Ironduke

Featured in last month's Popular Science:

The Vertical Farm Project - Agriculture for the 21st Century and Beyond...

According to proponents, about 4-6 times more food per acre can be grown in indoor vertical farming than traditional "horizontal" farming. No pesticides, emissions, restoration of ecosystems, etc. I think it's an exciting concept.

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Ray

Fantastic!

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Dago

Concept is sound. X amount in X amount of space. As opposed to X*x amount in X*x Space. With the use of composites, and modulated designs to bring the engineering costs down, it could become reality.

dalem

But is it necessary? We're already incredibly efficient, food-wise. Why pay to rebuild farming infrastructure?

-dale

Ironduke

Dale, while American agricultural output is huge (we produce something like 130% of our needs), I wouldn't call it efficient. According to what I've read in Rifkin's The Hydrogen Economy, modern agriculture requires about ten times the energy inputs than is yielded in outputs (calories). And this is just the growing of food. According to the same source, including transportation, processing, packaging, this number grows to 40 to 1, and 17% of energy used in the US is used in agriculture and the food industry.

If vertical farming proved viable and profitable, food could be grown where it was needed. For example, citrus fruits right here in Minneapolis. While the infrastructure would be quite an investment, I believe the crops grown could be competitive, as there are virtually no transportation costs, much less waste, no expenditure on fertilizers or pesticides, and no exposure to drought, freezing, or other environmental factors that negatively affect agriculture, as well as the ability to produce year-round. According to the site, agricultural yields in such as system could be 4-6 times higher than traditional agriculture.

Imagine one of these round buildings, an acre per story, 30 stories high. Accordingly, that would replace 120-180 acres of traditional farmland if those numbers are accurate.

Of course, such enterprise would need to be profitable, but I see no harm in setting aside some funding to test its viability. If profitable... well, the market would decide which is more competitive and cost-effective, and it would either be on or another. Why build skyscrapers when we can build one-story buildings so efficiently?

One of the problems facing the world is the loss of forest land of all types to agriculture, including slash-and-burn. Everywhere, agricultural desertification exists.

And if there's one thing we would achieve in the US, it's energy independence in agriculture.

Parihaka

Why not just get us folks who are actually good at low energy sustainable farming to show you how to do it?

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Ironduke

Low-energy input, fertilizer and pesticide-free crops still have transportation costs. For example, organic crops have been shown to have higher transportation costs which erase any environmental benefits from the practice of organic farming.

glyn

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crooks

Excellent idea, but the changes to be made to current farming would be huge, and the cost is surely gigantic.

Would we be able to impliment such a project?

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Debbie

Vertical farming is a great idea. Just think, all of that silly extra farmland can be used for housing. So - be happy and propagate more, do away with all that open space, vertical farming is coming in glass structures. Yippie and may I be dead before I see any of this come to fruition. If I am not dead it will further my wish to be dead.

omon

my toughts exactly, waste of money,

Canmoore

I'm not an agricultural expert, however, vertical farming reminded me of another type of vertical farming.

Mussel production, mussels attach themselves to large ropes or cables, that are attached to large floats. a single farm can have hundreds of these cables of mussels. The mussels need very little attention, they feed themselves by filtration, and when they grow to market size the cables are brought to the surface and collected.

Mmm I want some steamed garlic mussels now.

dalem

Hmm. In that light it does seem quite useful. Hate to see what happens in a tornado though.

-dale

astralis

good point, dale. in that case, california will get even more popular than it is today- ain't no tornadoes in salinas.

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glyn