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Vertical Farming
Vertical Farming is a proposed farming technique that would use a vertical building to grow a large amount of food in the very area that the food is needed. This vertical farm would co-exist with a general purpose building, such as an apartment building, that also grows enough food to support the agricultural needs of 10,000 people. The concept is a closed system, where all resources are recycled back into the system. Waste products, minerals, water and air will be captured, treated, and put directly back into the system. Composting of waste produced by the building will provide fertilizer for growing the crops. Transportation costs in terms of transporting waste and supplies will be substantially reduced.1
Benefits and advantages
- A building that occupies one square block and is 30 stories tall could provide enough food for 10,000 people.
- Agricultural land that has been degraded due to aggressive industrial agricultural uses would be allowed to rest and recover, as these vertical farms would provide great quantities of food.
- Crops grown indoors will be protected from random weather conditions such as hurricanes and typhoons.
- Transportation costs will be substantially reduced, as the food will be consumed very close to where it is grown.
- Abandoned properties can be rehabilitated and become functioning and contributing parts of the city.
Barriers and disadvantages
- The initial costs will be quite high. Designing and building a farm with this much technology will be very challenging.
- In this environment, not all crops will be able to be grown. Although fish and seafood could be easily grown in a vertical farm, most meats can not be raised in this closed environment. The variety of foods will decrease; however, the food available could potentially be of higher quality.
- Because human waste will be used for fertilization, it will probably be hard to convince most city-dwellers that this practice is sanitary and safe.
- Unfortunately, this technology is not available right now. Major steps forward in microbiology, hydrobiology, physics, automation, genetics, waste management, and urban planning will be needed. Advances in hydroponics, which is the practice of growing crops in water instead of soil, will be needed for vertical farming to become a reality. This is a future concept, but is one that has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and allow damaged farmland to be rehabilitated in an environmentally friendly way.
Examples of implementation
A group in Europe called Valcent, has built a prototype vertical farm in Dover, England. This vertical farming has yielded a 20-fold increase in yield per acre3, and seems to point towards a future where automated vertical farming could provide much more food on far smaller amounts of land.4
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