Live at Anuga FoodTec: Siemens presents vertical farming model for efficient crop production

29 Apr 2022 --- At this year’s Anuga FoodTec, Siemens is showcasing a digitally-enhanced vertical farming solution. The vertical farming model delivers improved resource efficiency and carbon cuts in crop production for various food sectors. 

The farming model is applicable to the food industry and beyond, Matthias Povolny, portfolio manager at Siemens, tells PackagingInsights from the trade show in Cologne, Germany. 

“The Siemens technology is enabling us to directly monitor and pre-calculate data coming from the feed level, bringing that to a gateway and then communicating it to the cloud. The cloud then enables us to do data and performance analytics so that we can ensure that our energy and water is used perfectly,” he explains.

The model’s scope
Povolny explains the technology itself can be applied to various F&B sectors and other industries.

“We can bring the technology to beer production, bakery production, edible oils and so on,” he says.

“The solutions are also very scalable so you can start with a very small footprint and enlarge that across multiple plants and across the entire world through a cloud solution that gives you the opportunity to track everything from the data to the management level.”The vertical tech is applicable to the food industry, including beer, bakery and edible oil production.

Boosting resource efficiency 
Environmental sustainability will play an increasingly important role for F&B producers in the coming years.

“This trend means we’ll have to be very resource-efficient in the future and therefore, the model of vertical farming is a nice showcase because it enables locally produced goods through very limited space and effort. This [solution] also implies a very low CO2 footprint of transportation,” asserts Povolny.

From the edge technology to the cloud level, Siemens has various solutions in place. 

“We have different applications that are scalable. We can also connect to different data levels and sources and also to different sensors themselves.”

“We can then bring up the data efficiently and have a small footprint in the cloud and therefore have a very good way forward to optimize our production,” concludes Povolny.

Agricultural concerns
Meanwhile, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is calling on food sectors to take action and manage practices that incorporate plastic, following the release of a new report on plastic contamination in agricultural land. 

The report underscores how land used to grow food is contaminated with far larger quantities of plastic pollution, posing a significant threat to food security, human health and the environment.

Also, the British Plastics Federation has reaffirmed the valuable role of plastic in reducing food spoilage and associated carbon emissions in response to a WRAP UK study, which suggested packaging doesn’t necessarily prolong the life of uncut fresh produce and can actually increase food waste. 

By Natalie Schwertheim