Is this the future of the farming industry?

Growing vertically is being harnessed across the city to grow fresh herbs, pea shoots and even willow trees.

While most supermarket herbs travel hundreds of miles before they reach our shelves, Alasdair Marchant’s are grown and picked fresh in Bristol at his indoor farm on Chapel Street, in St Philip’s Marsh, just down the road from Temple Meads.

The 28-year-old sells flat-leaf parsley, dill, coriander, chives and chervil with the roots on to keep them fresh and flavourful.

Through vertical farming methods, his herbs grow three times as fast as they would outside. In the summer it’s even quicker, his parsley can take five weeks to grow, in contrast to taking three or four months outdoors.

While most supermarket herbs travel hundreds of miles before they reach our shelves, Alasdair Marchant’s are grown and picked fresh at his indoor farm on Chapel Street – photo: Alasdair Marchant

Alasdair, who is lives on Gloucester Road, set up Bristol Urban Farms two years ago and runs the show mainly by himself alongside his small team of volunteers.

With no previous experience in horticulture nor farming, he learned the tricks of the trade through YouTube tutorials as he also navigated how to go about setting up and running his first business.

Vertical farming is all about growing more with less space and doing so while using up to 98 per cent less water than traditional farming.

Indoor farming uses hydroponics to create a controlled environment which replaces sunlight with LED lights, ground up coconuts to replace soil and water mixed with nutrients, the holy trinity for fresh, tasty greenery. All of which can be done in the middle of a city under a roof.

Vertical farming is all about growing more with less space and doing so while using up to 98 per cent less water than traditional farming – photo: Alasdair Marchant

Alasdair’s urban farm supplies shops and restaurants like Garden of Easton, Poco, Better Food, Hugo’s, Reg The Veg and Tobacco Factory’s shop, with pea shoots, microgreens and microsalads.

Microgreens are, as Alasdair describes, “baby versions of bigger plants which have really intense flavour and are highly nutritious”.

He added: “There are a lot of businesses in Bristol who are really into that, and they’re easy to get on board but the challenge is getting the bigger companies on board with it too.

“You’re kind of creating a new category of business while getting people over the fact that it’s a new model – restaurants don’t typically source their food from one farm.

“Some vertical farms have come and gone across the UK, it’s not as established as a business yet so there’s not a lot of knowledge out there.”

Alasdair heard about the concept after finishing his degree in textile design and thought “Bristol seems like the perfect place to set up something like that”.

Inside the farm Alasdair is able “to create the perfect day, every day with consistent and controlled conditions.”

It’s a more sustainable way to grow, it uses a lot less land and water. A lack of fertiliser and pesticides means the surrounding ecosystem and the produce is not impacted.

“Some estimates say vertical farming uses up to 98 per cent less water as the water doesn’t evaporate off the produce as it does outdoors,” Alasdair explained.

“Take a field the size of this room, which is around 70 metres squared, versus this room using vertical farming techniques, you can grow between 50 and 100 times more in this space. The shelves I’ve got now are quite low but I could keep building higher to make even more use of this space.”

Bristol Urban Farms pictured is Alasdair Marchant photo Alasdair Marchant

He hopes to spread the word as much as possible in the city before branching out to neighbouring cities like Bath.

Looking to the future, he wants to create a properly insulated room so he can grow his herbs all year around, without sticking to seasonal produce.

Alasdair added: “I wanted to create a business which doesn’t make more stuff which we don’t really need. Whereas food is something we do need.

“I really wanted to work in food production and to change it from the inside, so it’s more sustainable.

“My degree has really allowed me to think creatively in this job and to innovate and I think this fairly new category of farming needs a lot of innovation to survive.”

Just two miles down the road in St Anne’s, high energy music fills the labs at LettUs Grow as its team of young scientists and growers harvest freshly grown pea shoots, which are ready to pick in under a week using aeroponics.

Sound plays a big part in how LettUs Grow operates.

Things there work a little differently compared to Alasdair’s business, as the B Corp’s team of growers, engineers, plant scientists, software developers and business experts develop aeroponic technology which is used across the UK.

The company, founded in 2015 by University of Bristol alumni Charlie Guy, Jack Farmer and Ben Crowther, builds sustainable indoor and vertical farms using aeroponic technology to grow plants without soil. It does this differently from other people as it uses high frequency sound waves from ultrasonic atomisers, like little underwater speakers, to create a mist for its plants.

Aeroponic Rolling Benches from LettUs Grow 5

Aeroponics differs from hydroponics as it reduces water waste even more and speeds up growth. Rather than having the roots of plants submerged in water, the roots are surrounded in nutrient-rich mist from a much smaller body of water.

“Lots of people don’t know that plants respire through their roots.

“When the plant’s roots have oxygen around them, it’s a lot closer to a natural soil environment as in soil there are air pockets which allows plants to breathe,” India Langley, food systems research and PR lead for LettUs Grow told Bristol24/7.

A new product, Aeroponic Rolling Benches ™, is being tested and developed at LettUs Grow, which will help growers retrofit existing greenhouses. The idea was put into action after the B Corp saw a gap in the commercial farming market for aeroponics at scale.

“Because we only need to power the atomisers, we can do that while it’s moving, so we can now put aeroponics into a greenhouse environment.

“These benches have the ability to take a lot of technology from the vertical farming sector, which is often seen as futuristic and sci-fi-like and bring that into more traditional normal, commercial agriculture – where most of us are getting our food from.

“It’s really exciting to see vertical farming and agricultural farming blending together nicely,” India added.

India Langley food systems research and PR lead for LettUs Grow, said: “Lots of people don’t know that plants respire through their roots.” – photo: LettUs Grow

Traditional, commercial farms are also making use of the innovative technology made in Bristol. G H Dean, a farm in Kent, is harnessing LettUs Grow’s modern technology so the farmers there can rewild a section of the farm.

By transferring some of their production from the fields to the vertical farm, which sits in a 40ft container, they can rewet the land to create a good environment for birds. By doing this the Kent farm is balancing food production with rewilding.

India said: “One of the really exciting things about this project is how the farm is taking on the role of environmental stewardship while also taking care of its duty to produce food and finding novel ways of doing both.”

LettUs Grow has also been growing trees in its indoor farm too, working with the University of Surrey to grow willow trees for biomass production. Along with Bardsley England to help them increase the amount of apple trees they can produce to grow their orchards.

“This is something you don’t often think of when you think of vertical farming, you think of herbs and salads, not trees. Almost anything is possible.”

LettUs Grow, founded in 2015 by University of Bristol alumni Charlie Guy, Jack Farmer and Ben Crowther, builds sustainable indoor and vertical farms using aeroponic technology to grow plants without soil – photo: LettUs Grow

Moving forwards the East Bristol company is looking at integrating renewable energy into growing as it is “absolutely fundamental to the future of controlled environment farming”.

India continued: “The industry’s worst kept secret is that it’s very energy intensive.

“There are probably going to be some farms which don’t make it but what it’s going to do is it’s going to drive forward renewable energy integration like we’re seeing on the farm in Kent.

“It’s going to make the industry a lot greener in the long run.”

You can find out more about LettUs Grow, by visiting www.lettusgrow.com

Alasdair at Bristol Urban Farms is always on the lookout for volunteers and for restaurants and cafes to connect with in Bristol. You can contact him on bristolurbanfarms@gmail.com or find out more on his website www.theurban.farm.

Main photo: LettUs Grow

Read next:

• Brislington startup launches vertical farming trial in prison
• The Brislington team that has developed a way to grow plants with sound
• The refugee-owned farming business with dream to expand 
• The fight continues to save Bristol’s last working farm

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