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Vertical Farming: Is it for real? |
2 Comments |
| By Matt Mayer in Dumb Ideas, Eating Local, Green Living | August 23, 2007 | ||
I came across this story from the post in the UK about vertical farming, and I have to tell you. I question the wisdom of an initiative like this.
I would expect that using a system like this would promote even more use of chemical fertilizers, at a time period when we are already over fertilizing and experiencing massive run off and algae blooms.
Perhaps not, but how can you get the necessary yields if you don’t? Granted, organic farming can be just as productive, but in an environment like this? I’m not so sure.
That even being said, I firmly believe that in growing things there are relationships existing in soil that we can scientifically examine and replicate. Growing food like this seems like a way to grow nutritionally deficient foods.
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LG Adam said,
We’re not really running out of space are we? Yes in the cities, but there’s plenty of space for many years to come to meet our food need. This doesn’t look like a very green solution.
Michael said,
To address people’s concerns: Yes, we are running out of space, although we have to look specifically at arable land as opposed to general land mass. For our current population, we’re using 57.5% of the world’s arable land. And in order to get more, we’re clearing rainforests and other environments every day. We’re also using, in the US, 1/5th of our fossil fuels on agriculture alone, a lot of which I’m sure is for transportation.
Furthermore, enclosed hydroponics do not use chemical fertilizers or pesticides or other petrochemicals. Vertical farms are simply what we’ve been doing in hydroponic greenhouses, only built upwards in urban environments. The food that is produced is effectively organic, uses 1% of the water that traditional agriculture uses, can be designed to use no fossil fuels (relying only on solar and wind), and require no or very, very little transportation because they’re already in the cities they service.
There is also no evidence that hydroponics grow nutritionally deficient foods. I would love to see a source that even speculates that, if you have it, but hydroponics have been used for a long, long time with no such issues.