Future farming in the sky
YOU PROBABLY JUST CAN'T WIN
The other night there was a brief news item somewhere about the world's largest vertical farm opening. I can't remember where I heard it and I also can't find reference to a recent opening on the net, but never mind. There are certainly vertical farms on a massive scale around the world - Singapore, Japan and the USA seem to be the major players, and new ones are opening all the time.
The basic concept is to grow plants inside, stacked on racks that are circulated up and down in some cases to take advantage of limited amounts of natural sunlight. For mostly they are grown under LED lights. Water usage is minimal and reused, there are no pesticides used because there are no insects. It's a controlled environment. And there are several harvests a year because the crop is not dependent on the vagaries of the weather.
It's a concept that has been around since 1999 when Dixon Despommiers wrote a book about it. And my guess is that we have been seeing the product on our supermarket shelves for some time - certainly those hydroponic lettuces and herbs. Though I think hydroponic is not quite the same thing - that's growing in water I think, and these plants do not grow in water. There are also lots of different greenhouse methods of growing things like tomatoes. Greenhouses on rooftops are one proposed solution for cities that I came across.
For this is primarily a concept aimed to feed people in cities - thus taking out the transport costs as well. As usual I really am not up to speed with the technology or all the countless reports and articles that have been written on the subject. I just thought it was interesting and a possible way forward in an increasingly polluted and overcrowded world. The picture below sort of shows the process.
So what's not to like? And now that I am well into this article I see that this is really why I am writing it. For, of course, it's not all as perfect as it might seem, and the 'greenies' are out there in force naysaying the whole thing. For example an article on the Tree Huggers website is titled "Vertical farms: wrong on so many levels". The main argument seems to be a high usage of power - and they even criticise the use of renewable energy with an argument that is sort of saying that one uses sunlight to convert energy into sunlight, so why not just use sunlight? The high power usage means high cost, and therefore it's only food for the elite. They say the power usage is massive - and it may well be. And the cost of the land in the cities and the building of skyscrapers is also prohibitive (and polluting). As I say, I have not looked into this carefully, and I am sure there are arguments that can be made against it. For example, I saw somewhere somebody saying what about pollination? If there are no insects, how do they pollinate? Personally I assume they grow the plants from seed which is produced elsewhere via pollination. And why do we always have to find ways of knocking different ideas down, rather than finding solutions to the problems? But what do I know?
Well nothing. But I do think it is exciting that people are trying to find innovative solutions to the problem of feeding a world, which the optimists say is going to peak at 11 billion people. And although it has been said (in the same Tree Huggers article quoting from a book, “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.”, I personally think we should dare to dream. And anyway the farms that are currently in production must think they can make a profit and most of them are housed in unremarkable warehouse kind of buildings like this one. They keep building them.
To my mind there is not enough dreaming going on. Think big people and then solve the problems. That's what man is good at. Here are some of those beautiful building designs to contemplate. Yes - they're fanciful and the picture above is what is more likely to be, but maybe one day in a different world with a cheap energy supply?
