BIG IDEAS: Ep 2 – Dickson Despommier's Vertical Farming

No, vertical farming is not ever ( ever, ever, ever ) going to replace regular farming, but that's not what it's for. It is an attempt to solve a very, very specific problem. Transporting food from non-urban to urban areas is incredibly expensive, in hard cost and in environmental impact. In large metropolitan areas in many parts of the world it is prohibitively expensive to get any sort of fresh produce. A vertical farm in such an area would reduce the real costs, and the environmental costs of transporting the produce grown there to almost 0.

Further, there are a lot of opportunities for efficiencies in a vertical hydroponic farm, including using gravity feed and crop arrangement to get maximum utilization from the feeding medium ( different crops consume different nutrients at different rates, and you can arrange crops in sequence to deplete the feeding medium at the bottom ).

Equally, lighting concerns can be addressed with some research. In climates with an abundance of natural light, passive and semi-active natural light distribution systems are have become remarkably efficient. Elsewhere, photosynthetic wave lengths are well known, and appropriate spectrum is far more important that raw brightness. The ultra high power 'Grow Lights' people think of are mostly wasted in the growth factor. Spectrum specific LED's are dropping in price as production techniques improve, so growth lighting could be exceedingly efficient.

Again, remember the problem it is trying to solve - getting fresh, quality produce into dense urban environments to reduce or eliminate the environmental impact of transporting perishable goods into the city, and improve the availability of fresh produce to city dwellers. For _that_ problem, there is a very good chance that efficient, cost effective vertical farms _can_ be developed.

"If there weren't any pesky practical limitations, what world-changing device would you invent?"

What good does it do to have discussions about world-changing devices that ignore practical limitations? How about focusing on world changing ideas that actually are practical???

A vertical farm would be a tremendous WASTE of a ton of energy that would have been taken care of by nature itself out in the open field.

The issue will still be man power in the tower farms and also transporting the goods from the tower farms.

Wouldnt a better idea to bring people closer to there food again. Create bulding where people live below or above there little garden farms.

People would respect there food much more .. the organic waste of food scraps could help with the farming process.

You would bring people back to nature .. and you would hopefully create a community spirit in all the people who shared the garden farm level above or below them.

And porbably most importantly you wouldnt be spending large amounts of Energy (transportation, Packagin, Processing, Retail.. etc).. People would need to walk down stairs to get there food ..

In the northern climes the growing season is 60-90 days. For year round production building would need to be well insulated. Need artificial light in winter. Growing a lawn of cabbage, perhaps farming in soil not practical ,soil is heavy. Anyhow, need lots of water and weed control of some sort. Fruit trees are fairly large. Hydroponics maybe don't know. How do we handle pollination?

We are not all vegetarians. Beef,pig,chicken and dairy each on different floors. Hmm, these are messy critters. Also need slaughter house some where.

Just for fun, let's assume vertical farming would work. What do we do with all the production and transportation facilities currently in use in the US and other countries.

We probably should figure out how to handle our huge debt, health care and education problems first.

Regards,

Zarfman