Inside a warehouse in an industrial zone in Copenhagen vast stacks of plants soar almost to the ceiling. In time, this newly opened vertical farm will be one of the largest in Europe, while power from Denmark's windfarms will ensure it is carbon-neutral, according to the company behind it.
Though they will never see daylight or soil, hundreds of tonnes of lettuce, herbs and kale will be harvested over the coming months from the vast farm, run by Danish start-up Nordic Harvest.
"We have only an output of about 200 tonnes per year but we have built the support facility to support a production of 1,000 tonnes per year," CEO Anders Riemann told AFP.
The futuristic farm uses 20,000 specialised LEDs to provide the plants with light, while robots deliver trays of seeds from aisle to aisle across the 7,000-square-metre hangar.
Vertical farming, in which plants are grown in racks to maximise space, has been touted as a way to use urban spaces to help meet the world's growing food demand and produce food locally.
But indoor vertical farms have faced criticism over the vast amount of electricity needed to provide artificial light.
Nordic Harvest, though, says its facility is powered entirely by renewable energy from Denmark's extensive wind farms, which produce around 40 percent of the country's electricity.
"A vertical farm is characterised by not harming the environment by recycling all the water and nutrition or fertiliser and in our case we use 100 percent energy from windmills which makes us CO2 neutral," said Riemann.
"Our vision is that it can actually be done: Take some of the food production back into the cities where you can grow in a much smaller land and space optimised in the height."
