Life Cycle Sustainability Analysis of Modular Indoor Micro-farms

Current agricultural production practices place enormous burdens on the earth’s ecosystems and are creating challenges to meet future food security goals given growing populations and mounting pressure to limit resource use and environmental impacts. In Canada especially, the short growing season and cold climate limit vegetable production and create reliance on indoor food production or imports. To provide consistent, year-round access to leafy greens, herbs, and micro-greens, modgarden© proposes small, modular gardening units which users can monitor and adjust for ideal growing conditions remotely via an app. The aim of this research is to investigate and quantify environmental impacts, economic feasibility, and social impacts following a life cycle approach. In this way, areas of improvement will be identified, allowing the partner organization to effectively focus their improvement initiatives and achieve their goal of sustainably-oriented operations.

Faculty Supervisor:

Goretty Dias;Christine Moresoli;Trevor Charles

Student:

Gayathri Valappil

Partner:

Modgarden

Discipline:

Environmental sciences

Sector:

Agriculture

University:

University of Waterloo