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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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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?
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?