AI has found uses across different scientific endeavours. For example, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis once stated, “The greatest challenge is to understand intelligence, and once you understand intelligence, everything else falls into place.”
He won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry, not because he was a chemist, but because his AI tools helped in discoveries that would have taken years without it.
The same is happening with botany and farming. If you were in San Francisco Bay at precisely 6:47 am, inside a converted office in Lower Manhattan, you would see a nutrient-rich mist, a fog that is rolling in. It is made up of droplets so fine that they measure just five microns, which is much smaller than a single red blood cell.
These droplets settle on the roots of butter lettuce suspended in mid-air. It is a sight to behold because there is no soil and no standing water, just fog technology and an AI system that can understand the plant better than a human can. The AI can see if the plant is stressed or what kind of nutrients or protection it needs days or weeks before a human would notice.
We are in the AI age, and in the future of farming. It looks nothing like the pastoral fields of our distant agrarian past. They call it fogponics, and it’s the latest evolution in soilless agriculture, representing a quantum leap in farming technology. It’s the latest evolution in soilless agriculture, representing a quantum leap in farming technology. Not long ago, hydroponics submerged roots in nutrient solutions, and traditional aeroponics used high-pressure misters.
But fogponics utilises ultrasonic transducers vibrating at frequencies up to 2.4 MHz to create a suspended cloud of both water and minerals. It is beautiful, and the physics is elegant. Droplets under 30 microns remain airborne longer, allowing the roots to absorb what they need while maintaining optimal oxygen exposure.
What is the result? A 95% reduction in water use compared to traditional farming and yields that put even advanced hydroponic systems to shame.
Though someone observing this process might think the fog is the real magic, the AI system watching over the fog is the real miracle.
“By the time you see a yellow leaf, you’ve already lost two weeks of growth. The plant has been screaming for help in wavelengths we can’t see. That’s where AI comes in,” explains Dr. Sarah Chen, whose lab pioneered the integration of hyperspectral imaging with fogponic systems.
Dr. Chen’s technology is a breakthrough in the Distributed Cross-Channel Hierarchical Aggregation method (D-CHAG), which allows computers to process massive data from hyperspectral cameras. These cameras capture light across hundreds of wavelengths beyond what humans can see.
These cameras detect subtle shifts in how leaves reflect light, revealing biochemical changes that occur at the cellular level. For example, a drop in chlorophyll fluorescence or the accumulation of stress-related compounds there will go unnoticed by a human because they are invisible to the naked eye. However, it is evident to a properly trained algorithm.
So, what the AI really does is become a translator between two species. It helps plants communicate their distress to a human being through measurable physiological responses, such as a stomatal closure during drought, protein denaturation under heat stress or a metabolic shift during nutrient deficiency.
The AI models that work with these plants are trained on thousands of hours of plant behaviour data and can interpret and react in real time. When a random forest algorithm detects an unexpected drop in transpiration despite stable environmental conditions, it doesn’t wait for human intervention. The system automatically adjusts the fog density, modifies the nutrient mixture, or fine-tunes the LED light spectrum to address the problem.
“We call it cognitive agriculture. The AI acts as a digital copilot, not replacing the farmer but giving them superhuman perception,” Chen said.
Of course, the technological challenges are formidable. The ultrasonic transducers operating at megahertz frequencies can cause certain mineral salts to precipitate out of solution, potentially creating nutrient imbalances that lead to a lockout. By a lockout, we mean a situation where plants cannot absorb what they need despite an abundance of nutrients.
Advanced systems now deploy real-time pH and electrical conductivity sensors that adjust their nutrient mix well enough to ensure the fog remains chemically balanced at the molecular level.
So, what makes the technology so compelling? It’s that you can have more yield in an urban environment than in a rural one through traditional methods.
The Manhattan office vacancy rate hovers around 22%, with some cities like Phoenix seeing rates spike to 33%. People call them ghost towers, and they can now be reimagined as vertical farms. Their robust HVAC systems are open-flow plans suited for stacked growing. Imagine, all your food will no longer come from a farm thousands of miles away, but from the rooftops of the very cities that you live in.
And it’s not expensive either. Unlike residential conversions, which demand very expensive plumbing and fire code overhauls, these vertical farming slots transform existing commercial infrastructure without any or minimal modification.
A fine example is the Calgary Tower. Its 65,000 square feet of vacant office space has been transformed into a year-round producer of strawberries, kale, and cucumbers.
The best part is that the harvest reaches shelves within 24 hours. It adds at least five days of extra shelf life to products compared to those that come from California or Mexico. When we live in a world that is plagued by supply chain fragility, such proximity is a strategic victory.
Some facilities are pushing the synergy further, co-locating with data centres to capture waste heat. The servers that power our digital lives generate tremendous thermal energy; vertical farms can harness it to maintain optimal growing temperatures, addressing one of indoor agriculture’s biggest criticisms, which is energy intensity.
The economics are finally pencilling out. After years of venture capital euphoria followed by harsh reality checks, the vertical farming market is maturing. The global industry is valued at USD 7.5 billion in 2026 and is likely to double by 2031. However, the disciplined capital deployment and focus on unit economics, rather than growth at any cost, is going to be the highlight of a second growth phase.
If one walks through Dr. Chen’s research facility, one could witness rows of basal plants, roots dangling in perpetual mist, and the doctor gazing at the monitors displaying real-time spectral data.
“Five years ago, this would have required a supercomputer. Now it runs on an industrial PC at the edge of the network, making decisions in milliseconds,” she concluded.