Agriculture
The Future of Agriculture May Be Up
The seeds of an agricultural revolution are taking root in cities around the world?a movement that boosters say will change the way that urbanites get their produce and solve some of the world's biggest environmental problems along the way.It's called vertical farming, and it's based on one simple principle: Instead of trucking food from farms into cities, grow it as close to home as possible?in urban greenhouses that stretch upward instead of sprawling outward.The idea is flowering in many forms. There's the 12-story triangular building going up in Sweden, where plants will travel on tracks from the top floor to the bottom to take advantage of sunlight and make harvesting easier. Then there's the onetime meatpacking plant in Chicago where vegetables are grown on floating rafts, nourished by waste from nearby fish tanks. And the farms dotted across the U.S. that hang their crops in the air, spraying the roots with nutrients, so they don't have to bring in soil or water tanks for the plants.However vertical farming is implemented, advocates say the immediate benefits will be easy to see. There won't be as many delivery trucks guzzling fuel and belching out exhaust, and city dwellers will get easier access to fresh, healthy food.Looking further, proponents say vertical farming could bring even bigger and more sweeping changes. Farming indoors could reduce the use of pesticides and herbicides, which pollute the environment in agricultural runoff. Preserving or reclaiming more natural ecosystems like forests could help slow climate change. And the more food we produce indoors, the less susceptible we are to environmental crises that disrupt crops and send prices skyrocketing, like the drought that devastated this year's U.S. corn crop 
- Grow Your Hanging Gardens Of Babylon
Certain forward-thinking people square measure reinventing farming as we all know it. Indoor, organic urban farms growing food vertically victimization husbandry and aquaponic principles, square measure maturation round the country. The push for different...
- Can City Farms Feed A Hungry World?
July 06, 2013 Michael Levenston There will be billions more hungry people in 2050. Growing our food on vertical farms or under radical new lighting systems may be key to ensuring they have enough to eat. Within just the past 10 years, an increasing...
- Vertical Farming | Creating The Fertile City
?Without artificial lighting the result will be an uneven crop, as plants closest to the windows are exposed to more sunlight and grow more quickly.? WHEN you run out of land in a crowded city, the solution is obvious: build upwards. This simple trick...
- Public Works: Vertical Farming
By Patrick Metzger A new breed of urban farm visionaries says "Go big, or go home."You?ve likely heard of the 100 mile diet: sourcing all your food from farmers within 100 miles of home. But what if you could keep the kids in comestibles from...
- Inside A Vertical Farm
1. The Solar Panel Most of the vertical farm?s energy is supplied by the pellet power system (see over). This solar panel rotates to follow the sun and would drive the interior cooling system, which is used most when the sun?s heat is greatest....
Agriculture
The Future of Agriculture May Be Up
The Future of Agriculture May Be UpThe seeds of an agricultural revolution are taking root in cities around the world?a movement that boosters say will change the way that urbanites get their produce and solve some of the world's biggest environmental problems along the way.It's called vertical farming, and it's based on one simple principle: Instead of trucking food from farms into cities, grow it as close to home as possible?in urban greenhouses that stretch upward instead of sprawling outward.The idea is flowering in many forms. There's the 12-story triangular building going up in Sweden, where plants will travel on tracks from the top floor to the bottom to take advantage of sunlight and make harvesting easier. Then there's the onetime meatpacking plant in Chicago where vegetables are grown on floating rafts, nourished by waste from nearby fish tanks. And the farms dotted across the U.S. that hang their crops in the air, spraying the roots with nutrients, so they don't have to bring in soil or water tanks for the plants.However vertical farming is implemented, advocates say the immediate benefits will be easy to see. There won't be as many delivery trucks guzzling fuel and belching out exhaust, and city dwellers will get easier access to fresh, healthy food.Looking further, proponents say vertical farming could bring even bigger and more sweeping changes. Farming indoors could reduce the use of pesticides and herbicides, which pollute the environment in agricultural runoff. Preserving or reclaiming more natural ecosystems like forests could help slow climate change. And the more food we produce indoors, the less susceptible we are to environmental crises that disrupt crops and send prices skyrocketing, like the drought that devastated this year's U.S. corn crop"Vertical farming is a concept that argues that it is economically and environmentally viable to cultivate plant or animal life within skyscrapers, or on vertically inclined surfaces. The idea of a vertical farm has existed at least since the early 1950s and built precedents are well documented by John Hix in his canonical text "The Glass House" Irrespective of their origins, there are three classifications debated by contemporary scholars."
Dickson Despommier, a microbiology professor at Columbia University who developed the idea of vertical farming with students in 1999, thinks vertical farming will become more and more attractive as climate change drives up the cost of conventional farming and technological advances make greenhouse farming cheaper. In fact, he hopes the world will be able to produce half of its food in vertical farms in 50 years.
Then "a significant portion of farmland could be abandoned," he says. "Ecosystem functions would rapidly improve, and the rate of global warming would slow down."
- Grow Your Hanging Gardens Of Babylon
Certain forward-thinking people square measure reinventing farming as we all know it. Indoor, organic urban farms growing food vertically victimization husbandry and aquaponic principles, square measure maturation round the country. The push for different...
- Can City Farms Feed A Hungry World?
July 06, 2013 Michael Levenston There will be billions more hungry people in 2050. Growing our food on vertical farms or under radical new lighting systems may be key to ensuring they have enough to eat. Within just the past 10 years, an increasing...
- Vertical Farming | Creating The Fertile City
?Without artificial lighting the result will be an uneven crop, as plants closest to the windows are exposed to more sunlight and grow more quickly.? WHEN you run out of land in a crowded city, the solution is obvious: build upwards. This simple trick...
- Public Works: Vertical Farming
By Patrick Metzger A new breed of urban farm visionaries says "Go big, or go home."You?ve likely heard of the 100 mile diet: sourcing all your food from farmers within 100 miles of home. But what if you could keep the kids in comestibles from...
- Inside A Vertical Farm
1. The Solar Panel Most of the vertical farm?s energy is supplied by the pellet power system (see over). This solar panel rotates to follow the sun and would drive the interior cooling system, which is used most when the sun?s heat is greatest....