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Singapore Builds First Vertical Vegetable Farm
kkleiner writes "Short on arable land? One solution would be to plan up. Singapore, a small country that imports most of its food, has now begun selling vegetables from its first vertical farm. And even while they're more expensive the vegetables are already selling faster than they can be grown. If the farms prove sustainable – both technologically and economically – they could provide a much desired supplement to Singapore's locally grown food and serve as a model for farming in other land-challenged areas."
Singapore Builds _Its_ First Vertical Vegetable Farm
How do they get the fertilizer to stick to the walls?
Always reminds me of Brass Eye's Science episode
And if they can find a good, cheap way to desalinate sea water they could almost declare themselves functionally independant from Malaysia.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
It's finally looking a bit more like real life!
I think therefore I am... a Linux geek.
http://www.ted.com/talks/stephen_ritz_a_teacher_growing_green_in_the_south_bronx.html
No matter how you align your farms, there's a finite amount of sunlight that you can't get more of. This method can increase yields, but only up to a point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_farming
Specifically:
"The Armenian tower hydroponicums are the first built examples of a vertical farm, and is documented in Sholto Douglas' seminal text "Hydroponics: The Bengal System" first published in 1951.[5] Contemporary notions of vertical farming are predated by this early technology by more than 50 years. link"
So it's off of "THE first" by about half a century.
This is done elsewhere already. Even in the US in urban areas, often using old buildings that meet the peculiar needs of a vertical farm. One in particular comes to mind that grows fish in vats under the produce/plants.
Its a very elaborate grow house. I hope they consulted with the experts in the field, the weed growers. Its always funny watching people in the field pretend those black sheep don't exist, tip toe around the whole topic, but everyone knows the black sheep are the ones keeping the hydroponic stores alive so the hippies can pretend the tomato growers are the only farmers doing work in the field.
Disclaimer, I grow basil, oregano (really) and mint at my house for cooking. Basil butter on toast... mmmm. I recommend avoiding globe basil, that stuff is a PITA to harvest. Experience shows that one mint plant produces enough leaves for two mint juleps every two weeks, your production may vary of course. The oregano mostly ends up in oregano butter also, on toast or whatever.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
So, they're raising anencephalics to harvest for transplant organs?
Cool! Takes a lot less space in a skyscraper than doing it free range.
http://www.growingpower.org/
Sugapablo
From the article "Just 60W of power – just enough for a lightbulb – is needed to operate one tower per day."
Why is do journalist always mix-up the notions of instantaneous power and quantity of energy?
Isn't this what they call a skyscraper in Singapore? I'm just kidding.
Have you bothered to click the link? These 'farms' are plants on multiple shelves. They still grow horizontally, only that they are aligned vertically. They don't use any kind of vertical surface.
Whoa dude! Why so harsh? You might like, hurt the story writers feelings or something. You're insistence on accuracy is offensive to Singaporeans.
Facts don't mean anything if we don't feel good about ourselves. You're just too old and stuck in your society of correctness ways and stuff. You should like, die or something and make room for us young people who are inventing things like the first vertical "farm".
This guy has been at it for a while http://www.omegagarden.com/index.php?content_id=1500 I know people who grew cannabis in these and other rotation gardens although getting good yields out of these depends on the strains. Usually Nebula, Cherry and Diesel do pretty good. The "Kush" strains are way to finicky and a pain to get going but doable.
They don't state if they use a NFT/Aero system or Rockwool/Flood and Drain. Also I wonder what their pesticide usage is like?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Gah! How'd I type-o the subject line?
They may not be the first in the world to do this but any new competition should be welcome as being another team and another chance at finding techniques to improve cost effectiveness.
My first thought after seeing the headline and thinking "That's cool!" was whether or not they could stay in business and what kind of future this setup could have elsewhere. It's probably a concept very much like fuel prices: When prices rise high enough to support more expensive production methods, these fancier methods will have a better chance of gaining traction and staying in business.
The Singapore government should consider what value they put on food security for their population. If they value it highly enough, then perhaps a subsidy for the company to help them expand would be justifiable.
The value and challenges of hydroponic farming might not be obvious to those of you in the west (I live in Singapore).
First, the local vegetable market is dominated by Malaysian and Chinese imports. Both of these countries have questionable laws limiting the use of pesticides and fertilizers. I have no doubt that their products are grown unsustainably. Most people wash Chinese vegetables with soap for fear of the chemicals that may remain on them.
Those imported vegetables are incredibly cheap locally. Its possible to get all the food you need for a stir fry for a small family (with meat) at a local wet market for just a few dollars. But, as I said above, the safety of that food is dubious. Singaporeans are now rich enough (average income second only to Japan in Asia) to expect a better quality of food.
The one vegetable that we simply cannot get in quality is the tomato. Most are flown here under ripe so they do not crush in transit. Of course the carbon footprint of those tomatoes must be massive. The higher quality ones come from Japan, but apparently were shipped frozen. Tomatoes are mushy, mealy, and never taste like a proper tomato picked in southern Europe's late summer. Sky green's web page shows they are only tackling non-flowering vegetables (greens). This is probably because they are not able to farm the bees needed for tomato pollination. I've never seen a bee in Singapore and don't know what the concerns are of raising honey bees on the island.
Just a few thoughts from an American in Singapore...
So each tray gets its time in the sun while going up the tower, and in the shade going down (or vice versa). It seems this would work well only if the plants you are growing are happy getting half the sunlight available at your location. I'm sure you could get a similar effect in horizontal format with little difficulty.
If you can get friction low enough, you might be able to make the whole thing run simply by watering the plants at the top of the down part of the cycle, so the weight differential makes it go.
Scientific American had an article on vertical farms some time back (paywalled here.) As I recall, they had a much more energy intensive design (growing lights etc.) My objection was that for anything like that you could make work in a sky scraper, you could much more cheaply put the same technology out in rural areas.
The Singapore plan only works if there are areas you're happy to cast into shade (and block views from) with these towers. They can't be close together, or they'll be in each other's shade.
Incidentally, Singapore's climate has remarkably little annual variation. The hottest month has average high temperature of 31.7C, the coldest month has average high temperature of 30.0C. Rain is more variable, but still by less than a factor of two through the year. (This is not from personal experience.) If anyone knows of somewhere with less weather variability, I'd be interested to hear of it.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
If they can move those towers on just 50W, then there should be a real savings in energy versus trucking the food in from 50km away, never mind from even farther away! Also if you can just rotate the tower during the day to spread the light falling on each plant, you can pick the ripe veggies by hand and save the energy of a tractor or other mechanized picker... Local is fresh, no refrigeration or funky inert gases needed... Plus it provides shade and oxygen. Of course you do spend much energy on making the structure itself, but thats a sunk cost and pollution happening far from the city...
They should probably go with a more efficient design that uses torches instead of relying on sunlight. It may require a fair amount of cobblestone (or stone if you're feeling fancy) but it is much easier to harvest than their design.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2DaL3kHRZA
It's shelving.
A much better way for them would be to install solar panels on each building and sell electricity to Malaysia. Farming in Singapore is the hardest way to earn money.
~ Best man at your service.
the vegetables are already selling faster than they can be grown
So people are buying vegetables that haven't even been grown yet?
Tower farming was on one of my Farms of the Future stamps from the 1930s. As well, vertical gardens and farms already exist. However this is, it appears, Singapore's first vertical farm.
When I was in the States back in the 1980's I got to know some friends - refugees from Cambodia - and they were growing their veges in vertical farms, on very tiny plots of land - not more than 200 square feet - in the backyard of houses in urban center.
The Cambodian vertical farms are different from the one featured in TFA - the Cambodian version consist of different kinds of veges growing on "towers" made of bamboo.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
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It's common in south asia, allows the ..."fertiliser"... to be in a dry and usable form.
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In the US we have found that in dense, urban, areas violence tends to be a huge problem. Some cities now use gardens and other methods to encircle a neighborhood such that the neighbors see themselves as a unit and the violence, crime and drug issues decline as a result. Not only vegetables but chickens and fish and other products as well could surround a neighborhood as a perimiter. This boundary would not only define the local turf but it could feed the community as well. And with a policy of hiring workers who live inside the neighborhood it could also take a bite out of poverty. If food is provided as a non-profit co-op the cost of food could also drop far below store prices. As far as sunlight is concerned it can be piped from buildings that need less sunlight to the vegetable gardens. Those roof tops could also house windmills to sell back to the power companies or use on site. I can just see it now. First floor -talapia, second floor- catfish, third floor trout, fourth floor shrimp, fifth floor mussels, sixth and seventh floor fish cleaning and processing, floor eight -vegetables, basement-mushrooms, roof-windmills and solar. Adjaent unit -sales of products.
Imagine NYC with 500 buildings producing food this way.
"First, the local vegetable market is dominated by Malaysian and Chinese import"
Dude, I live in Canada and it's becoming much the same here.
Lettuce/tomatoes/potatoes are local, oranges come from California, and other stuff varies, but if you want garlic, ginger, and many other such things you'll have to shop around for some place that sells more domestic product. I found one grocer that sells some nice made-in-Canada Russian Red Garlic. It costs more, but is tastier than the cheap stuff at most stores (kinda spicy), and I don't have to worry as much about it being grown in land full of heavy metals etc.
Let me guess, you looked at the scammer site hydrogrowled.com
Let me guess, you looked at that site and growled to yourself.
So people are buying vegetables that haven't even been grown yet?
Let me guess: you've never heard of commodity futures.
This will surely inspire other countries as well! Thanks for sharing this information. I assume this is good news for people of Singapore. Another innovative idea on their economic progress!