Columbia University professor of environmental health and microbiology, Dickson Despommier, coined the term "vertical farming." He says that a 30-story building built on one city block and engineered to maximize year-round agricultural yield could feed tens of thousands of people. Pictured: an artist's rendition of what one such farmscraper might look like.
Image: Vertical Farm Project
Dear EarthTalk: What is "vertical farming" and how is it better for the environment?
—Jonathan Salzman, New York City
“Vertical farming” is a term coined by Columbia University professor of environmental health and microbiology Dickson Despommier to describe the concept of growing large amounts of food in urban high-rise buildings—or so-called “farmscrapers.”
According to the vision first developed in 1999 by Despommier and his students, a 30-story building built on one city block and engineered to maximize year-round agricultural yield—thanks largely to artificial lighting and advanced hydroponic and aeroponic growing techniques—could feed tens of thousands of people. Ideally the recipients of the bounty would live in the surrounding area, so as to avoid the transport costs and carbon emissions associated with moving food hundreds if not thousands of miles to consumers.
“Each floor will have its own watering and nutrient monitoring systems,” Despommier elaborated to online magazine Miller-McCune.com, adding that every single plant’s health status and nutrient consumption would be tracked by sensors that would help managers ward off diseases and increase yield without the need for the chemical fertilizers and pesticides so common in traditional outdoor agriculture.
“Moreover, a gas chromatograph will tell us when to pick the plant by analyzing which flavenoids the produce contains,” Despommier said. “It’s very easy to do…These are all right-off-the-shelf technologies. The ability to construct a vertical farm exists now. We don't have to make anything new.”
With world population set to top nine billion by 2050 when 80 percent of us will live in cities, Despommier says vertical farming will be key to feeding an increasingly urbanized human race. His Vertical Farm Project claims that a vertical farm on one acre of land can grow as much food as an outdoor farm on four to six acres. Also, vertical farms, being indoors, wouldn’t be subject to the vagaries of weather and pests.
“The reason we need vertical farming is that horizontal farming is failing,” Despommier told MSNBC, adding that if current practices don’t change soon, humanity will have to devote to agriculture an area bigger than Brazil to keep pace with global food demand. Another benefit of vertical farming is that former farmland could be returned to a natural state and even help fight global warming. As agricultural land becomes forest and other green space, plants and trees there can store carbon dioxide while also serving as habitat for wildlife otherwise displaced by development.
Vertical farming is not without critics, who argue that the practice would use huge amounts of electricity for the artificial lights and machinery that would facilitate year-round harvests. Bruce Bugbee, a Utah State University crop physiologist, believes that the power demands of vertical farming—growing crops requires about 100 times the amount of light as people working in office buildings—would make the practice too expensive compared to traditional farming where the primary input, sunlight, is free and abundant. Proponents argue that vertical farms could produce their own power by tapping into local renewable sources (solar, wind, tidal or geothermal) as well as by burning biomass from crop waste.
CONTACT: The Vertical Farm Project, www.verticalfarm.com.
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20 Comments
Add CommentI love this idea so much I don't really care what powers it. Food that is grown indoors independent of the climate and pests and rainfall, food that is grown from local nutrients in our sewerage (helping prepare us for peak phosphorus and potassium), and food that comes from within our city, not ever growing farmlands and ever receding habitats, it's win win win!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo build a few Gen3/4 nukes for each city, grow our food in towers, and save the county's local biomass for the local biochar plant. That way you'll have gaseous / liquid fuel energy for those transport requirements that *have* to have liquid fuels.
Otherwise, run everything in the city that we can on electricity from Gen3/4 nukes burning the radioactive waste of previous generations, renewables, wind power, whatever you have.
One question: can these towers grow a crop like *wheat* economically? I thought they were mainly for fruit & veg.
OK, as long as you can convert sunlight to electricity and back to sunlight without losing 90%+ of the total energy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis idea is going nowhere. Food is too cheap to support the investments needed to pull something like this off. And where does this guy get the idea that "horizontal farming is failing"? Despite predictions to the contrary, crop yields are holding up just fine.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSoccerdad, No, they're not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/indicators/C54/
Also, we're killing topsoil everywhere through overworking it, desertifying it, changing the climate so that we are in perpetual drought (like here in NSW, Australia), or increasing salinity, or building suburbia over it.
And then there's going to be 2.5 billion more of us in just 40 years. When existing grain yields seem to have peaked out, how on EARTH are we going to feed all those people?
This is such an awesome idea... I think our country (mainly an agricultural one) can try this as a secure alternative to counter effects of the numerous typhoons that batter our crops yearly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI just want to see at least one of these built and how the economics work out. Maybe they'll learn heaps while building "Mark A" and have even better refinements for "Mark B". Then who knows? Local strawberries in winter? Food growing 24 hours a day? Hydroponics & fisheries and even biogas all combined in permaculture styled nutrient flows and systems, but with industrial strength manufacturing power behind it? Now that could lead to something exciting.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is an interesting idea. The technology is not new. The idea has been around since Babylon's "Hanging Gardens". If this really were a workable idea I find it hard to believe some enterprising entrepreneur wouldn't have already implemented it. It sounds economically unfeasible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisElectricity (to produce artificial sunlight) is really expensive, as is real-estate, not to mention the huge construction costs. When these resources can be purchased more inexpensively elsewhere (horizontally), why bother? Also, the logistics of this idea seem unrealistic. What makes horizontal farms economically feasible today may not translate well to a vertical environment. For instance most buildings aren't designed to drive tractors around in. Another example, just to move a tractor between floors requires a HUGE, high-cost elevator shaft, which means a lots of used-up space that cannot produce anything. The alternative, means you do most of the labor by hand, which is a lot more expensive.
This idea sounds like some architect's or politician's dream. Interesting in theory but entirely impractical. Why would you farm in skyscrapers when you can do it better and cheaper already in the U.S. Midwest or Brazil? Unless food prices rise greater than the combined energy, real-estate, construction, and labor prices, you won't see this one in real-life EVER!
Another question, aren't there countries around the globe that still pay farm-subsidies to farmers to make them deliberately NOT farm? Why not simply activate those vacant parcels? If the prices will support it they will be the first to be activated. There is still lots of "cheap" farmland that can be developed much less expensively to meet demand before we will see this anytime soon.
Then, how much would you like to charge for the crop consuming so much energy?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, good point. Food prices are outrageous now, so whoever builds one of these is going to want an immediate return on the investment. So, it will all be "designer" foods that only the well to do can afford. Our farming techniqes are not the true farmers way. Big agra-biz is the prime culprit in their greed to produce more and profit even more. The land can be re-vitalized without chemicals, but the a**hats in government are too afraid to address the one, and only thing on the planet that can save it. HEMP. A true bio-wonder.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, the economics....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHas anyone lately tasted a locally grown organic tomatoe vs on that came from a dutch hot house? That first and foremost should answer all the questions in regards to this proposal.
Also there are the Chinese (and they are the majority when it comes to accumulated calory intake) with their idea about Chi - it is not only the chemical components which make food nutritous - also the fact that you eat what is in season and what is produced ( I assume not in vertical farms) locally.
So dream on professor Despommier while I go and tend my garden. Love that pesto from last summer....
One day robots will be growing our food on the roofs and exterior walls of our homes and businesses. We won't need special buildings. Robots will plant, nourish, protect and harvest everything, and then transport it other robots that will cook it up within minutes of harvest. And you'll control what happens at every step.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisalbeit, your weed is really good, where do you get it? from a vertical hothouse perhaps?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismaybe u grow highest from thing grown up high
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat again happens when the remainders of THAT will be automatically discarded to and incinerated in the basement?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthat could cause serious operator error - which in turn would make the tomatoes even blander.
Dear Bill and Melinda
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSeattle would be an ideal location to try this incredible idea. If it can be done there it can be done anywhere!
Tehachapi, California did have crop problems this year. Tomatoes for example didn't ripen until mid-late October for many of us. There weren't enough hot days this growing season for them to ripen earlier. Fall was warmer, late into November. Finally, we're getting freezing nights that will hopefully be enough for freeze dependent fruit trees like peach, apple. The US does have plenty of food. Still 50% of the people in the world are hungry. The pesticides and herbicides used to control pest are poisons that cause things like cancer and juvenile leukemia. If we think recycling of organic matter into compost, it's the ideal medium for healthy, pest and pesticide free food. Check out uctv.tv and track down the video called "The world according to Monsanto."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@ "theartistpoet"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1) Vertical real estate is cheaper than horizontal real estate. 2) There is no way big ol heavy fuel guzzling tractors would be used.
I imagine mechanical arms from the ceiling doing the harvesting and gravity delivering the goods. The tricky part is sunlight which could be sovled by some clever architecture and materials science. This is not impossible, it's the future!
One of the largest problems in food production comes with that crops are usually quit specific to the enviorment under which they can thrieve, while other plants such as alge, can grow under much less restricted conditions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInnovations to circumvent this may come in form of genetic modification or even more radically, rerouting of energy trapped in other other plants to crops so that they can be harvested without undergoing the full cycle of shooting, growth and maturing.
This will revolt the very concept of argriculture and superceds verticle farming in terms of production and energy efficiency.
This is a great idea and although it may never completely replace convential farming it has a lot of merit. It is already being done extensively here in New Zealand. Mainly hydroponics but aeroponics and other methods as well depending on the crop. Here it is done not in highrise buildings, although there is no reason that it could not be - we have all the technology - but in acres of glass houses. The food produced is wonderful. No damage from hail, wind, hurricans, etc, which cause millions of dollars worth of damage here every year. No problem with early snow falls or unseasonal droughts or, as in Australia these days, salt laden ground water. No bugs, no blight, no runoff into our pristine rivers, no downtime, no transport costs, (or very little) no problem with bees, etc, etc. No large consumption of desiel fuel, low carbon emissions. I have seen food grown this way and even worked with it. The produce that is grown this way is realy splendid. It is the way to go. We have no option anyway. And using highrise buildings makes absolute sense - its just a matter puting what we already do here one on top of another. We can get to the moon, surely we can do this. Put me down for shears in any startup company.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is the way of the future and we already grow food extencively using high tech hydroponics, aeroponics and other methods, here in New Zealand. We do not use buildings but instead have 100s of acres of glass houses growing many different kinds of produce, and the food produced is of the highest quality. The plants are grown very closely packed together, which for plants like tomatoes, for instance is a good thing. There is no problem with damage from unseasonal weather conditions, which here in New Zealand causes millions of $ loss to farmers every year. No worry from storms or draught, or as in Australia these days, salinity in the ground water. No bugs, no blight, no wastage, no down time, low transport costs, and less carbon, no problem with bees, no runoff of insecticides into our pristine rivers, no soil erosion, etc, etc. I have worked on some of these farms and it is the way to go. We have no option. And why wouldn't we because it works well and we have the technology right now. The only difference is in a highrise building you are puting one on top of another. I can't see a problem. We are puting a building in space right now I'm sure we could manage to put a few plants in a highrise to feed ourselves so we can stop stuffing up the planet.
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