This is an out-of the box technology that needs to be studied well and implemented since the universe is still considered basically relying on agriculture as their basic source for economic development.
I see two major problems with the notion of vertical farming as a solution to food shortages:
First, it requires a MASSIVE infrastructure. We're talking about building towers and bringing the farm inside. Traditional farms use what is already there.
Second, it's far more labor-intensive, increasing the cost of producing the food even more.
It just doesn't work when you scale it up to produce food for millions. And let's not forget the impact of producing all the tech required to go vertical.
What tech? it's not exactly that hard to stack greenhouses onto of each other. No need for any serious infrastructure, just use light weight materials like wood/aluminum and lots of glass. The structure doesn't necessarily have to be that tall, as long as it's contained it will be able to produce crops at a higher efficiency than traditional farming, with the benefit of no runoff and less land being used.
@SupremeCommander360 The production of metal that can support skyscraper-sized farms like he is proposing (hint: you'll need steel) has a substantial environmental impact. We're talking strip-mining for the metals, chemical treatments, foundries, and the logistics to ship the material to the farm site. Once something like this is constructed it might be sustainable, but the cost of constructing it isn't. And like I said, it's MUCH more labor-intensive. You can't mass harvest vertical farms.
I disagree, creating a sustainable vertical farm that produces crops year round in a controlled pest-free environment is worth the cost of mining the materials to construct one. Think about it, transportation costs become dramatically reduced now that crops can be grown in a city and do not have to transported long distances, the carbon footprint will be reduced over long term, no oil-based pesticides, fungicides, or herbicides.
And who is to say that you couldn't use a preexisting building for such a structure? Of course it would require many renovations but it would most likely still cost less than making one from scratch. Retrofitting a closed mechanized harvesting system to harvest crops that are too labor intensive could solve labor problems inside of one of these buildings, at least it still not like diesel powered farming equipment used on every modern farm today. Hydroponics = no plowing/spraying
@xanthoptica: google the artificial leaf developed by MIT. It will produce hydrogen for essentially nothing, pair that with the fuel cells developed by bloom energy, and the led lighting used by grow ops in bc and you've got an energy efficient solution. The technology keeps getting better and the price keeps dropping.
@krislyttle They're already doing Confined Animal Feeding Operations.....Henry Ford never meant to take his factory model and apply it to farming/food/animals
There are a lot of buildings that are used for practically next to nothing in terms of space. You work and you see so much space- for a room with only a desk a chair , a few pictures and some sorts. Just because of design aesthetics. It is called modern architecture. There are thousands of buildings like that around the world. Now imagine giving them up to create -not vertical farms, but instead large stadium sized farms. then it will be closer to practical.
if we cannot afford to innovate future supply increases then I suggest you start getting ready to meet your Death panel counselor if you are past 55 years old . and for the next 20 years of Depopulation your new home will be a FEMA CAMP concentration Center complete with Gas chamber and Oven , all that will be remembered is that you were to Expensive to keep around !!!!!!
Are you people crazy - do some calculations on exactly how much land is needed to grow enough grain to feed millions of people! I am all for local food - but I cannot honestly see how these buildings can provide enough food to feed the population of large cities. When was the last time this guy went out to a broad acre farm producing the millions of tonnes of grain that feed the population. This guy is in la-la-land.
@Hamish121212 You forget the fact that such a building can grow products ALL THE TIME and at a CONSTANT RATE. Are you forgetting that most places in the world do have seasons? Try to grow anything useful when your land is covered in a thick pack of snow.
In these buildings no harvests fail: no diseases or plagues, no droughts or monsoons, no night frost etc. So efficiency rises enormously.
A lot of soil is used up due to our ways of farming, we're actually creating deserts!
I'm all for this idea but done a drastically different way. Watch the film Zeitgeist Moving Forward, which shows an in-depth perspective into what is actually wrong with our societies and the barriers and collapse we face as well as real solutions that incorporate these ideas and many others.
So..... what if someone were to put a poison in the waste that is given to the plants that feed them? The plants would be killed, and a crop ruined. What if bugs got inside and ate the plants? It would be a breading ground!! What if we become too dependent on these close looped systems? If a terrorist attack occurred on one of these buildings, we will have no other horizontal crops to use for food, we would starve! Same goes for if a natural disaster took one out. Not a good idea.
@koolman280 It's easy to keep bugs out. And don't forget it's easy to store large stacks of food (just use pure nitrogen and keep it cool) so if a harvest is compromised it's easy to restart and the population would still be safe.
Poison and terrorist attacks ... You must be an american. Most of the planet feels and is safe.
@flexyco You're making points without backing any of it up "It's easy to keep bugs out" thanks for enlightening me on how to do so. And then you just bash me at the end, your argument sucks, retry.
@earthrages Dirt? No. Minerals and nutrients dissolved in water. Some crops can even be grown with their roots hanging in midair, and the water is sprayed around in a fine mist.
I don't see how the sun would get to any of the crops but the top layer. Maybe the edges at most, but certainly not the kind of sunlight they would need. Maybe a helix design or spiral staircase one, but that would take up a lot of materials.
40pointplan, my followup comments on your YouTube video were civil and on point, they required approval by you, and they were not approved. This is an important issue, and the critical perspective needs to be aired. If you are trying to save the world, then do it the right way, not the impossible way.
New Movie coming out soon "40 Point Plan". First ever Save the World shows how Food Sky Towers (Vertical Farming) will SIGNIFICANTLY help these struggling farmers you refer to along with eliminating billion dollar crop failures and cross contamination with livestock causing people to die. What if a company was the exact opposite of Monsanto and actually gave 33% off all profits to "We the People" who are struggling. What if Food Sky Towers they build sole purpose was to eliminate hunger...?
Question: how is this going to affect the rural agricultural communities that are currently providing this country's food and the small family farmers that are already struggling due to market bullys like Monsanto? sounds great ideally, but corporate farming can't end well.
@holdingoutformyhero New Movie coming soon called "40 Point Plan". A Save the World film showing how Food Sky Towers will SIGNIFICANTLY help these struggling farmers you refer to, along with eliminating billion dollar crop failures and cross contamination with livestock causing people to die. What if a company was the exact opposite of Monsanto and actually gave 33% off all profits to "We the People" who are struggling. What if Food Sky Towers they build sole purpose was to eliminate hunger...?
@holdingoutformyhero Well, ecologically speaking, farmscrapers would be able to produce way more food per acre of land than either subsistence or modern farming, which would cut down on the amount of land needed to grow food. Economically speaking, there'd be no need to use pesticides to ensure that crops are protected from unwanted pests, bad weather wouldn't be an issue, and transportation costs would go way down if these farmscrapers were placed inside the large cities that would need them.
@holdingoutformyhero Still, although I do think that these new innovative agricultural methods promise to revolutionize agriculture as we know it, I doubt that traditional farming or even subsistence farming would disappear in the decades, or even centuries, to come. These farmscrapers would need to face some extra challenges in order to be able to grow, say, bananas or pineapples as opposed to lettuce or broccoli, so expect to receive those goods from your local plantation. ;-)
@holdingoutformyhero Finally, if you're worried about corporate greed making life more difficult for people, then maybe you should consider growing your own food in your own backyard, though if you live in an apartment complex that doesn't have a backyard to grow food in, then you might want to take a look at the idea of growing your own garden on the roof of buildings. Perhaps you could get together with your neighbors to create your own community garden on top of your apartment building? ;-)
if the fuckin crooks stopped sprayin chemicals in the fuckin skies,we could all grow our own good foods in the soils in our back yards.everything for control.stop poisoning our foods,water,n skies,Please!!!
@watty924 The poisons apparently don't stop farmers from growing their crops even when the poisons are directly applied, so I think it should be a difficult assertion that those same poisons are keeping your garden plants from growing. OTOH, maybe I have high expectations for commentators on YouTube, given what is typical around here.
if the fuckin crooks stopped sprayin chemicals in the fuckin skies,we could all grow our own good foods in the soils in our back yards.everything for control.stop poisoning our foods,water,n skies!!!
For anyone going to that conference, please ask him about the sunlight problem. He should not have been invited, but it is not as if it is easy to deter such people with arguments from physics and geometry. Even the editors of popular science publications don't seem to get it. Idealism wins the day, in the short term, at least.
@fibberznjelly I know the feeling. If you are active about a good cause, then it gives you a good feeling, regardless of whether or not the cause is a delusion. When some stranger comes along and says what it really is, then the high is gone. I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer. I mean to be constructive, to tell the truth, to correct something that is objectively and morally wrong. If you don't believe me, then check my math. Don't be in it just for the high.
While your point on the amount of light a vertical farm could collect from sunlight is correct, aren't you forgetting that we can produce artificial light which mimics sunlight.
In that case we can reduce the vertical farm to a simple equation, energy = food. Put electricity in for powering the lights (and anything else) and get food out.
You would still probably save energy overall due to the concentrated nature of the building reducing transport and other costs.
@richzap2 I wish we could probably save energy that way, and the bottom line is: probably not. Traditional farms already make use of a very efficient and the most sustainable energy source there is: the Sun. The energy cost of transportation is only a minor disadvantage when compared to the cost of collecting energy and converting it to artificial sunlight that vertical farms would need. Alternet did a study on it, and you can find it here: alternet.org/food/146686/
Had a look through that, I kind of expected those figures for the complete production from vertical farms and they're pretty nasty (8x US energy production) but a few points.
First they looked at wheat production, not consumption, US consumption of wheat is less than half that of production (25M tons/year compared to 60M in production).
Second I don't think anyone who's suggested this is expecting vertical farms to completely take over production from regular farms.
It's also intended as a means to produce food where there is no other means, in those cases its simply a matter of footing the energy bill or starving. Many countries cannot feed themselves from regular agricultural techniques, this may provide a way of doing it.
In any case I think that until a prototype is built it will be difficult to see exactly how good or bad it will be economically. But the potential it offers is enough that it would certainly be worth a try.
@richzap2 Any country that can afford to build vertical farms and produce artificial sunlight to sustain them can also sustainably import the food from elsewhere for much cheaper. When there is a poor and dense population on the Moon with no soil, then maybe vertical farms will be a good idea. The economics and physics can be modeled with feasibility studies funded by interested investors, which probably explains why not one vertical farm has ever been built.
@richzap2 Let's be clear - sunlight is the limiting factor for crop production. The energy that goes into the food we eat has to come from somewhere; ultimately, it's the Sun. The more conversions we make along the way (say, using electricity from solar cells to run artificial lighting) the more of that energy we lose - easily on the order or 40-50%. There may be places where *supplemental* artificial light make sense, but the sunlight problem has been blissfully ignored in vertical farming.
I hope I drove home the point that the criticism is not just a pessimistic dismissal. The problem of sunlight really is an insurmountably fatal problem to the whole idea. I sent an email to Dr. Despommier, and I begged him to stop misleading so many capable and motivated environmental activists, for the sake of the planet Earth. Judging by the wall of unsold books behind him in the video, I don't think he will listen. :(
I think I see where your problem is - sunlight. You are forgetting some basic physics. Sunlight does not shine a 90 degrees to the earths surface and a vertical farm does not necessarily have to be vertical. Imagine if you will and farm that is directed at the perfect angle to absorb the suns ray, rather like a series of steps but steeper. Then imagine that back of the building being reflective, rather like the curved sunbathing things that women used to use to tan under their chins.
@bigstarflying Thanks. No need to accuse me of forgetting basic physics. My objections are all about the basic physics, but the problem of limited sunlight seems to be ignored by all of the advocates. You propose solving it by building these things at an angle orthogonal to mean vector of sunlight (I presume). Well, great, that solves the physics, but it also means that it still will do no good to stack them, and it will not save much land or energy. Alternatively, you can (continued)
@bigstarflying Alternatively, you can stack them and solve the sunlight problem by putting sufficiently enormous space between each layer so that no lower layer is in the shadow of the upper layer, maybe each layer is as tall as it is wide. Well, then the problem is no longer basic physics but economics. It takes enormous cost and energy and not enough payoff. But, if you really believe in it, then do something that hasn't been done and design an economical vertical farm with sunlight in mind.
I am on your side, bigstarflying. I believe that these problems to vertical farming are physically and economically insurmountable, but I encourage you to find solutions, and you can do that by building a better model of vertical farming with this very common criticism concerning limited sunlight in mind. If you succeed, then you will save the world. If you don't, then you will have evidence to encourage others to direct their activism to more practical solutions. I wish you all the best of luck
Think about the sun shining at 45 degrees. A vertical plane (wall) will receive the same sunlight as a horizontal plane (ground). Now create a convex vertical wall facing the sun. This will receive more sunlight than the horizontal plane, as it effectively tracks the sun. Then think of that wall sloping back at an angle of 45 degrees (with layer upon layer of crops). This will receive vastly more sunlight than the ground and take up significantly less space.
@bigstarflying Wonderful. So suppose a vert farm covers a horiz area x by x. The first layer will have to be x tall for a farm area=x^2 (crops grow vertically and need horiz floor). For no shadow problem, the 2nd layer has to start from 2x and extend to 3x above the ground. Each layer requires 2x of height.
A World Trade Center tower was 208 by 208 by 1368 ft.
A WTC tower was 208 by 208 by 1368 ft. If we size a vert farm to WTC tower, then x=208 ft, and number of levels of vertical farm=1368/(2x)=3.3. You can fit 3 layers of farm, to produce almost 3 acres of farmland (208^2/(43560 ft^2/acre).
"A significant portion of the light hitting the building would be turned back by the glass, and direct sunlight would penetrate into the interior of a vertical farm only when the sun is low in the sky (especially if, as Despommier recommends, two layers of plants are stuffed into each story.) Even then, it would reach the crop plants at a low angle, so that each square inch of leaf would receive much less light than if the light were hitting the leaf from above."
I think you may have to do more of the thinking for yourself. Just cutting and pasting others opinions is not really going to help your rather negative stance.
@bigstarflying Absolutely. I tried doing all of my own thinking, as you can see in my earlier comments. I suggested that it is a bad idea to stack crops for the same reason nobody stacks solar panels. And then I read the same point on Alternet. The article was written by someone who did all of the needed research and published it, so I used his findings, and that is actually the way science works. The problem of limited sunlight is fundamental to the physics of these things.
Paraphrase from Alternet.org's article, "Why Planting Farms in Skyscrapers Won't Solve Our Food Problems"
For obvious reasons, no one has ever proposed stacking solar panels one above the other. For the same reasons, crop fields cannot be layered one above the other without providing a substitute for the sunlight. Even with all-glass walls, the amount of light reaching plants on all of a high-rise would fall far short of what is needed.
How wonderful this application is. Egypt too needs it. Despite its excessive land space the country suffers from sever water limitation. The good idea here is to recycle everything, including irrigation water that leaves the system as drainage water that should be reclaimed and reused. This idea is applicable in Egypt only at one price: to replace the Egyptian population by another that thinks like Dr. Dixon Despommier. O.K., maybe by the 35th century by the return of some Egyptian from Mars
Seems like a really good idea. I'd like to see it done before we hoist this guy on our shoulders though. If it proves practical, it would certainly create a ton of jobs.
The sunlight "problem" is easily solved if you understand the basics of surface area, direction of the sun and all the light that is wasted on a conventional "flat" crop.
1) A vertical farm, like a solar panel will be optimized for sunlight.
2) All the light that fall in between the crop can be recycled (reflection, tranparency)
3) The basics of the surface area of a 3D object over a 2D flat object.
@rabidduckies Like so many ad hoc solutions, those solutions bring in more problems than the single problem it solves. In order to capture all the needed sunlight, you will need each floor to be as tall as it is wide or thereabouts, but I am not seeing that in any rendition. Glass and mirrors all over the place have a very high initial expense and high maintenance cost. If I am wrong, then design a solar-practical vertical farm that is better than a traditional farm. I haven't seen one yet.
Yeah, I just looked at wiki for the pros and cons. I think the professor is just trying to sell his book.
The cost for lighting, the need to burn fuels to produce high levels of CO2 for the plants, light pollution caused by green houses (let alone skyscraper green houses), and the fact that this method doesn't even work on important crops (corn, rice, wheat) SEEMS to indicate that this is another implausible, unrealistic, futurist scam/plug to sell book/Utopian idea.
I would really like to read more on the technique, because I'm very skeptical of a plan that claims that nutrition and water do not leave the buildings....
were do plants inside the building get there light from? If they are crowded and have another flour above, they don't going to be delicious.
That only the plant leaves the building, that never going to happen! Were do the plants get there nutrition? If you move the product out of the cycle, you need to refill the nutritions at some point!
Its a god thing, if it is not to expensive in building the stuff. But, an ordinary greenhouse will do the job! Moreover the greenhouse can capture more sun!
@obamabinbiden911 Well, protocol would come into effect. Three steps in protocol: prevention, quarantine, extermination. Prevention could entail rigorous sterilization and disinfection as well as screening for all incoming and outgoing regions. Quarantine the areas infected. Finally, exterminate as a last option to prevent spreading contamination. In the end, regulation and protocol will make contamination EXTREMELY unlikely.
Do this, t his needs to be done. No more of this pessimistic bullshit that plagues the development towards the future, no colorful, boring, flat, forget that and lets build up.
insted of doing all this complex ass stuff to support the rising number of people why dont we just sterilize a good chunk of earth? just because you can have kids doesnt mean you should. back when people were few in the bible it was ok but now theres to many of us... so fuck it.
@AyeAreDee Yes, but it is discussed in great detail as being real, in scientific texts of the time, and ancient peoples did have a good notion of reality and fiction.
The idea is nice and futuristic, but I'm getting so tired of hearing this propaganda about overpopulation, global shortage of food, and global warming, and the solution is always more regulations and more taxes. I sometimes wish I lived on another planet free from everything.
Awesome but not practical. With the drawings alone it is big failure - plastics, concrete, processed wood and steel. Make the best dreams out from everyone's home backyard, simple but not costly. Agriculture is not a blue collar dream, we still got bare lands to be nurtured by common sense with nature.
Para que queremos invertir millones en dinero y en energia para algo que podemos hacer de forma natural en millones de hectares tierras abandonadas en todo el mundo?, por que queremos cambiar lo que ya funciona perfectamente?
Interesting way to incorporate Germany's auf bau idea to farming...though, I can see this widening the gap between those who seek higher education and those who don't. With these buildings, it may come to be that you no longer need actual humans to spend whole days collecting the food...unless they already work for the company as an engineer whose essential function is maintaining the machinery, which would include clearing it of food.
imagne all dirt grown food becomes illegal "for santitary" reasons and then all food has to be grown behind locked doors and baracade fences....this happened with pork...all pork has to be raised on concrete...you cannot sell pork grown on the ground....so all the small hog farmers went out of busness...it wont be long before it will be illegal to grow your own food if we embrace all these "ideas" as wonderful for civilization. anything that fosters corporate farms is no friend to you.
@spotlightonapple what obligation for feeding oneself does the world have? It occurs to me that all this "beneficence" may do more harm than good.Its because of the "humanitarianism" that we have an ever increasing popultation that is unable to provide for themselves.The idea that every inch of dirt on the planet should be occupied is craziness. Allocating energy for people to live in the high desert or 10 million deep in a city of 25 sq miles is insanity. There must be more practical solutions
@plasmavore The thing is that the fact that they look really nice is really their only appeal. They are not practical in the least. They do not have the geometry to capture enough sunlight and they would inhabit valuable building space in cities.
A few years ago, I realised that there is a lot of wasted space on the rooftops of building in the cities, like shopping malls. I thought it would be a good idea to grow crops up there... I really should have written that down.
@Sorrysouljahhh That would work. Now that I've seen this video, I can imagine the vertical farms being skyscrapers, adding to the skyline of many cities. They'd be able to mass-produce vegetables all year long, in an ideal environment... I'm starting to wonder why we aren't already doing this.
Großes Potential!!!. Sehr futuristisch und dennoch realistisch, bei richtiger Anwendung an Effizienz nicht zu überbieten. Aber, was ist die Folge auf den Weltmakt, wie verhalten sich die Preise, wer sind die Verlierer?
Ganze Regionen, Städte und Länder finanzieren sich durch ihre Agrarkultur und sind abhängig von ihr und ja das Land leided darunter.
Entwicklung kann in zweierlei hinsicht gefördert werden zum einen die Existenz der Vertical Farm an sich und zum anderen die Standortbestimmung.
@trscheit How do you think they will build the vertical farms, if they don't have materials? If a farm is built in every major city, an enormous amount of materials will be needed. There will be machinery in the farms, which will need replacement. The material companies will probably become wealthier.
Rather than creating massive, unproven new spending by building crazy structures for this, why not go into highly populated areas, rent the top ten floors of every skyscraper in sight, and see if you can make it work there?
How many people can you feed from one building? Land is a lot cheaper than glass, maybe we should help world farmers mechanize and become highly efficient first. I bet there's a lot more land production possible in this world than we're getting out now.
The limited resource is light, NOT land. If you farm vertically, there is not enough sunlight to grow more plants than would fit on the building's footprint.
This guy clearly does not have a background in agriculture.
@eatingmaplesyrup Artificial sunlight will have to be used, and that would make the produce many times more expensive nullify the intended energy savings many times overs.
The start-up costs are too high, and it won't produce enough food to cover the costs of maintaining the building much less paying for it. Corn, wheat, rye grown inside, its just not practical. I don't think this guy has ever driven across the mid-west or through the mississippi delta. This a lame idea, no investor will go for it.
Marijuana Growers have been perfecting this for years, getting the maximum harvest in the littlest amount of space.
The only downside I see is there would be less need for manual labor therefore making a much more complex job market. Just like the computer made offices full of typewriters obsolete.
Would also have a huge impact on illegal immigration if you catch my drift :)
I can't wait till all our foods come from these and logging of forests to make farmland finally stops.
Alexfantastico26 1 week ago
Very nice video - used it to illustrate a blog post about Vertical Farming on Nextstarfish
NextStarfish 2 months ago
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This is an out-of the box technology that needs to be studied well and implemented since the universe is still considered basically relying on agriculture as their basic source for economic development.
TheDaimos70 3 months ago
Comment removed
TheDaimos70 3 months ago
its a good idea but anything but trees who need the wind to strengten them.
yohanbab 6 months ago
see google-street view : gooDOTgl/DdvN7
leguanfarmer 7 months ago
Why did they put a photo of this shopping centre in Cologne, Germany at 1:59? what does this have to do with vertical farming?
leguanfarmer 7 months ago
I see two major problems with the notion of vertical farming as a solution to food shortages:
First, it requires a MASSIVE infrastructure. We're talking about building towers and bringing the farm inside. Traditional farms use what is already there.
Second, it's far more labor-intensive, increasing the cost of producing the food even more.
It just doesn't work when you scale it up to produce food for millions. And let's not forget the impact of producing all the tech required to go vertical.
SBFloppie 8 months ago
@SBFloppie
What tech? it's not exactly that hard to stack greenhouses onto of each other. No need for any serious infrastructure, just use light weight materials like wood/aluminum and lots of glass. The structure doesn't necessarily have to be that tall, as long as it's contained it will be able to produce crops at a higher efficiency than traditional farming, with the benefit of no runoff and less land being used.
SupremeCommander360 7 months ago
@SupremeCommander360 The production of metal that can support skyscraper-sized farms like he is proposing (hint: you'll need steel) has a substantial environmental impact. We're talking strip-mining for the metals, chemical treatments, foundries, and the logistics to ship the material to the farm site. Once something like this is constructed it might be sustainable, but the cost of constructing it isn't. And like I said, it's MUCH more labor-intensive. You can't mass harvest vertical farms.
SBFloppie 7 months ago
@SBFloppie
I disagree, creating a sustainable vertical farm that produces crops year round in a controlled pest-free environment is worth the cost of mining the materials to construct one. Think about it, transportation costs become dramatically reduced now that crops can be grown in a city and do not have to transported long distances, the carbon footprint will be reduced over long term, no oil-based pesticides, fungicides, or herbicides.
SupremeCommander360 7 months ago 2
@SBFloppie
And who is to say that you couldn't use a preexisting building for such a structure? Of course it would require many renovations but it would most likely still cost less than making one from scratch. Retrofitting a closed mechanized harvesting system to harvest crops that are too labor intensive could solve labor problems inside of one of these buildings, at least it still not like diesel powered farming equipment used on every modern farm today. Hydroponics = no plowing/spraying
SupremeCommander360 7 months ago
@xanthoptica: google the artificial leaf developed by MIT. It will produce hydrogen for essentially nothing, pair that with the fuel cells developed by bloom energy, and the led lighting used by grow ops in bc and you've got an energy efficient solution. The technology keeps getting better and the price keeps dropping.
TheSchwabyLlama 9 months ago
Now what we need to solve is getting cattle, sheep, goat, hog, chicken, turkey... fish...
krislyttle 9 months ago
@krislyttle They're already doing Confined Animal Feeding Operations.....Henry Ford never meant to take his factory model and apply it to farming/food/animals
texasriverfarmer1 5 months ago
There are a lot of buildings that are used for practically next to nothing in terms of space. You work and you see so much space- for a room with only a desk a chair , a few pictures and some sorts. Just because of design aesthetics. It is called modern architecture. There are thousands of buildings like that around the world. Now imagine giving them up to create -not vertical farms, but instead large stadium sized farms. then it will be closer to practical.
shova213 9 months ago
I want one :)
frognoutdoors 9 months ago
if we cannot afford to innovate future supply increases then I suggest you start getting ready to meet your Death panel counselor if you are past 55 years old . and for the next 20 years of Depopulation your new home will be a FEMA CAMP concentration Center complete with Gas chamber and Oven , all that will be remembered is that you were to Expensive to keep around !!!!!!
TireLift 10 months ago
he can grow the veggies and fruit crops in these facilities and that would open up the farmland for more cereal grain production , duh winning !!!!!
TireLift 10 months ago
Are you people crazy - do some calculations on exactly how much land is needed to grow enough grain to feed millions of people! I am all for local food - but I cannot honestly see how these buildings can provide enough food to feed the population of large cities. When was the last time this guy went out to a broad acre farm producing the millions of tonnes of grain that feed the population. This guy is in la-la-land.
Hamish121212 10 months ago
@Hamish121212 You forget the fact that such a building can grow products ALL THE TIME and at a CONSTANT RATE. Are you forgetting that most places in the world do have seasons? Try to grow anything useful when your land is covered in a thick pack of snow.
In these buildings no harvests fail: no diseases or plagues, no droughts or monsoons, no night frost etc. So efficiency rises enormously.
A lot of soil is used up due to our ways of farming, we're actually creating deserts!
flexyco 9 months ago
I'm all for this idea but done a drastically different way. Watch the film Zeitgeist Moving Forward, which shows an in-depth perspective into what is actually wrong with our societies and the barriers and collapse we face as well as real solutions that incorporate these ideas and many others.
GimmeTheReason 10 months ago
So..... what if someone were to put a poison in the waste that is given to the plants that feed them? The plants would be killed, and a crop ruined. What if bugs got inside and ate the plants? It would be a breading ground!! What if we become too dependent on these close looped systems? If a terrorist attack occurred on one of these buildings, we will have no other horizontal crops to use for food, we would starve! Same goes for if a natural disaster took one out. Not a good idea.
koolman280 11 months ago
@koolman280 It's easy to keep bugs out. And don't forget it's easy to store large stacks of food (just use pure nitrogen and keep it cool) so if a harvest is compromised it's easy to restart and the population would still be safe.
Poison and terrorist attacks ... You must be an american. Most of the planet feels and is safe.
flexyco 9 months ago
@flexyco You're making points without backing any of it up "It's easy to keep bugs out" thanks for enlightening me on how to do so. And then you just bash me at the end, your argument sucks, retry.
koolman280 9 months ago
@koolman280 Isn't it obvious? All the air and water will be filtered and irradiated with UVC, entering and leaving will be done through an airlock.
endotwikipediasotorg/wiki/Cleanroom
flexyco 9 months ago
@flexyco Still haven't explained anything, or your 2nd point, or explained what your last point has to do with anything.
koolman280 9 months ago
@koolman280 Use your own brain. I'm finished with this.
flexyco 9 months ago
@flexyco Lol, just because you lost.
koolman280 9 months ago
@koolman280 Mwahahaha! You didn't even try!
flexyco 9 months ago
Where will the dirt come from? Will you be using composted dirt from farms around the world or will you be using topsoil?
earthrages 1 year ago
@earthrages Dirt? No. Minerals and nutrients dissolved in water. Some crops can even be grown with their roots hanging in midair, and the water is sprayed around in a fine mist.
flexyco 9 months ago
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I don't see how the sun would get to any of the crops but the top layer. Maybe the edges at most, but certainly not the kind of sunlight they would need. Maybe a helix design or spiral staircase one, but that would take up a lot of materials.
crazytown232001 1 year ago
but r the veggies got chemicals on them?
watty924 1 year ago
40pointplan, my followup comments on your YouTube video were civil and on point, they required approval by you, and they were not approved. This is an important issue, and the critical perspective needs to be aired. If you are trying to save the world, then do it the right way, not the impossible way.
ApostateAbe 1 year ago
New Movie coming out soon "40 Point Plan". First ever Save the World shows how Food Sky Towers (Vertical Farming) will SIGNIFICANTLY help these struggling farmers you refer to along with eliminating billion dollar crop failures and cross contamination with livestock causing people to die. What if a company was the exact opposite of Monsanto and actually gave 33% off all profits to "We the People" who are struggling. What if Food Sky Towers they build sole purpose was to eliminate hunger...?
40pointplan 1 year ago
Question: how is this going to affect the rural agricultural communities that are currently providing this country's food and the small family farmers that are already struggling due to market bullys like Monsanto? sounds great ideally, but corporate farming can't end well.
holdingoutformyhero 1 year ago
@holdingoutformyhero New Movie coming soon called "40 Point Plan". A Save the World film showing how Food Sky Towers will SIGNIFICANTLY help these struggling farmers you refer to, along with eliminating billion dollar crop failures and cross contamination with livestock causing people to die. What if a company was the exact opposite of Monsanto and actually gave 33% off all profits to "We the People" who are struggling. What if Food Sky Towers they build sole purpose was to eliminate hunger...?
40pointplan 1 year ago
@holdingoutformyhero Well, ecologically speaking, farmscrapers would be able to produce way more food per acre of land than either subsistence or modern farming, which would cut down on the amount of land needed to grow food. Economically speaking, there'd be no need to use pesticides to ensure that crops are protected from unwanted pests, bad weather wouldn't be an issue, and transportation costs would go way down if these farmscrapers were placed inside the large cities that would need them.
ShadowWolfTJC 1 year ago
@holdingoutformyhero Still, although I do think that these new innovative agricultural methods promise to revolutionize agriculture as we know it, I doubt that traditional farming or even subsistence farming would disappear in the decades, or even centuries, to come. These farmscrapers would need to face some extra challenges in order to be able to grow, say, bananas or pineapples as opposed to lettuce or broccoli, so expect to receive those goods from your local plantation. ;-)
ShadowWolfTJC 1 year ago
@holdingoutformyhero Finally, if you're worried about corporate greed making life more difficult for people, then maybe you should consider growing your own food in your own backyard, though if you live in an apartment complex that doesn't have a backyard to grow food in, then you might want to take a look at the idea of growing your own garden on the roof of buildings. Perhaps you could get together with your neighbors to create your own community garden on top of your apartment building? ;-)
ShadowWolfTJC 1 year ago
if the fuckin crooks stopped sprayin chemicals in the fuckin skies,we could all grow our own good foods in the soils in our back yards.everything for control.stop poisoning our foods,water,n skies,Please!!!
watty924 1 year ago
@watty924 The poisons apparently don't stop farmers from growing their crops even when the poisons are directly applied, so I think it should be a difficult assertion that those same poisons are keeping your garden plants from growing. OTOH, maybe I have high expectations for commentators on YouTube, given what is typical around here.
ApostateAbe 1 year ago
if the fuckin crooks stopped sprayin chemicals in the fuckin skies,we could all grow our own good foods in the soils in our back yards.everything for control.stop poisoning our foods,water,n skies!!!
watty924 1 year ago
Dr. Despommier will be giving a short talk at a entrepreneur's conference in NJ on Oct 24 for those interested.
naceaus.org/annual_conference_2010_info.htm
KellerRune 1 year ago
For anyone going to that conference, please ask him about the sunlight problem. He should not have been invited, but it is not as if it is easy to deter such people with arguments from physics and geometry. Even the editors of popular science publications don't seem to get it. Idealism wins the day, in the short term, at least.
ApostateAbe 1 year ago
@ApostateAbe - Jesus dude, give it a rest. Not everyone is as negative as you.
fibberznjelly 1 year ago
@fibberznjelly I know the feeling. If you are active about a good cause, then it gives you a good feeling, regardless of whether or not the cause is a delusion. When some stranger comes along and says what it really is, then the high is gone. I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer. I mean to be constructive, to tell the truth, to correct something that is objectively and morally wrong. If you don't believe me, then check my math. Don't be in it just for the high.
ApostateAbe 1 year ago
@ApostateAbe
While your point on the amount of light a vertical farm could collect from sunlight is correct, aren't you forgetting that we can produce artificial light which mimics sunlight.
In that case we can reduce the vertical farm to a simple equation, energy = food. Put electricity in for powering the lights (and anything else) and get food out.
You would still probably save energy overall due to the concentrated nature of the building reducing transport and other costs.
richzap2 1 year ago
@richzap2 I wish we could probably save energy that way, and the bottom line is: probably not. Traditional farms already make use of a very efficient and the most sustainable energy source there is: the Sun. The energy cost of transportation is only a minor disadvantage when compared to the cost of collecting energy and converting it to artificial sunlight that vertical farms would need. Alternet did a study on it, and you can find it here: alternet.org/food/146686/
ApostateAbe 1 year ago
@ApostateAbe
Had a look through that, I kind of expected those figures for the complete production from vertical farms and they're pretty nasty (8x US energy production) but a few points.
First they looked at wheat production, not consumption, US consumption of wheat is less than half that of production (25M tons/year compared to 60M in production).
Second I don't think anyone who's suggested this is expecting vertical farms to completely take over production from regular farms.
richzap2 1 year ago
@ApostateAbe
It's also intended as a means to produce food where there is no other means, in those cases its simply a matter of footing the energy bill or starving. Many countries cannot feed themselves from regular agricultural techniques, this may provide a way of doing it.
In any case I think that until a prototype is built it will be difficult to see exactly how good or bad it will be economically. But the potential it offers is enough that it would certainly be worth a try.
richzap2 1 year ago
@richzap2 Any country that can afford to build vertical farms and produce artificial sunlight to sustain them can also sustainably import the food from elsewhere for much cheaper. When there is a poor and dense population on the Moon with no soil, then maybe vertical farms will be a good idea. The economics and physics can be modeled with feasibility studies funded by interested investors, which probably explains why not one vertical farm has ever been built.
ApostateAbe 1 year ago
@richzap2 Let's be clear - sunlight is the limiting factor for crop production. The energy that goes into the food we eat has to come from somewhere; ultimately, it's the Sun. The more conversions we make along the way (say, using electricity from solar cells to run artificial lighting) the more of that energy we lose - easily on the order or 40-50%. There may be places where *supplemental* artificial light make sense, but the sunlight problem has been blissfully ignored in vertical farming.
xanthoptica 9 months ago
I hope I drove home the point that the criticism is not just a pessimistic dismissal. The problem of sunlight really is an insurmountably fatal problem to the whole idea. I sent an email to Dr. Despommier, and I begged him to stop misleading so many capable and motivated environmental activists, for the sake of the planet Earth. Judging by the wall of unsold books behind him in the video, I don't think he will listen. :(
ApostateAbe 1 year ago
I think I see where your problem is - sunlight. You are forgetting some basic physics. Sunlight does not shine a 90 degrees to the earths surface and a vertical farm does not necessarily have to be vertical. Imagine if you will and farm that is directed at the perfect angle to absorb the suns ray, rather like a series of steps but steeper. Then imagine that back of the building being reflective, rather like the curved sunbathing things that women used to use to tan under their chins.
bigstarflying 1 year ago
@bigstarflying Thanks. No need to accuse me of forgetting basic physics. My objections are all about the basic physics, but the problem of limited sunlight seems to be ignored by all of the advocates. You propose solving it by building these things at an angle orthogonal to mean vector of sunlight (I presume). Well, great, that solves the physics, but it also means that it still will do no good to stack them, and it will not save much land or energy. Alternatively, you can (continued)
ApostateAbe 1 year ago
@bigstarflying Alternatively, you can stack them and solve the sunlight problem by putting sufficiently enormous space between each layer so that no lower layer is in the shadow of the upper layer, maybe each layer is as tall as it is wide. Well, then the problem is no longer basic physics but economics. It takes enormous cost and energy and not enough payoff. But, if you really believe in it, then do something that hasn't been done and design an economical vertical farm with sunlight in mind.
ApostateAbe 1 year ago
I am on your side, bigstarflying. I believe that these problems to vertical farming are physically and economically insurmountable, but I encourage you to find solutions, and you can do that by building a better model of vertical farming with this very common criticism concerning limited sunlight in mind. If you succeed, then you will save the world. If you don't, then you will have evidence to encourage others to direct their activism to more practical solutions. I wish you all the best of luck
ApostateAbe 1 year ago
@ApostateAbe
Think about the sun shining at 45 degrees. A vertical plane (wall) will receive the same sunlight as a horizontal plane (ground). Now create a convex vertical wall facing the sun. This will receive more sunlight than the horizontal plane, as it effectively tracks the sun. Then think of that wall sloping back at an angle of 45 degrees (with layer upon layer of crops). This will receive vastly more sunlight than the ground and take up significantly less space.
bigstarflying 1 year ago
@bigstarflying Wonderful. So suppose a vert farm covers a horiz area x by x. The first layer will have to be x tall for a farm area=x^2 (crops grow vertically and need horiz floor). For no shadow problem, the 2nd layer has to start from 2x and extend to 3x above the ground. Each layer requires 2x of height.
A World Trade Center tower was 208 by 208 by 1368 ft.
ApostateAbe 1 year ago
A WTC tower was 208 by 208 by 1368 ft. If we size a vert farm to WTC tower, then x=208 ft, and number of levels of vertical farm=1368/(2x)=3.3. You can fit 3 layers of farm, to produce almost 3 acres of farmland (208^2/(43560 ft^2/acre).
The average farm size is 434 acres.
ApostateAbe 1 year ago
Continued from Alternet:
"A significant portion of the light hitting the building would be turned back by the glass, and direct sunlight would penetrate into the interior of a vertical farm only when the sun is low in the sky (especially if, as Despommier recommends, two layers of plants are stuffed into each story.) Even then, it would reach the crop plants at a low angle, so that each square inch of leaf would receive much less light than if the light were hitting the leaf from above."
ApostateAbe 1 year ago
@ApostateAbe
I think you may have to do more of the thinking for yourself. Just cutting and pasting others opinions is not really going to help your rather negative stance.
bigstarflying 1 year ago
@bigstarflying Absolutely. I tried doing all of my own thinking, as you can see in my earlier comments. I suggested that it is a bad idea to stack crops for the same reason nobody stacks solar panels. And then I read the same point on Alternet. The article was written by someone who did all of the needed research and published it, so I used his findings, and that is actually the way science works. The problem of limited sunlight is fundamental to the physics of these things.
ApostateAbe 1 year ago
Paraphrase from Alternet.org's article, "Why Planting Farms in Skyscrapers Won't Solve Our Food Problems"
For obvious reasons, no one has ever proposed stacking solar panels one above the other. For the same reasons, crop fields cannot be layered one above the other without providing a substitute for the sunlight. Even with all-glass walls, the amount of light reaching plants on all of a high-rise would fall far short of what is needed.
ApostateAbe 1 year ago
How wonderful this application is. Egypt too needs it. Despite its excessive land space the country suffers from sever water limitation. The good idea here is to recycle everything, including irrigation water that leaves the system as drainage water that should be reclaimed and reused. This idea is applicable in Egypt only at one price: to replace the Egyptian population by another that thinks like Dr. Dixon Despommier. O.K., maybe by the 35th century by the return of some Egyptian from Mars
profdrfahmy 1 year ago
Seems like a really good idea. I'd like to see it done before we hoist this guy on our shoulders though. If it proves practical, it would certainly create a ton of jobs.
JPhillips011 1 year ago
The sunlight "problem" is easily solved if you understand the basics of surface area, direction of the sun and all the light that is wasted on a conventional "flat" crop.
1) A vertical farm, like a solar panel will be optimized for sunlight.
2) All the light that fall in between the crop can be recycled (reflection, tranparency)
3) The basics of the surface area of a 3D object over a 2D flat object.
rabidduckies 1 year ago
@rabidduckies Like so many ad hoc solutions, those solutions bring in more problems than the single problem it solves. In order to capture all the needed sunlight, you will need each floor to be as tall as it is wide or thereabouts, but I am not seeing that in any rendition. Glass and mirrors all over the place have a very high initial expense and high maintenance cost. If I am wrong, then design a solar-practical vertical farm that is better than a traditional farm. I haven't seen one yet.
ApostateAbe 1 year ago
Chris Morris came up with this idea in the 90s as a joke on his satire show Brasseye. Now it's being discussed as something real. Wow.
ChristopherDone 1 year ago
Yeah, I just looked at wiki for the pros and cons. I think the professor is just trying to sell his book.
The cost for lighting, the need to burn fuels to produce high levels of CO2 for the plants, light pollution caused by green houses (let alone skyscraper green houses), and the fact that this method doesn't even work on important crops (corn, rice, wheat) SEEMS to indicate that this is another implausible, unrealistic, futurist scam/plug to sell book/Utopian idea.
Aleprechaunist1987 1 year ago
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@Aleprechaunist1987 - nothing about what you say makes any sense. You are either posting as a satirical joke, or you really are an idiot.
dogbasilblue 1 year ago
Are we supposed to stack livestock too?
wiseidiot5763 1 year ago
I would really like to read more on the technique, because I'm very skeptical of a plan that claims that nutrition and water do not leave the buildings....
Aleprechaunist1987 1 year ago
were do plants inside the building get there light from? If they are crowded and have another flour above, they don't going to be delicious.
That only the plant leaves the building, that never going to happen! Were do the plants get there nutrition? If you move the product out of the cycle, you need to refill the nutritions at some point!
Its a god thing, if it is not to expensive in building the stuff. But, an ordinary greenhouse will do the job! Moreover the greenhouse can capture more sun!
unluckylion 1 year ago
i really like this idea, but it would cost a lot of money. Although i live in canada were we dont really need vertical farms.
check2wice 1 year ago
1:55 - [everybody gets fed] - exactly what has be genetically engineered
obliviongreen 1 year ago
@obamabinbiden911 Well, protocol would come into effect. Three steps in protocol: prevention, quarantine, extermination. Prevention could entail rigorous sterilization and disinfection as well as screening for all incoming and outgoing regions. Quarantine the areas infected. Finally, exterminate as a last option to prevent spreading contamination. In the end, regulation and protocol will make contamination EXTREMELY unlikely.
dreapster 1 year ago
"We could make flour, cupcakes, marvellous juicy... CUPCAKES!.!.! oooooh cupcakes...."
mbran96 1 year ago 5
5 people still play in farmville
calmsakura 1 year ago
As great an idea as this is, the second a plant disease, or a pest gets in the system, you lose everything..
SetTheRayToJerry 1 year ago
@SetTheRayToJerry You're not looking at it.
In an outdoor farm, the plants are exposed to the weather, terrestrial animals, birds, bacteria, insects, thieves, everything.
This is a completely controlled environment.
Think about it.
TalesFromTheKeyboard 1 year ago
At 1:30, he says "Wheat" like Stewie says "Cool Whip."
Thumbs up for me noticing?
bossbower 1 year ago
@bossbower how bout thumbs down for you saying thumbs up
grimzuccini 1 year ago
@bossbower Many people talk like that. Family Guy appeals to ignorant people who don't know this. Thumbs down for asking for it.
ChristopherDone 1 year ago
there is a ski hill in a building in the middle of the desert
I think fresh greens from a building in the middle of the desert is an even better idea
aeroponics research needs to catch up
moneyman10k 1 year ago
gr8 idea
f1adore 1 year ago
malthusianism. hilarious
a5dr3 1 year ago
hhhwweat
LittleJohnnyW 1 year ago
wtf?
FedoTecktoniK 1 year ago
2:00 lolwut?
Ioganstone 1 year ago
Can't we just kill people?
TheStarShooters 1 year ago
This is nothing new.
kjlhfgjksdf 1 year ago
2:00 is FTW!
RamoJack 1 year ago
Do this, t his needs to be done. No more of this pessimistic bullshit that plagues the development towards the future, no colorful, boring, flat, forget that and lets build up.
CyberSpectrumND 1 year ago
insted of doing all this complex ass stuff to support the rising number of people why dont we just sterilize a good chunk of earth? just because you can have kids doesnt mean you should. back when people were few in the bible it was ok but now theres to many of us... so fuck it.
bigperson666 1 year ago
@bigperson666 Agree.
TheMasochisticZebra 1 year ago
@bigperson666 how about you sterilize yourself and stop spreading the retard gene.
Nenshati19 1 year ago
@Nenshati19 we should fuck.
bigperson666 1 year ago
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PARADLACRISISQUEMEBA 1 year ago
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were essentially a vertical farm. This is actually profoundly ancient technology.
bundangbear 1 year ago 6
@bundangbear True, but remember, no one actually found ruins of this monument.
AyeAreDee 1 year ago
@AyeAreDee Yes, but it is discussed in great detail as being real, in scientific texts of the time, and ancient peoples did have a good notion of reality and fiction.
bundangbear 1 year ago
@bundangbear
There is nothing new under the sun, we forgot our past, therefor we needed to rediscover it
oAndyDanko 11 months ago
Humanity needs to control its population growth! End of story!
hopingtoflyaway 1 year ago
Why can't everyone just have a victory garden like me..? ;D haha jk
eternalsunshine182 1 year ago
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petujaymz 1 year ago
genius Arab countries need farming methods like that
abdulla1458 1 year ago
The idea is nice and futuristic, but I'm getting so tired of hearing this propaganda about overpopulation, global shortage of food, and global warming, and the solution is always more regulations and more taxes. I sometimes wish I lived on another planet free from everything.
karitube 1 year ago
Awesome but not practical. With the drawings alone it is big failure - plastics, concrete, processed wood and steel. Make the best dreams out from everyone's home backyard, simple but not costly. Agriculture is not a blue collar dream, we still got bare lands to be nurtured by common sense with nature.
cass2chk 1 year ago
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Theeffinfunnyvideos 1 year ago
Para que queremos invertir millones en dinero y en energia para algo que podemos hacer de forma natural en millones de hectares tierras abandonadas en todo el mundo?, por que queremos cambiar lo que ya funciona perfectamente?
mombata81 1 year ago
genius!
Tdfaria 1 year ago 30
I hate the way he says "Wheat" though... Why is he putting so much emphasis on the H? He's doing it to piss us off I bet...
shadowblade145 1 year ago
@shadowblade145 hahahahahaah
Krath117 1 year ago
Looks awesome! It's a great idea that we should all work on improving it further!
shadowblade145 1 year ago
microsoft coperight claim goes banana's D here..
jack869 1 year ago
its the future...
srikanth94 1 year ago 25
Interesting way to incorporate Germany's auf bau idea to farming...though, I can see this widening the gap between those who seek higher education and those who don't. With these buildings, it may come to be that you no longer need actual humans to spend whole days collecting the food...unless they already work for the company as an engineer whose essential function is maintaining the machinery, which would include clearing it of food.
Minnelpin 1 year ago
a m a z i n g ! ! ! ! ! s o c o o l ! ! !
ultimatelype 1 year ago 3
awesome
Niallphillips 1 year ago 6
imagne all dirt grown food becomes illegal "for santitary" reasons and then all food has to be grown behind locked doors and baracade fences....this happened with pork...all pork has to be raised on concrete...you cannot sell pork grown on the ground....so all the small hog farmers went out of busness...it wont be long before it will be illegal to grow your own food if we embrace all these "ideas" as wonderful for civilization. anything that fosters corporate farms is no friend to you.
centervilletn 1 year ago
@centervilletn I think that the benefits of vertical farming (AKA: feeding the world) out ways the negatives.
spotlightonapple 1 year ago
@spotlightonapple what obligation for feeding oneself does the world have? It occurs to me that all this "beneficence" may do more harm than good.Its because of the "humanitarianism" that we have an ever increasing popultation that is unable to provide for themselves.The idea that every inch of dirt on the planet should be occupied is craziness. Allocating energy for people to live in the high desert or 10 million deep in a city of 25 sq miles is insanity. There must be more practical solutions
centervilletn 1 year ago
This is a great idea!
I'd love to see one of those in real life.
Not only are they practical, but they also look really nice. :)
plasmavore 1 year ago
@plasmavore The thing is that the fact that they look really nice is really their only appeal. They are not practical in the least. They do not have the geometry to capture enough sunlight and they would inhabit valuable building space in cities.
ApostateAbe 1 year ago
Natality control NOW !!
HEKENU 1 year ago
A few years ago, I realised that there is a lot of wasted space on the rooftops of building in the cities, like shopping malls. I thought it would be a good idea to grow crops up there... I really should have written that down.
MrBenSampson 1 year ago
@MrBenSampson
mini vertical farms can be airlifted to city rooftops.
Sorrysouljahhh 1 year ago
@Sorrysouljahhh That would work. Now that I've seen this video, I can imagine the vertical farms being skyscrapers, adding to the skyline of many cities. They'd be able to mass-produce vegetables all year long, in an ideal environment... I'm starting to wonder why we aren't already doing this.
MrBenSampson 1 year ago
how about everyone just gets off their ass and grows their own food?
TrueInLight 1 year ago
@TrueInLight How would people living in apartments be able to feed themselves? What would they do during the winter?
MrBenSampson 1 year ago
@TrueInLight you first
34dolphan 1 year ago
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@34dolphan do you know me? dont think so..
TrueInLight 1 year ago
Großes Potential!!!. Sehr futuristisch und dennoch realistisch, bei richtiger Anwendung an Effizienz nicht zu überbieten. Aber, was ist die Folge auf den Weltmakt, wie verhalten sich die Preise, wer sind die Verlierer?
Ganze Regionen, Städte und Länder finanzieren sich durch ihre Agrarkultur und sind abhängig von ihr und ja das Land leided darunter.
Entwicklung kann in zweierlei hinsicht gefördert werden zum einen die Existenz der Vertical Farm an sich und zum anderen die Standortbestimmung.
djangito99 1 year ago
This sounds like a good idea to me but it would ruin companies like John Deere.
trscheit 1 year ago
@trscheit Unless John Deere invests in this farm.
MrBenSampson 1 year ago
Comment removed
trscheit 1 year ago
@MrBenSampson Ya but then they would be no longer be buying from the companies that give them their raw materials for their machinery.
trscheit 1 year ago
@trscheit How do you think they will build the vertical farms, if they don't have materials? If a farm is built in every major city, an enormous amount of materials will be needed. There will be machinery in the farms, which will need replacement. The material companies will probably become wealthier.
MrBenSampson 1 year ago
His name is Dr. DICKson lol
pabloenis 1 year ago
then you harvest and then you shit! yea
dumbnetworks 1 year ago
Mars would be an awesome place to grow produce. Shipping would be a bitch.
jab0805 1 year ago
Rather than creating massive, unproven new spending by building crazy structures for this, why not go into highly populated areas, rent the top ten floors of every skyscraper in sight, and see if you can make it work there?
How many people can you feed from one building? Land is a lot cheaper than glass, maybe we should help world farmers mechanize and become highly efficient first. I bet there's a lot more land production possible in this world than we're getting out now.
pgioja 1 year ago
Widespread high density farming will rise before this ,because of the high startup cost of vertical structures.
Mikegardensandcooks 1 year ago
He can't recycle water and nutrions, because they leave with the products.
b3h1nd321 1 year ago 2
@b3h1nd321
They recycle the 80% that doesn't leave with the product
Sorrysouljahhh 1 year ago
@Sorrysouljahhh
Average water percentage that plants are made of is ~65-80%.
They can't fully recycle anything.
b3h1nd321 1 year ago
The limited resource is light, NOT land. If you farm vertically, there is not enough sunlight to grow more plants than would fit on the building's footprint.
This guy clearly does not have a background in agriculture.
Richardgwm 1 year ago
@Richardgwm perhaps artificial lighting could be use?
eatingmaplesyrup 1 year ago
@eatingmaplesyrup Artificial sunlight will have to be used, and that would make the produce many times more expensive nullify the intended energy savings many times overs.
ApostateAbe 1 year ago
The start-up costs are too high, and it won't produce enough food to cover the costs of maintaining the building much less paying for it. Corn, wheat, rye grown inside, its just not practical. I don't think this guy has ever driven across the mid-west or through the mississippi delta. This a lame idea, no investor will go for it.
stretch34318 1 year ago
Marijuana Growers have been perfecting this for years, getting the maximum harvest in the littlest amount of space.
The only downside I see is there would be less need for manual labor therefore making a much more complex job market. Just like the computer made offices full of typewriters obsolete.
Would also have a huge impact on illegal immigration if you catch my drift :)
ziggyisaiggy 1 year ago
I'm not against vertical farms, but I don't support the justification.
There's no need to simply accept urbanisation - w should improve life on the countryside, so people can live well without needing a car.
No need to accept populationn growth - sen giirls to school!
As to industrialising: that's already happened, with large monocultures.
As to money, see "money as debt
as to killing/21leftcenter" check ecological foorprint. Killing americans is far more efficient than killing ethiopians
ronaldonmg 1 year ago
The risk of crops freezing, or other climate catastrophys would be greatly reduced. This would reduce potential crop/ investment losses.
demofactory 1 year ago
This will make people in this time lose Many jobs for farmers just think about it
branstan100 1 year ago
@tropicalthunder232
another biewer fan,burn him! XD
MrSerborag 1 year ago
this is a stupid idea the farms will blow over in the wind and kill people
featheryfriend 1 year ago
get the guy from Man v. Food to stop eating so much
BakingRecipes 1 year ago
As long as major coporations don't touch this, it's brilliant stuff.
I think there something like this already started.
Jogeta5 1 year ago
I'm just wondering why can't we control the population growth?
BooMers232 1 year ago
Perople have disliked this?
Canberra3lites 1 year ago
cooooooool
hansikelo 1 year ago
woow
MsNeusha 1 year ago
the inventor of this idea should get a Nobel Price ...
PS: 2 Justin Bieber fans (i coudnt resist ;D)
MrSerborag 1 year ago
@MrSerborag fag..sorry couldnt resist ;D
tropicalthunder232 1 year ago