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Vertical Farming
SolFire writes "The BBC is running a look at the potential for Vertical Farming in the Big Apple, a concept that promises to reduce the environmental impact of farming and increase the efficiency of food production by building multi-story farm complexes in urban areas. The vertical farm is envisioned as a self sustaining complex of greenhouses stacked on top of each other. More details can be found on the project web site."
Interesting.
Could be the first step towards building arcologies...
I have to wonder what the produce would be like given the general air quality in that area. I doubt this sort of thing could be scaled large enough to actually make a positive impact on the environment so my question would be what consequences would occur in the resulting produce? Would it be carrying toxic or other unpleasant side-effects?
And even more importantly: Where will they get the illegal labor to harvest the stuff?
My initial reaction is yes, this would be very cool. I question the economics, however:
1. Cost/benefit in terms of land and construction. It'd be *expensive* to build (and keep up) such custom, fragile, and constraint-ridden structures in high-rent NYC.
2. Competition with more conventional year-round greenhouses in NYC's 'burbs.
It's hard to know how these factors would shake out. I wish the scientists all the luck in finding funding, though I think there are other worthy (and competing) ideas that deserve funding just as much as this.
A 10 story building in NYC is still going to be way more expensive than 100 acres out in nowheresville, Kansas, isn't it?
Um...don't you need sunlight to grow (almost) anything? How exactly do you propose to get enough sunlight by going vertical! I suppose maybe some crops can get enough sunlight near sunrise and sunset...
I'm already surprised NASA doesn't hire them to come up with effective ways to grow things in space. If you want revolutionary science, send a group of them to the space station with a few seeds, some PVC pipe, and a light bulb. The place will look like the Amazon freakin' jungle before the next resupply shuttle docks.
There seem to be some practical issues with vertical farming... One being that the interior of a city isn't the best place to get sunlight from, that means the plants are going to need to have artificial lighting to keep them growing, you'll also have fairly intensive use of water. I'm not sure that city infrastructure would be ready to support a vertical farm, and that's before considering the issues of produce quality and marginal cost. As long as foreign produce is competing at price that is much lower than the price of produce produced in a vertical farm, then you've got problems. The vertical farm is almost certain bound to fail unless substancial duties are imposed on imported food.
Of course, then you have a host of follow up issues such as the effect on increased food prices on the poor, and the distorting effect those prices may have on eating patterns and subsequently the health of the population...
Still it's an interesting idea.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
a concept that promises to reduce the environmental impact of farming
Thereby freeing up arable land for more "environmentally friendly" endeavors, like factories and housing developments.
Give me a break. How about spending this money on ways to reduce the world's population growth? Lack of arable land is a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.
The report says most of the 3 billion people to be added to world population in the next 50 years would be born in areas where land was scarce. If the grain-land area in the world stayed the same as in 2000, the 9 billion people projected to inhabit the planet in 2050 would each be fed from less than 0.07 hectares of grain-land -- an area smaller than what is available per person today in countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, which face the shortage of land..
(link)
.. when you have a solid/dirt floor above every level and buildings on all sides of it, how exactly do you plan to get sunlight into the buildig for the plants to grow? My offices has lots of windows, but when we turn the lights off, it still gets dark in the center.
And as for "All produce would be organic as there would be no exposure to wild parasites and bugs":
I suppose that it would be true until a few bugs hitch a ride on the back of some freight. 'Nature finds a way'. Heck, I wouldn't be surpised if we've had a few ants on the space station by now.
> All the bottom layers are for growing mushrooms and cockroaches.
I imagine you're being facetious, but actually, growing edible mushrooms in an urban environment makes a lot of sense - many vigourous strains of edible fungi will grow happily on substrates like discarded coffee grounds, newspaper* and cardboard. Think how much more efficient recycling of cellulose-based waste would be if you didn't have to ship it hundreds of miles to a recycling facility - in fact, you didn't really have to process it at all, except steeping it in water and doing a mild pasteurisation. Best of all, once the fungi has exhausted the substrate, it makes a great compost (most fungi don't use up the nitrogen present in such substrates) which can then be used for agriculture on higher levels! Sustainable and delicious!
*this applies to Western countries, where newspapers are now predominantly printed using soy-based non-toxic inks. This is not a good idea wherever lead-based inks are prevalent, fungi can accumulate heavy metals.
In places where irrigation is difficult, is where this can be very successful. Water is lost to evaporation, but in an enclosed environment, that evaporation can be captured and reused. The middle east also has great sunlight for solar energy for the power needs. I also would not burn the plant waste. Too many nutrients that can be composted and put back into the soil. I like this idea a lot. Maybe not for an urban setting, though.
I love the idea of not trucking (with fossil fuel) produce into urban centers.
:-(
My problem with this is that there simply isn't enough solar energy falling on xm^2 to run a farm of 30xm^2. Doesn't matter how parabolic your solar collector is. I don't buy for a moment that you can make up any significant part of the difference burning the waste plant material. That leaves us grid power . . . which brings us back to fossil fuel.
-Peter
While the work the 'students' have done is interesting on an intellectual level, it is a complete farce when it comes to economics. I find it pretty doubtful that crops could even begin to contemplate competing against other land uses like offices, condos, and retail space, especially in urban areas where land costs are through the rough. On top of that, you are going to need to pay the utilities on this monster in addition to shipping in all the equipment and supplies. There is not a slim chance in hell that such a project could be economically viable.
There is a very good reason why farmers don't construct massive green houses to grow their crops year round; it is too damn expensive. The cost of constructing a green house is pittance compared to the cost of constructing a 30 story building in an urban area. What they are in effect suggesting is not only that you grow all of your food in a green house, but that you do it in a place where land costs are the highest in the world in a structure that costs a few orders of magnitude more then a green house!
The whole idea is silly. It is a cute intellectual game and if it pays beer money for a few undergrads, great, but paying for undergrad beer money is about as far as this idea is going to go.
I see a few problems with the premise of this idea.
First off - you don't need a skyscraper and certainly you don't need to occupy an entire building. Nobody is going to use an entire building in a place like New York for farming.
Second - existing farms will not be converted back to forest land. Farms that don't produce crops get subsidized. If it's not a farm, the farmer doesn't make money.
Third - A professor from a school like Columbia is as likely to revolutionize the farming industry as a professor from the University of Montana is to revolutionize skyscraper architecture.
If you want to see the future of farming, take a look at what marijuana growers are doing. They seem to be the only farmers truly interested in maximizing output in small spaces in less than ideal conditions.
Transport costs are unlikely to ever be zero, you'll have to move stuff a few miles around the city to get it to stores and resturants.
Given that, this isn't going to be in a downtown area. Costs will mean it's much more likely to be in a depressed ex-industrial region - real estate will cost many times less and there will be a marginal transportation incerase.
I wonder how pollution will affect the quality of the produce. I do know there's a vineyard in Commerce City, Co in the shadow of a huge oil refinery and it makes some great wine.
I once did see something like this that was actually useful. One year, California had a serious drought, and alfalfa for horses was hard to get. So one company sold a hydroponic grass factory. This was a shipping container with a stack of trays and grow lights. Each day you removed and "mowed" one tray, did some maintenance on it, and put it back in the stack to grow new grass. The grow cycle was about three weeks. Not very energy efficient, but needed little water, which was what mattered that year.
You see smaller trays like that full of alfalfa sprouts at Jamba Juice outlets. Same concept, smaller scale.
There are some huge indoor farms in Saudi Arabia, where they have sun, space, energy, and money, but limited water and poor soil.
There's some grumbling in the "eco" community about the "3000 mile salad", and how much energy is used shipping produce around. But in fact, the biggest transportation fuel cost is the SUV trip to the grocery store. If the customer drives further, to the farmer's market, it's even worse. What's actually happening in transportation is that railroads are making a comeback, simply because their energy costs are lower.
I'm not a Troll, it's reverse psychology.
Now city people can know what plants look like as well.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
"All the bottom layers are for growing mushrooms, cockroaches," and people.*
Just as the public really isn't welcomed to come out and recreate in existing farms, I doubt the new vertical farms will welcome the public.
Add to this a desire to cover urban landscape with solar panels, and we will probably quickly see a situation where access to sunlight is a commodity that is out of the reach of your standard urban dweller. While it will be great for people to make better use of solar resources hitting an urban area, these solar resources are still quite limited. A vertical farm works by blocking sun from the plebians in the tower's shadow.
Going from one of the earlier postings of the building looking like it's about 100 feet in diameter, that's 7,850 sq. ft. per story, or 123 kilowatts per story. If the building is 30 stories tall, we're talking 3.6 megawatts just to run the lights!
You probably won't have to heat the building, ever, but the air conditioning bill in the summer time would be astronomical.
Ignoring that whole air conditioning thing, if you were able to get 80 watts per square meter 8 hours a day from solar cells (you wouldn't in NY, but even if you could), you'd need... 17 acres of land covered with solar cells to power the lights!
Dude, organic hydroponics. It's real, I practice it in my home to grow greens for my tortoises in the winter. The shit I grow under an old security light looks better than the stuff I buy at the grocery store! Either I'm a better farmer than the big guys, or all that transport takes a toll on the food.
Plants might not do as well, but then we don't have to spend energy transporting food 1000 miles from BFE. We also reduce the infrastructure load on NYC and surrounding areas.
Ventilation will be a problem, but it's simply a matter of scale.
Hey, when gas goes to $7.00 a gallon, the cost to work the land and transport the goods to market will be HUGE and this idea might not look so bad anymore. Comparing your chemical-fed and chemical-protected family farm to a closed-system all-organic greenhouse on cost of structure alone isn't really fair.
Blar.
Anyone who's worked in even the most windowed office building knows that only the spaces next to the windows get the light.
Plants need light to grow. The windows can only supply so much. So the other light has to be artificially produced (which eats energy).
The soil, the water, fertilization, etc can all be handled fairly naturally. But some of it will have to be imported. This is not "self sustained" by any means.
But the biggest factor is energy consumption. Is it cheaper to spend the energy to move crops from 100% natural light into the city or is it cheaper to spend the energy on artificial light and grow the crops inside the city?
This goes right along with my thought up above that such a structure would work well for small fragile crops that don't ship or store well, like berries. Edible fungi are right in the same class -- they don't need anything but a controlled environment and the appropriate influx of "garbage" as the old stuff gets broken down. And they don't keep well once picked, so the closer you are to market, the better.
:)
Most of the retail cost of these fragile crops, outside of the initial labour for pickers, is actually in the special handling they need to ship and store well, as they are very easily destroyed by any mishandling or unexpected storage conditions. If you don't need to ship them any further than the market down the street, and don't need to store any quantity beyond what you'll sell that market tomorrow, that's a heap of costs you don't have, and a bunch of middlemen you don't need to pay. That alone likely would cover the operating costs.
Further, as some point out above, it doesn't make sense to put such structures on ground that would be more profitable for parking garages and condos. But what about putting smaller units on the otherwise-unused roofs of various buildings? Such as parking garages and condos.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
just mandate that the out 20' of every floor in in every building over the 5th floor has to be used for this.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If plants absorbed green light, then they wouldn't be green. :)
Objects are the colors they are because those are the colors they don't absorb. Other than that, you're spot on, though.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Wouldn't it make more sense to add a little greenhouse on the roofs of existing buildings??? Light is
plentiful at the top. It would even help with water runoff and A/C. I think europe's been doing
this for awhile.
Humanure is actually the best fertilizer around, it's just that you have to process it before it can be used. Failure to do this can actually lead to contamination at the store. But consider what we do with poop today; barring your own septic, it gets flushed into pipes and carried to a treatment plant. It's then pumped into a pond or tank (depending on how much money they spent on the place) and it's allowed to just sit for a while, digesting itself. The crap contains all the necessary decay organisms already, so all you have to do is age it. But then we generally either landfill the solid waste, or we thin it down with water and pump it into the ocean, or a river. Whee! It's safe at this point and so we could as easily be mixing it with irrigation water and spraying it on crops ("fertigation").
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
they use concentrators and trackers, and can pipe natural sunlight via fiber optics around to anyplace inside a building. Here is a DOE link on the tech albeit used in conjunction with regular lighting Hybrid solar lighting
The shiny tube guys are in use also, and are cheaper, but require a large diameter pipe to function well.
why do wind farms consist of all those huge windmills? wouldn't 100 times as many smaller windmills generate a similar amount of power?
Generally speaking large wind gennies, er mills, have lower rpms so there's less vibrations and it's thought they are less of a threat to wildlife. However because of the large blades the speed of the tips of the blades are actually faster. Some studies have shown the faster blade tips create the elusion of a solid object, however others have shown they create a strobe effect like strobe lights.
FalconShould there be a Law?
1,2,3: Most of the other real estate in this solar system sucks. Mars might be terraformable at some date in the far future, and self-sustaining sealed ecosystems on the moon or large asteroids might also become possible at some point. Still not prime real estate by any stretch of the imagination. Possible to do: conceptually, yes, but not with current technology. Feasible is fuzzy... it depends on what the alternatives are. Same thing goes for extra-solar settlement.
4: Better alternative? No, especially not in our lifetimes. But it is still eventually necessary for the long-term survival of the human species. An extinction-level meteor impact WILL eventually happen (and has happened twice before), and even if we manage to avoid that the sun will eventually either go nova or burn out into a brown dwarf. But the fact that it's not an immediate necessity doesn't mean that we shouldn't start trying now. The time to move out of Pompey is BEFORE Vesuvius erupts... once you see the smoke, it's already too late.
5, 6, 7: You're reading your own biases into the GP post. I don't think anyone here is saying any of those things. We need to make this planet last as long as we can, so that we have time to advance far enough that we can seed other ones.
It's pointless to think about moving all of the human race to another planet; and even if it were possible, human nature is such that most people wouldn't leave even in the face of an impending catastrophe. At most we can do is provide the opportunity for a tiny percentage to migrate elsewhere and start breeding.
I could go on, but Heinlein does a better job of making this argument in several of his novels (Time Enough For Love in particular).
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?