in the world and the largest vertical farm in South Korea, covering 2,300 square meters.

Using NextOn's cultivation system, the farm grows 60 crops. Choi Jae Bin, chairman of NextOn, said the tunnel temperature was between 10 and 22 degrees Celsius (50 to 72 degrees Fahrenheit), helping to optimize crop growth conditions.

It is reported that in 1970, South Korea built a tunnel for a major highway and was closed in 2002. Using this abandoned tunnel, NextOn reduced its construction cost by half. And the vertical farm began serving vegetables to a food retailer and a chain bakery by the end of August.

With global warming and a shrinking agricultural workforce, intelligent farms using LED lighting technology and systems have become a potential solution for sustainable food production.