Why Growing Vegetables in High-Rises Is Wrong on So Many Levels

The dream of vertical farming is gaining momentum despite many unanswered questions about its feasibility.

There are projections that the vertical farming market will hit $4 billion by 2020. In a recent segment of NPR’s Diane Rehm Show (in which I participated), several guests argued that vertical farming could revolutionize agriculture and even supply most of our food needs. The show’s guest host, Maria Hinojosa, declared it “something big, different, and permanent.”

However, in their efforts to develop a system that sustainably supplies cities with a large share of their food, theorists and practitioners of vertical farming face insurmountable obstacles. These include the limited range of crop species that can be grown; the tiny proportion of our population’s total food needs that indoor crops could supply; the elite market being targeted; and the irrelevance of indoor agriculture to the lives and diets of people living in economically stressed rural regions where the bulk of our food is grown.

Meanwhile, looming largest among the many factors that will restrict the growth of vertical gardening (a term I believe is more apt than “vertical farming,” given the potential scale and the types of food that can be produced) are its extraordinary energy requirements and heavy climate impact.

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A Tall Vision of Vertical Farming in Hong Kong

by Sean Quinn, Jason Easter, Nick Benner, Yasser Salomon, Jon Martin

A vision indeed, this mega-tower inspires us to think of how agriculture can be integrated into buildings and cities. However, with its location being prime real estate and hazelnuts as one of the suggested crops, it does little for the maturation of the vertical farming dialogue. 

What a fantastic way to use bottles.

And there we go!

Our website is now LIVE. Kickstarter to follow suit soon. We will keep you updated. For more details, visit our Prefundia page.

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Urban Farming in Tokyo

the video

Living skyscraper concept is straight out of J.R.R. Tolkien’s dreams

Our greatest cities could see massive tree-like structures rising amidst their skyscrapers one day. Teeming with life, these vertical gardens could provide both food and a bit of green space for city folk. These enormous vertical farms could be the self-sustaining hearts of their host cities. They’ll scrub the air clean, purify local water and produce renewable energy. They’ll be so wonderful that it’ll almost be like living in Lothlorien.

http://www.dvice.com/2014-6-4/living-skyscraper-concept-straight-out-jrr-tolkiens-dreams

NEWFARM/NEWYORK: Mixed-Use Manhattan Vertical Farm

Recently, a few friends and colleagues of Agritecture.com partnered on this vertical farm design for an empty lot next to the highline in Chelsea, Manhattan, NYC. 

Special thanks to: 

Its time for a NEWFARM in New York. In the midst of the complexity of the concrete jungle, this urban food hub and vertical farm in Chelsea, Manhattan represents an evolution of both agriculture and architecture. One purpose of NEWFARM is to produce fresh vegetables for its inhabitants and visitors all year long. NEWFARM is also a place where buyers and sellers of food can interact with makers, artists, and growers. The vertical farming components of NEWFARM are composed of water-saving and highly productive hydroponic agriculture systems. The productivity of the farming systems compliment the artist and “maker” spaces of the building that come with the residences. Above all, NEWFARM is a bridge between nature and architecture.

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What’s the Real Problem With Urban Agriculture: Misinformation

In this guest post, Blue Planet Consulting summer intern Ben Mickel responds to this recent article critcizing urban agriculture: What’s the REAL Problem with Urban Agriculture by Harkyo Hutri Baskoro

Before trying to answer what the problems with urban agriculture might be, lets first define what exactly urban ag is: Urban agriculture is the practice of cultivating, processing, and distributing food in or around a village, town, or city. (Bailkey, M., and J. Nasr. 2000. From Brownfields to Greenfields: Producing Food in North American Cities. Community Food SECURITY News. Fall 1999/Winter 2000:6)

This is a complex industry that exists at the intersection of Horticulture, Technology, Urban Planning and Food Security.  There is so much positive support coming from the community and an influx of capital is driving the expansion of high tech urban agriculture around the world and sometimes its difficult to know if its all just “hype” or really part of the future of cities. 

Growing Food in the Middle of the City is only Half the Story

Let’s address some of the cons Baskoro raised about Urban Ag. The first issue Baskoro addresses is whether or not it is “worth it to farm in the middle of the city” despite the fact that still most urban agriculture occurs not in the heart of most cities but in the peri-urban areas. In fact, some of the greatest opportunities for urban agriculture lie on the edge of the city where the land is cheaper but access to infrastructure and customers is still high. Lets stop thinking about urban agriculture simply as picturesque farms in the city and start determining how we can feed more of the city from nearby sustainable farms.

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Innovative use of space - let’s discover more foldable vertical garden/farming models.

Reach New Heights at www.vertical-farming.net

Blogger Evan Bromfield Questions the Sustainability of Vertical Farms

Evan Bromfield is a research assistant at the Centre For Food Safety in Washington D.C. and a vertical farming enthusiast and blogger. Read this recent article from his blog that considers what most don’t consider when thinking about vertical farming. 

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Vertical ‘Pinkhouses:’ The Future Of Urban Farming?

by MICHAELEEN DOUCLEFF

  The idea of vertical farming is all the rage right now. Architects and engineers have come up with spectacular concepts for lofty buildings that could function as urban food centers of the future.

In Sweden, for example, they’re planning a 177-foot skyscraper to farm leafy greens at the edge of each floor. But so far, most vertical gardens that are up and running actually look more like large greenhouses than city towers. And many horticulturists don’t think sky-high farms in cities are practical.

“The idea of taking a skyscraper and turning it into a vertical farming complex is absolutely ridiculous from an energy perspective,” says horticulturist Cary Mitchellof Purdue University, who’s been working on ways to grow plants in space for more than 20 years.

The future of vertical farming, Mitchell thinks, lies not in city skyscrapers, but rather in large warehouses located in the suburbs, where real estate and electricity are cheaper.

And oh, yeah, instead of being traditional greenhouses lit by fluorescent lamps, he says these plant factories will probably be “pinkhouses,” glowing magenta from the mix of blue and red LEDs.

Light is a major problem with vertical farming. When you stack plants on top of each other, the ones at the top shade the ones at the bottom. The only way to get around it is to add artificial light — which is expensive both financially and environmentally.

Vertical farmers can lower the energy bill, Mitchell says, by giving plants only the wavelengths of light they need the most: the blue and red.

“Twenty years ago, research showed that you could grow lettuce in just red light,” Mitchell says. “If you add a little bit of blue, it grows better.”

Plant’s photosynthesis machinery is tuned to absorb red and blue light most efficiently. They have a handful of other pigments in their leaves that catch other wavelengths, but the red and blue wavelengths are the big ones, supplying the majority of the light needed to grow.

So why LEDs? They’re super energy efficient in general, but unlike traditional greenhouse lamps, they can be tuned to specific wavelengths. Why use all of ROYGBIV when just RB will do?

And there’s another advantage to using LEDs in greenhouses and vertical farming, Mitchell says: Because these lights are cooler, you can place them close to the plants — even stacked plants — and lose even less energy.

Recently, Mitchell and his graduate student designed a 9-foot-tall tower of lights and grew tomato plants right up against it. “As the plants get taller, we turn on the [light] panels higher up,” he explains. “It takes about two months before all the panels are on.”

The towers cut energy consumption by about 75 percent, Mitchell and his team reported earlier this year.

Right now, experiments are using these specialized LEDs to supplement natural light, not replace it.

But as LEDs get more and more efficient, could growers forgo the natural light altogether and grow crops completely in enclosed rooms, where they’re protected from temperature changes or damaging pests?

That’s exactly what Barry Holtz, at Caliber Biotherapeutics, is already doing.

His farms have never seen the light of day.

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Detroit’s urban farmers have proven to be some of the most innovative people in the city.

They’ve reclaimed vacant lots and learned how to bring fresh, nutritious food to neighborhoods in need of it.

Now two new ventures continue that innovation by introducing vertical farming systems into the city’s mix, the Detroit Free Press (http://on.freep.com/1DPcRoO ) reported.

One, known as Artesian Farms of Detroit in the Brightmoor district on the far west side, has begun to grow vegetables in a hydroponic system - trays filled with water and nutrients - stacked up to 14 feet tall.

The other, known as Green Collar Foods, set up its vertical racks last week in a corner of Eastern Market’s newly renovated Shed 5. It uses an aeroponics system, in which nozzles mist a thin, watery film on the roots of plants suspended in air inside trays.

Growing plants indoors inside cities has been done for a long time in various places around the world, including in the RecoveryPark project on Detroit’s east side. Now adding vertical racks greatly increases the production capacity of any given project by taking advantage of vertical space.

“It doesn’t necessarily take a huge building,” Ron Reynolds, one of the partners in Green Collar Foods, said last week at Eastern Market. “You don’t have to go to the city and say, ‘I’d like that 50,000-square-foot building.’ Effectively in 400 square feet you can have three stories up. So a lot of the buildings begin to open up for viability.”

These vertical growing systems typify how urban farming has undergone rapid innovation in recent years. Practitioners around the world have learned to wring increased production from seemingly barren urban sites to bring fresh, nutritious food to city residents.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack visited Detroit recently and said that growing food inside cities could become an important part of regional food systems in a world beset by drought and other issues. Detroit, he added, is known far and wide as one of the centers of that movement.

“I think it’s real and I think it’s a great complement to the agriculture that takes part in other parts of the country,” Vilsack said. “We face a very interesting challenge of feeding an ever-increasing world population when the land available for production will likely shrink. We have to have new and creative ways to produce the food to feed our people.”