Vertical farming

Vertical farming is an idea that my "Engineering for a Sustainable Technosphere" class is looking into over the next month. Lots of info available at www.verticalfarm.com. The idea is basically that multi-story buildings can be used in urban areas to grow food -- perhaps enough to feed 50,000 people 2,000 calories/day… in a building with a footprint the size of one city block. From a sustainability perspective, if this is possible it could be a phenomonal step toward reducing transportation costs (dollars and environment-related) of food. Somewhere I was reading that the cost of transporting lettuce from California (where over 80% of the US's lettuce is grown) to New York is about $.43 per pound. But if a pound of lettuce can be grown in a hydroponics greenhouse in New York for $.27 (vs. .$20/lb in CA) -- then there's a huge net savings. Here's a story about a non-profit in Winnipeg, Canada -- http://www.maximumyield.com/article171.htm -- it started when a high school teacher was disappointed in the quality of food available to students and decided to start growing food. It's interesting to think about the potential implications to Iowa farmers who rely on big equipment and massive inputs of fossil fuels -- both for machinery, and also for fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. My assumption has been that any method for growing food that relied less on fossil fuels would necessarily have to be more reliant upon human labor… but this company http://www.organitech.com/index.php?page_id=1 seems to be doing massive automation of the farming… so of like the assembly process I saw at the Volvo truck plant two weeks ago. Certainly there are many issues and considerations to be worked out with such a massive transition in agricultural process, but it's something to keep an eye on.

My own hydroponics experiment has not been faring so well… my water got a little acidic last week and caused my best plants to die. I'd added nutrient solution to the water and didn't check the ph immediately afterwards… within 4 hours of the water cycling to the plants, it was clear that something was not right… and before I could find baking soda to add to the water to bring the ph back up… my best pepper and two best tomato plants crashed… and they haven't come back yet. So. Oops. I'm a bit frustrated with the whole process, in part because of my lack of space… "the garden" takes up 1/3 of my bedroom… with another third going to my desk and the final third to my bed… there just isn't my space for experimentation. I'll look forward to relocation in the future to a place that is my suitable to such experiments. I do have a (yes, one) spinach plant that is starting to show some potential… as in there are new leaves in the last two days… so I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that it picks up the growth pace a little and provides me some inspiration to continue.