Columbia Uni. proposes skyscraper farming in cities.

[Soontir C'boath]

Vertical farming in the big Apple
By Jeremy Cooke
BBC News, New York

Downtown Manhattan is hardly a place you would associate with agriculture. Rather, with its countless restaurants, cafes, shops and supermarkets this is a place of consumption.

And so every morsel, every bite of food New Yorkers munch through every day must be trucked, shipped or flown in, from across the country, and across the world.

Now though, scientists at Columbia University are proposing an alternative. Their vision of the future is one in which the skyline of New York and other cities include a new kind of skyscaper: the "vertical farm".

The idea is simple enough. Imagine a 30-storey building with glass walls, topped off with a huge solar panel.

On each floor there would be giant planting beds, indoor fields in effect.

There would be a sophisticated irrigation system.

And so crops of all kinds and small livestock could all be grown in a controlled environment in the most urban of settings.

That means there would be no shipping costs, and no pollution caused by moving produce around the country.

It's all the brainchild of Columbia University Professor Dickson Despommier.

He and his students took existing greenhouse technology as a starting point and are now convinced that vertical farms are a practical suggestion.

Professor Despommier lists many advantages of this revolutionary kind of agriculture. They include:

* Year round crop production in a controlled environment

* All produce would be organic as there would be no exposure to wild parasites and bugs

* Elimination of environmentally damaging agricultural runoff

* Food being produced locally to where it is consumed

And, says the professor, vertical farming would allow some existing traditional farms to be returned to natural forests. Good news in a time of global warming.

"Even if it's not quite natural.... a little bit factory-like in terms of its production, here's what you're going to get back: you're going to get back the rest of the earth. And I'll take that any time."

The plan is to make the whole complex sustainable.

Energy would come from a giant solar panel but there would also be incinerators which use the farm's waste products for fuel. All of the water in the entire complex would be recycled.

Several hours drive north of the city in upstate New York, Ed Miller's 18,000 apple trees are in full bloom.

Like farmers across the world he has lived through decades of constant change and innovation. But he remains, at heart, a man of the soil.

So what does he think of the virtual farm concept? He is, perhaps, surprisingly positive: ''It looks like a fancy greenhouse," he says. "It's fabulous, it will be very interesting. It will be phenomenal."

For now, vertical farms are a virtual concept. But the scientists insist that the theory is sound.

All they need now, they say, is the money to make this a reality.

Graphics courtesy of Chris Jacobs, Rolf Mohr, and Dean Fowler of machinefilms.com and unitedfuture.com

I hope this pans out. It will certainly reduce the worry of providing food to the cities when transportation costs in the future could (will?) skyrocket. Though I wonder what this would do to rural farmers if this become prevalent.

[Guardsman Bass]

Would this thing be run year-round? I'm asking since even if it is a greenhouse for the plants, you still probably would have to heat the building to keep the complex system of irrigation pipes from freezing in the winter. That could be a problem if natural gas prices go up, as I think, from the Peak Oil discussions I've heard, they will.

[Soontir C'boath]

They said they're going to recycle the wastes made on the farm.

Energy would come from a giant solar panel but there would also be incinerators which use the farm's waste products for fuel. All of the water in the entire complex would be recycled.

The farm looks to be self-sufficient.

[LapsedPacifist]

You'd certainly need to keep the temperature stable for growing, but with 30 floors of grow lights you're going to be generating a lot of heat, even with really efficient lights. Hmmm... 20ish acres for a Portland (200' block) of real estate.

Even if you were heating with oil the fact that you wouldn't have to ship the stuff should make it cheaper post-peak oil, right?

LP

PS. Isn't there a film reel from the 50s that has an Urban chicken farm? I would have sworn that was a MST3K.

[Solauren]

I've seen this idea, in various forms, for as long back as I can remember.

It's only now that it's begining to attrach serious attention.

However, I think it's a good idea.

Imagine a grocery store like A&P or another big chain, with a 50 story building on it, where the produce and such is grown.

Very nice, and very convient. You'd have sales on the 1st floor, proceesing on floor 2- 5, and growth on 6 - 50

The food would be grown, washed, and possibly canned on site.

That would be awesome. And very cost-effective in the long run.

[Molyneux]

I really hope that this pans out...especially since it might lead to some land being put to more productive use out west. Maybe it would even start to crack the farming subsidies...

[Soontir C'boath]

I really hope that this pans out...especially since it might lead to some land being put to more productive use out west. Maybe it would even start to crack the farming subsidies...

Well, that's the part I'm wondering about. If we come to rely more on farms made in the city and it becomes too costly to transport food from rural areas, wouldn't they need subsidies to keep afloat?

[Molyneux]

I really hope that this pans out...especially since it might lead to some land being put to more productive use out west. Maybe it would even start to crack the farming subsidies...

Well, that's the part I'm wondering about. If we come to rely more on farms made in the city and it becomes too costly to transport food from rural areas, wouldn't they need subsidies to keep afloat?

Pardon me for asking, but...if there's no need for the food they're producing, why keep them afloat in a losing business? Why not just give them low-interest loans so they can use the land for something more profitable?

[Howedar]

Fat fucking chance. Consider the price comparison between downtown land and edge-of-city land. Then consider the construction costs. Then consider the amount of light you can capture with an essentially vertical area within a skyscraper-ed city.

[Molyneux]

Fat fucking chance. Consider the price comparison between downtown land and edge-of-city land. Then consider the construction costs. Then consider the amount of light you can capture with an essentially vertical area within a skyscraper-ed city.

So build 'em on the edge of the city - that's still much closer than, say, Bumfuck, Kansas where the food is grown now.

[Darth Servo]

They said they're going to recycle the wastes made on the farm.

Energy would come from a giant solar panel but there would also be incinerators which use the farm's waste products for fuel. All of the water in the entire complex would be recycled.

The farm looks to be self-sufficient.

Impossible. You'd probably need far more fuel than the waste products would provide and the plants incorporate the water into their biological structures as they grow. Once classic equation: 6 H20 + 6 CO2 --> C6H12O6 + 6 O2

[Korvan]

Misunderstood Genius? (scroll down a bit)

I have to say that I'm pretty skeptical of the whole skyscraper food thing. The amount of sunlight is dependent on the footprint of the building and that has to be divided by the number of floors. You will get some extra light from that which hits the side, but if you have tall buildings next to yours, this will cut that light down a lot.

[Zixinus]

Churchill would be proud.

http://www.davidszondy.com/future/Living/churchill.htm

[Howedar]

Fat fucking chance. Consider the price comparison between downtown land and edge-of-city land. Then consider the construction costs. Then consider the amount of light you can capture with an essentially vertical area within a skyscraper-ed city.

So build 'em on the edge of the city - that's still much closer than, say, Bumfuck, Kansas where the food is grown now.

If you're on the edge of the city, why build a skyscraper in the first place? Why not just appropriate a proposed subdivision?

There's an implied choice here (Bumfuck, KS vs. middle of the city) that need not be made.

[loomer]

A subform of this could be useful, however. On every building over, say, five stories, devote the roof to gardening. Sure, you might not get MUCH from it, but it could potentially lessen the burden in general, right?

[Broomstick]

A couple of problems that I can see, that may or may not be solvable

- Solar energy is not universally available. While Phoenix, Arizona may have enough and constant enough sunlight to utilize various forms of solar energy, some place like Chicago this various a LOT more depending on the season - wintertime we have something like 16 hours of darkness. How much power can you extract in 8 hours, and that's assuming minimal cloud cover. Which in this area isn't realistic - we're overcast a good portion of the time.

OK, fine - supplement the solar power with wind power. High above the ground the wind is usually stronger. At least it's a supplement.

Waste products can be used to generate methane that you can also burn for power.

- Then you have the problem of soil and water. These will be heavier than traditional home/office furnishings. Better make sure your skyscraper has robust construction. There is also the problem of water leaks, which can cause damage of one sort or another, or failure of the plumbing to supply water where needed.

- Artificial lighting will seriously impact profitability due to power requirements and the need to shed heat. Maybe if you constructed thin, narrow cityfarms, so you could use windows and natural lighting as much as possible this would cut down on the problem. However, in high latitudes efficiency will drop in winter for the simple reason that there simply is not as much light. Not only will you need to supplement solar with wind/combustion, you'll be doing it at a time of year when you will also probably have to generate heat above what is produced by the living things inside. The further north/south you are, the more extreme this problem as you will have sunlight and more cold for longer periods of time.

- Windows. If you use a lot, it's a good thing in winter, but you have to deal with the heat generated by your green house in summer and that can be a considerable problem. If you make the windows something that can be opened, venting the interior air, that solves the heat problem but leaves you vulnerable to pests coming in. Not to mention the extra maintenance required by moving parts.

- Soil condition. There will be no natural restoration of the soil in this system. At some point you will need to add nutrients back in. In other words, fertilizer. Where is that going to come from?

[Guardsman Bass]

What about the shit produced by the city? If you got rid of the bacteria, then wouldn't it be usable as fertilizer if pumped into the building?

[Broomstick]

Well, yes, sorta - you actually don't want to sterilize it at least initially - bacteria provide a natural, low-cost means of converting waste to fertilizer. The problem is the space and time needed to process the large quantities involved. And, of course, infection/pollution/toxin control. You have to keep the sewage used for fertilizer separate from stuff you don't want in the food chain. Can you trust people NOT to pour nail polish remover down the toilet that connects to the fertilizer plant? What about people with various infections transmittable by human shit? Yes, of course, you could sterilize it before using it in your skyscraper greenhouse, but you may need to add in beneficial bacteria and other micro-fauna/flora/fungi to obtain the best agricultural results.

[Darth Servo]

What about the shit produced by the city? If you got rid of the bacteria, then wouldn't it be usable as fertilizer if pumped into the building?

You want manure pumped all over your place of business?

[Molyneux]

What about the shit produced by the city? If you got rid of the bacteria, then wouldn't it be usable as fertilizer if pumped into the building?

You want manure pumped all over your place of business?

Assuming that I'm a farmer, YES!

[aerius]

Sounds like a large scale marijuana grow-op.

A multi-story structure's going to need huge amounts of high intensity lighting, I don't even want to figure out the power consumption figures for one of these building. It works for marijuana since the crop is worth a crapload of cash, but I doubt it'll be worth it for something cheap like lettuce.

But, I think the idea can be used on a smaller scale. Instead of having an entire greenhouse building, we turn the top floor of every building into a greenhouse. That way we can use natural sunlight almost all the time and really cut down on power. I'd also grow everything with hydroponics, it's cleaner, you don't have to worry about soil, and it gives much higher yields per unit of area. We already have hydroponics farms where they have a millions of plants under large greenhouses, we're basically taking that and shrinking it down to fit on the roof of a commercial downtown building.

[AMX]

Maybe this page would be useful for the discussion:
http://www.verticalfarm.com/

[Broomstick]

I'd also grow everything with hydroponics, it's cleaner, you don't have to worry about soil, and it gives much higher yields per unit of area. We already have hydroponics farms where they have a millions of plants under large greenhouses, we're basically taking that and shrinking it down to fit on the roof of a commercial downtown building.

My dad and I used to grow things hydroponically in our basement (and no, it wasn't pot). You have to worry about algae and fungal growth in the medium (it's loaded with nutrients after all), and you need a high level of sanitation for foodstuffs. You don't have to worry about soil but you DO have to worry about the nutrient solution composition. You will need a substrate of some sort to support the plants. And root crops do terribly under hydroponics - our attempt at carrots wound up looking like orange spaghetti. It's because the root systems are not as extensive/developed as in soil. A proper substrate and perhaps a proper dilution of nutrient fluid may alleviate some of this, but that's certainly beyond my limited experience and expertise. You will need power to operate pumps for cirulating the fluid - the crude, gravity feed system we used when I was a kid is simply not feasible on a large scale however efficient it is small scale.

These obstacles can probably be overcome - there are certainly both greenhouse and hydroponic foodstuffs available in grocery stores even now - but it's not a pancea. Using soil may in some circumstances be more cost-effective.

[His Divine Shadow]

This sounds like small potatoes to me (pun intended). But every bit of wasted areal not wasted is good. As the son of greenhouse farmers I think it sounds exciting, thanks to greenhouses we get our own corn, watermelons, paprika and whatnot in Finland.

[Gil Hamilton]

Maybe making entire skyscrapers into buildings has problems, but I don't see any reason why you can't turn the top levels of sufficiently flat buildings into victory gardens for some buildings and sophisticated farms in others. They do that to a limited extend already in some buildings in New York, with rooftop gardening. Just start instituting in on a mass scale and start training up some dedicated gardeners and farmers to take care of the crops, then make part of their paycheck a serious rent deduction. I'm willing to bet there are plenty of New Yorkers who'd put in quite a few hours in a roof top garden for a deduction to their rent. I'd think processing and reclaiming some of the waste that the city generates to manure them wouldn't be completely unfeasible either.

You might not generate enough veggies to feed all of New York City, but it would certainly be a start.