Food supplies are shrinking as 80% of the world’s arable land has been cultivated and climate change is further lessening the amount of available land. The world population is rapidly increasing, causing demand for food to increase. To combat this and bring us into the future with adequate food supplies, Dickson Despommier of Columbia University has been creating momentum for urban farming through his vertical farming research and advocacy. This is not the usual urban farming most of us have heard of, but rather multi-story skyscrapers consisting of layers of vegetation cultivated for mass sale.
Las Vegas has designed the world’s first vertical farm which is 30 stories high, and is planned to cost $200 million and grow enough crops for about 72,000 people a year. Each floor is designated to mimic certain climate conditions in order to be able to cultivate a wide variety of plants that would otherwise be imported. Although the building was said to be opened in 2010, it has been put on hold due to monetary constraints.
Vertical farming is a growing trend which is increasingly being called the way towards a sustainable future. This way, food will be grown locally, reducing carbon emissions and creating many jobs. We would rely less on imports for food and will live closer to our food source, perhaps even living in apartments below these farms. Pesticide use as well as urban runoff would nearly be eliminated by having the plants indoors.
While being very ambitious with his plans, Dickson Despommier admits that the biggest constraint on moving forward is the extensive cost of vertical farms. The millions of dollars needed to build one skyscraper farm is often unfeasible. However, the prospects are very high as with about 160 of these skyscrapers, all of New York could be fed. This is particularly beneficial when shrinking land space from growing populations, development and sea level rise are taken into consideration.
I think this would be great to have in cities because of the countless benefits of vertical farming. To me, the benefits outweigh the costs and I would like to see a project like this carried out. As one article states, this could begin “the end of farming as we know it” by responding to the unsustainable way we have structured life that will not accommodate the numerous added citizens of the world in years to come.
Noor Khalidi
I also think that there are other issues to consider when examining the idea of vertical farming. One of the major problems with conventional agriculture is the fact that it has become a very unprofitable business (60% of Virginia's small farmers actually lose money every year). As a result, a large portion of farmland in the US is owned by huge conglomerate farming operations that, because of their size, have to take environmental shortcuts in order to efficiently grow crops, dispose of waste, and transport their finished products. It seems to me that the high construction costs associated with vertical farms would keep small farmers out of the business, and leave that undesirable part of conventional agriculture unchanged.
ReplyDeleteI tend to agree with the above comments, it seems to me that if most farmers can not be profitable without government subsidies and large scale operations on very cheap land, how do they propose to make a 30 story building on very expensive urban real estate a lucrative operation?
ReplyDeleteThough eliminating pesticide use and emissions from transportation, the food generated from one of these buildings would have to face a steep markup to reflect the cost of growing, an issue that conventional agriculture often avoids thanks to commodity pricing and government intervention.
The issue comes down to whether or not consumers can be convinced that sustainably raised food that reflect the true cost of production is worth an increase in their grocery bill.
When researching the benefits and costs of vertical farms, it was surprising to me to find that in order to sustain our growing population (with the conservative estimate being approximately a 3 billion increase by 2050 assuming present demographic trends) that the land needed to support such growth will represent 20% more land than the area of Brazil if traditional farming practices are continued! As a consequence of urban sprawl, this is definitely land that we don't have and creative initiatives are going to have to be developed in order to accommodate the increasing demand for food supply. Darr, I agree that consumers are going to play a major role in the decision whether these vertical farms are utilized to address future food shortage. The enormous amount of money, resources and infrastructure that will go into developing these vertical farms will have a major influence on the price of food. Additionally, could some of the benefits of food farms be offset by its energy impacts? I read that vertical farms will require an exhaustive amount of energy to upkeep, especially during the winter when days are shorter and sunlight is limited. It will be interesting to see what type of energy, whether alternative energy resources are proposed to develop and maintain these vertical farms.
ReplyDeleteVertical farms would require a certain amount of topsoil to sustain the plants, this topsoil has to come from somewhere. I am concerned that importing the topsoil to the vertical farms would produce devastating environmental harm.
ReplyDeleteAlso, if I know anything about insects, it's that they can get into anything, so it would be naive to think that you would no longer need pesticides. The indoors environment would not prevent pests from getting in, it would just make it harder for them to get out. Insects are tenacious little buggers.