An Insider’s Look at the Long-Term Growth Potential of Controlled-Environment Agriculture
UGA horticulture Professor Marc van Iersel’s research focuses on developing sustainable and cost-effective ways to ensure that crops — such as these turnip plants in a grow room at his greenhouses — get the amount of light they need to grow. Photo: Andrew Davis Tucker/UGA
Traditional agriculture is highly weather dependent, and many producers of high-value crops are shifting over from field production to controlled-environment agriculture (CEA). A recent article from the University of Georgia Cooperative Extension’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CAEAS) highlights the work of Dr. Marc van Iersel and others in this area.
Van Iersel, the Vincent J. Dooley Professor of Horticultural Physiology, defines CEA as both greenhouse production that relies on natural sunlight and vertical farms that use an electrical light source.
“One of the reasons a shift is happening is that 90% of all leafy greens produced in the U.S. are produced in California and Arizona. That area is in a megadrought and there is no end in sight. Because of this, they may not really be able to have water available to grow the crops in what is essentially a desert,” van Iersel says. CEA production is appealing to those who are “looking for production systems that may not use as much water in controlled conditions where you can get predictable, year-long production.”
In his 27 years at CAES, van Iersel’s research has focused on developing sustainable and cost-effective ways to ensure that crops get the amount of light they need to grow.
“The greenhouse has to respond to weather conditions changing all the time,” he says. “You have shorter fluctuations from morning to afternoon to evening and year-long fluctuation in many parts of the U.S. in winter. You need to adjust to it.”
Based on his research, van Iersel co-founded Candidus in 2017 with Erico Mattos, who received his doctorate from UGA in 2013. The company, Greenhouse Grower’s 2021 Technology of the Year award winner, provides lighting control systems that use a compact, powerful industrial microcomputer to monitor light sensors, calculate optimal lighting conditions, and control the lighting in controlled environment systems via a local Wi-Fi network.
“There was no one taking advantage of controlling light precisely in greenhouses,” van Iersel says. “We found we could reduce electricity costs for lighting by 30%, and given that, generally speaking, electricity cost for lighting is between 10 and 20% of operating costs for greenhouses, that can reduce operating costs by nearly half.”
The partners initially developed a system that responded to real-time levels of sunlight, but van Iersel has collaborated with electrical engineers to improve the system.
Continue reading at the University of Georgia.
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