A leading proponent of vertical farming discusses how urban areas should adapt
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
- free water from rain
- free energy from the sun
- dirt that’s just there which you put the seeds in
With vertical farming you have all the expenses of regular farming, plus the cost to build a building to put it in, plus the cost for hydroponic solution, plus all the scaffolding, climate control, lighting, etc etc
If they use vertical farming to breed lattice they are just doing it wrong. There are much better uses for that.
Sun and rain are not so necessary as it seems. Many plants love shadow, and every building has a system to move water up and let it fall later. Green walls could gladly act as a first filter to help recycle part of the liquid human waste produced on a skyscrapper. We are yet diluting it before, so... why not modernize it adding a mesh of capillary roots in the way down?
Putting this walls in special areas out of the way, even shadowed areas, is totally doable even in desertic areas. Just a matter of design. This walls would store water, boost biodiversity and generate a local climate.
Is anybody suggesting it is?
But if you imagine that you're going to feed an urban area from vertical/urban farms - well, the wholesale price of a bushel (60 pounds) of wheat has fluctuated between ~$4 and ~$12 over the last 15 years - so between 7 and 20 cents per pound.
How many orders of magnitude below vertical farming's best-case scenario is that? And how much waste heat would staple-growing vertical/urban farms need to get rid of, in global-warming cities, where the poor are already dying from the heat?
I think the general idea is that it can be used to grow fresh produce with a short shelf life which require fragile and expensive just-in-time logistics to get to your plate before going bad.
The fact that expensive restaurants are already using it to produce fresh produce is probably a sign that it can be made mass market if costs can be reduced. The produce is fresher and not spritzed with pesticides. Isn't that preferable?
This is all quite plausible, especially as solar/wind is leading to more periods of very very cheap or even free energy, the automation is getting better and the tech is falling in price.
True.
But re-read the first paragraph of the article, especially the "they wanted New York City to be able to feed its population entirely on crops grown within its own geographic limit." bit. The article seems to be built upon utterly delusional assumptions.
Alternatively, how 'bout in Scando ?
If we assume that new nuclear power plants will not be located close enough to conurbations to supply district heating, then how else to effectively use the waste heat ?
For designers and planners interested in these ideas, please remember to account for increases in frequency in natural disasters over the coming century
It wasn’t that long ago that our nation’s capital, Canberra, almost burnt down from bush fires
Ideas like ground level parklands with high rises over the top do make me concerned about potential mass casualty events from a metropolitan bushfire
Fire fighting resources (like all) are finite
Black summer and the previous Canadian summer bushfires really should drill home the need to consider worst case scenario performance for buildings and urban planning design patterns
“As Despommier notes, the world’s cities make up two per cent of the Earth’s surface but produce sixty per cent of the planet’s greenhouse emissions.”
…as though that is some kind of “gotcha” for cities. But it’s like complaining that oceans make up only 70% of the Earth’s surface but contain almost 100% of its water! Forests cover only 30% of the land surface but contain almost all of the trees!
Cities produce 60% of the plane’s greenhouse emissions because that’s where people live, and it’s people who produce greenhouse emissions. It’s not an amazing argument for urban farming, it’s a tautology.
After we've destroyed the environment enough traditional farming won't be an option.
The article talks about only solar panels, but the conventional meaning of your statement would be that it's not possible with any renewable energy. Of course you can use e.g. nuclear or geothermal and save space.
It also presumes that instead of putting all of your wind farms and solar panels somewhere outside of the city and connecting them with this new technology called cables that that you'd put them all on top of your skyscraper.
One of my favorite lettuce brands Revol, grows their greens in advanced greenhouses that use less water and lots of technology to optimize the process. This is the future, not vertical. https://www.revolgreens.com/greenhouses/
Of course attempts to duplicate existing farms in cities will have issues. Many of these may be resolved. For example, even current farms are beginning to make use of automated weeding and picking machines. This could make it practical to grow in awkward built places that have limited or no safe access.
It is also really important to bear in mind the ugly reality of massive farm failures. When volcanoes blot out the sky for a year or more, which happens every few hundred years, all currently dominant forms of farming fail absolutely and catastrophically. However, in such circumstances some vertical farming setups would have limited challenges. It may be difficult to efficiently and reasonably plan for such scenarios, but we know absolutely that they will happen and it has already been a while since the last really big volcanic event.
Granted, most nice plants still seem to require some light, but the efficiency advantages over photosynthesis still apply. So maybe use transmissive solar panels to mildly shade the plants, plus hydroponics to deliver the synthetic nutrient solution to them.
Dickson is semi retired now but you can check him and Vincents podcasts, TWiP and TWiV there.