Wales' farmers are best known for their lamb and beef, but could they be tempted by a side hustle in salad leaves, mushrooms or edible flowers? University researchers are working together to try to set up a Welsh Centre of Excellence for vertical farming, which means growing crops indoors in a controlled environment . They claim it could offer a "major diversification option" for Welsh farmers, while boosting the nation's food security. Wales currently produces very little of the fruit and vegetables consumed by its people, and is reliant on imports from elsewhere in the UK or overseas.
For husband and wife Chris and Donna Graves it all started with a tray of microgreens on a windowsill. Now their garage has been transformed into a full-on urban farm, growing crops used to garnish dishes and cocktails in high-end restaurants. "The beauty of it is we can grow 365 days a year," Donna said, with customers appreciating "a premium product".
"It's the fact that they're grown in Wales and aren't travelling miles from across the border," she said. Chris said energy costs - for lighting and heating - was one challenge, particularly in winter, but "luckily we've found the customer base to keep us going." The business in Church Village, Rhondda Cynon Taf, is in the process of expanding and kitting out an industrial unit, where the couple said it was their dream to install solar panels or a biomass heater.
"If we can drive down the costs we'd like to get into the public sector as well, serving hospitals and schools," Donna said, adding that grant funding from the Welsh government to support urban and vertical farms was needed to help the sector take off. At Tyn-yr-Onnen farm, near Waunfawr in the heart of Eryri national park in Gwynedd, another vertical farming success story has been making headlines. Gareth Griffiths-Swain, 33, won a TV contest to supply the high-end mushrooms he grows in a barn on the family farm to Aldi.
"It's been fantastic for us and we've had to scale up in quite a small amount of time," he said. "Mushrooms are super space-efficient, you can grow so much food in a very, very small space - we're now growing for a large UK retailer and doing it on our small farm." "It doesn't matter about the weather outside, we create the environment in which mushrooms thrive so you can keep producing throughout the year.
" There was "definitely" potential for other farmers to follow in his footsteps, he said. "We were on a sheep farm with 300 ewes which wasn't really working for my grandfather when he was doing it and we identified that these barns were perfect for vertical farming." He said the challenge was focusing on getting the product right.
The farms remoteness means it would not be feasible to have a big truck taking fresh mushrooms away every day. Instead he focuses on dried mushrooms and other "shelf-ready products" he can prepare on location. Both businesses are showcasing their work at this year's Royal Welsh Show in Llanelwedd, Powys, where there is a particular focus on fruit and vegetable growing with the launch of a new Horticulture Village.
We often hear that people are recommended to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, but a recent study concluded that Wales only grew enough to provide someone with a quarter of one single portion a day. Another study by Food Sense Wales found 94% of the vegetables served in Welsh schools were imported. "These are global supply chains that are increasingly at risk of climate change and global conflict," explained Jonathan Tench, director of well-being economy for Wales' future generations commissioner.
"To protect our food security in the future and make sure that there's healthy food available in our schools and hospitals in future we need to be growing more of our own," he said. "That's going to require lots of different strategies from Welsh government, councils and health boards to look at how we can get more communities to grow the food that they need and how we can work with farmers to look at diversification." Researchers from Aberystwyth, Swansea and Cardiff Metropolitan universities have joined forces on a project they hope will help more vertical farming businesses take off in Wales.
The plan is to establish a Welsh Centre for Excellence for controlled environment agriculture. Dr William Stiles, a soil scientist from Aberystwyth University, said he hoped the concept could become "a major farm diversification option". While several larger scale vertical farms across Europe and the US have faltered recently due in part to high energy costs, he said there were examples of smaller ventures that were making it work.
"We're seeing lots of microgreen farming operations across the UK - they tend to sell direct to the consumer at farmers' markets or high end restaurants, selling niche goods." "So they do achieve some good business models and make a certain amount of money, but it's early days," he added. The hope is the new cross-disciplinary research group can help work on the "significant challenges facing vertical farming as it transitions from technological infancy into mainstream food production," he added.
At a workshop in Chepstow, Monmouthshire, the group heard from Henry Gordon-Smith, CEO of global vertical farming consultancy firm Agritecture. He said the "consistency" that controlled environment farms delivered was "one of the best benefits" and "it's clearly an opportunity for farmers to have a more consistent income and predictability around their crops". "For many small farmers, what's great about [vertical farms] is that you can actually build them relatively small and you can make them more low-tech if you want to.
"You're selling direct to the consumer...
and you're getting the top margin - that's a big opportunity for farmers that typically just depend upon commodity prices.".
