Author Topic: High-rise farming ?  (Read 705 times)

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Offline skyblue1

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High-rise farming ?
« on: May 03, 2010, 05:05:00 PM »
Why Planting Farms in Skyscrapers Won't Solve Our Food Problems
'Vertical' farming would not solve the most pressing agricultural problems -- just make things worse.

Agriculture in America has become an ecological, social and nutritional disaster of sufficiently huge scale to inspire a frenzy of book-writing, filmmaking, conference-holding and project-initiating in recent years. The critiques that emerge are often right on the money, highlighting pesticide and nitrate pollution, soil erosion, the consequences of meat production in feedlots and confinement sheds, the destruction of rural communities and the poor nutritional quality of food. But the solutions being proposed have not, for the most part, been of the same scale as the problems; most would do little more than nibble at the edges of America's long-running agricultural fiasco.

A striking example of such ill fit between problem and proposed response can be found in the November 2009 issue of Scientific American, where Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health and environmental health sciences at Columbia University, made his case for what he calls "vertical farms," a vision he promotes through his site verticalfarm.com.

After doing a very good job of describing the terrible toll that agriculture takes on soil, water, and biodiversity across the globe, Despommier's article lays out a proposal to replace soil-based farming with a system of producing food crops in tall urban buildings-to, he writes, "grow crops indoors, under rigorously controlled conditions, in vertical farms. Plants grown in high-rise buildings erected on now vacant city lots and in large, multistory rooftop greenhouses could produce food year-round using significantly less water, producing little waste, with less risk of infectious diseases, and no need for fossil-fueled machinery or trans¬port from distant rural farms."

Despommier describes how one of his scenarios-which are based on the use of hydroponic or "aeroponic" methods of growing plants without soil-might work: "Let us say that each floor of a vertical farm offers four growing seasons, double the plant density, and two layers per floor-a multiplying factor of 16 (4 _ 2 _ 2). A 30-story building covering one city block could therefore produce 2,400 acres of food (30 stories _ 5 acres _ 16) a year." By extrapolating numbers like those and assuming extraordinary leaps in technology, as well as the repeal of Murphy's Law, he has made such a convincing case for vertical farms that, he claims, "many developers, investors, mayors and city planners have become advocates." Time magazine has run a generally positive story on the concept. And an Australian architect is currently planning to build the first full-scale vertical farm, in China.

The idea for vertical agriculture grows out of the realization that there are not enough exposed horizontal surfaces available in most urban areas to produce the quantities of food needed to feed urban populations. Although the concept has provided opportunities for architecture students and others to create innovative, sometimes beautiful building designs, it holds little practical potential for providing food. Even if vertical farming were feasible on a large scale, it would not solve the most pressing agricultural problems; rather, it would push the dependence of food production on industrial inputs to even greater heights. It would ensure that dependence by depriving crops not only of soil but also of the most plentiful and ecologically benign energy source of all: sunlight

Osensitive1

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Re: High-rise farming ?
« Reply #1 on: May 03, 2010, 05:19:02 PM »
There's plenty of farmland so vertical farming isn't needed. The US has subsidizing and pays farmers not to plant, in order to control the market and price while other countries go hungry.

*Wanders off to ponder humanity.*

Offline skyblue1

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Re: High-rise farming ?
« Reply #2 on: May 03, 2010, 05:27:20 PM »
some of these high rise farms in underdeveloped countries would do wonders.

I wonder if they would work in drought stricken countries , like Ethiopia

Scrapheap

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Re: High-rise farming ?
« Reply #3 on: May 03, 2010, 05:34:56 PM »
Where do you find this pseudo-science bullshit??

Osensitive1

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Re: High-rise farming ?
« Reply #4 on: May 03, 2010, 05:49:39 PM »
some of these high rise farms in underdeveloped countries would do wonders.

I wonder if they would work in drought stricken countries , like Ethiopia
There's no life where things don't grow. Those people need out of there. In the meantime, they could be well fed.

Offline skyblue1

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Re: High-rise farming ?
« Reply #5 on: May 03, 2010, 05:57:01 PM »
Where do you find this pseudo-science bullshit??
Awww , are the words to big for you , little guy

Osensitive1

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Re: High-rise farming ?
« Reply #6 on: May 03, 2010, 06:02:17 PM »
It's not so much pseudo-science as impractical, except for novelty because it would cost more. Rooftop gardening is becoming more popular, as well as live roofs where grass or ground cover are planted. Have seen one of those and they're pretty nice.

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Re: High-rise farming ?
« Reply #7 on: May 03, 2010, 06:03:29 PM »
There's plenty of farmland so vertical farming isn't needed. The US has subsidizing and pays farmers not to plant, in order to control the market and price while other countries go hungry.

*Wanders off to ponder humanity.*

"My country 'tis of thee/Sweet land of subsidy..."
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Re: High-rise farming ?
« Reply #8 on: May 03, 2010, 06:49:29 PM »
Roof top gardens and ground cover is a fine idea but growing like you described would be for now impractical and way too expensive. The nutritional claims against farm vs organic foods is little or non existent.  As for the other problems things could be done to address the concerns that would be more practical     
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Offline "couldbecousin"

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Re: High-rise farming ?
« Reply #9 on: May 03, 2010, 07:32:49 PM »
I don't like the sound of high-rise farming. I'm afraid of heights and I hate the smell of manure! :thumbdn:
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Offline normal_impaired

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Re: High-rise farming ?
« Reply #10 on: May 03, 2010, 09:05:59 PM »
Look at a topographic map, notice how much of this country is perfectly flat farmland.  Pretty much the entire midwest is farmland, so why do we need to grow things on the upper levels of buildings in the most polluted areas of the country?
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Scrapheap

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Re: High-rise farming ?
« Reply #11 on: May 03, 2010, 09:08:12 PM »
Look at a topographic map, notice how much of this country is perfectly flat farmland.  Pretty much the entire midwest is farmland, so why do we need to grow things on the upper levels of buildings in the most polluted areas of the country?

Reduce shipping costs??  :-\

Not giving our money to drunk rednecks to spite the red states??

Offline normal_impaired

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Re: High-rise farming ?
« Reply #12 on: May 05, 2010, 12:26:56 AM »
Look at a topographic map, notice how much of this country is perfectly flat farmland.  Pretty much the entire midwest is farmland, so why do we need to grow things on the upper levels of buildings in the most polluted areas of the country?

Reduce shipping costs??  :-\

Not giving our money to drunk rednecks to spite the red states??

Yes, let's not allow the people who live in the vast areas where there's no industry other than agriculture to farm our food.  Screw the people who have been farming for their entire lives out there where all the grain silos and everything is already set up.  It would make so much more sense to use skyscrapers towering over thousands of carbon-emitting cars and trucks as places where people who know nothing about agriculture can do all the work that's currently done by those who actually have college degrees in agriculture.
Autism Speaks would like to remind you that you don't exist, because there are no Autistic adults and autistic children are too braindead to be able to use a computer.

Scrapheap

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Re: High-rise farming ?
« Reply #13 on: May 05, 2010, 12:57:50 AM »
 :agreed:  ^^^ I was being sarcastisc, in case you didn't already know.  ;)

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Re: High-rise farming ?
« Reply #14 on: May 05, 2010, 10:55:27 PM »
lol farmville lol new york farmville lol tokyo farmville
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