FibrillatorD

The WTO. Not to say there aren't plenty of unfair bilateral trade agreements. But the WTO, with its 150 member states, naturally includes some parties that have "bad" governments. This does not mean that, as members of the same world trade organization, they should face a different set of standards which are helping to leave their constituents hungry.

dalem

Why shouldn't it mean that? Why shouldn't there be consequences of having a bad government, i.e. one that serves the needs of its people poorly?

-dale

brokensickle

DALE,

I think many valuable benefits could be made when this idea is developed, but the structures must be able to endure weather.

Security from arrant air craft should be considered also as it would be an easy target to disrupt food supplies by enemies and your general scoundrels. If you know what I mean...

Traditional farming methods should remain in place.

Seems like a good idea all in all IMHO.



IVAN the IDEALIST

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FibrillatorD

So the entire third world has bad government? You just kind of casually coughed up this one-to-one relationship between your idea of "bad" government and poverty. What about China? They're a third world communist country that's experienced unprecedented sustained growth. Should they give all their wealth back because they're people are subjected to communist authoritarianism? The 90s were hell on Russia -right after it liberalized, politically and economically. How did that happen?

Of course China has more weight to throw around than a Liberia or Bolivia. And it was lucky to be able to catch on to 40 years of GATT agreements that benefited manufacturing nations, where for a long time the US and Europe had the competitive advantage.

The Uruguay Round's "grand bargain" never happened. The agricultural subsidies are still in place, still keeping out third world imports while driving down global prices, and the non-tariff barriers are still effective. Meanwhile third world nations are checked against reneging on their commitments to rigged intellectual property games and tariff reduction because any economic retaliation will hurt us so much less than ours would hurt them. Retaliation against violators by the wronged nation is only as effective as the nation is big and (already) rich. A good method in theory, in practice it hasn't been so just. At least it has nothing to do with "bad" domestic politics.

dalem

Yep. That's why it's "the Third World".

I stand ready to be moved off of my generalization though. What are some poor countries that have good governments?

I would argue that China is still a poor country, although there may be certain Chinese who are wealthy.

Because it was a period of flux and chaos. The teens and 20s were hell on Russia too as it moved into a bad government.

Good. I don't want China to catch up yet.

I am certainly relatively ignorant of trade and tarriff arrangements, but taking it all as written, I am still relatively unconcerned. And I don't see what your point is about "rigged intellectual property games". Something is yours or it's not. If it's not, you have to pay to use it - I don't see a problem.

And it seems to me that if agro subsidies were not in place prices would fall which would reduce the need for third world food product even further. Not that I am in favor of farming subsidies - I say get rid of them.

-dale

lazybastard

This could go hand in hand with hydroponics.

ArmchairGeneral

And therein lies the rub. It's a very tall greenhouse. Thus, it likely won't be any more effective at growing staples than greenhouses. When's the last time you ate bread made from greenhouse grown wheat?

At the same time, it will have significantly increased building costs compared to single story greenhouses. Multi-story buildings are not cheap to build, especially when they must be strong enough to hold thousands of gallons of water, plants, soil, harvesting machinery, etc. I expect it would be just as or more expensive to build a multi-story greenhouse as to build an office building of the same size.

The site claims that the farms will be completely organic. Fat chance. Greenhouses tend to be heavy pesticide users. No birds to eat bugs, not many predator bugs either, so it's harder to practice organic pest control. I don't really see how they could not use fertilizer, either. Organic grown produce is nice, I eat a good bit of it, but it's still quite expensive. Perhaps in the future it will be a viable way to mass produce food, but not now, especially compounded with inherent difficulties of greenhouse production.

Also, the farms will not be subject to economy of scale. I assume they will depend on sunlight, thus the buildings cannot be terribly wide, or the plants in the middle will be shaded out. There's a limit to how high you can build for a given footprint, so they can't be too tall, either.

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ArmchairGeneral

I've looked at the article, and there are many things that don't make sense to me. Like why a 2050 world population of 8.6 billion (or 9.2 billion, both numbers are thrown out in the article), an increase of 50%, would need 1 billion hectares of new farmland, an increase of 125 % over the present 800 million hectares.

Or why we can't just convert the zillions of acres devoted to raising and feeding cattle, pigs, etc. (a highly inefficient process) to producing grains for human use.

Or why we're worrying about feeding a growing population at all, when such worries have proven unfounded over and over in the 150 years since Malthus.

If I was really worried about such problems, I would concentrate on raising plankton and algae. Much more efficient than this boondoggle.

There's an interesting and informative cost analysis of this idea here: AustinContrarian: Very, very expensive farmland (updated)

There's also an interesting discussion at slashdot: Slashdot | Vertical Farming