BIG IDEAS: Dickson Despommier's Vertical Farming

If there weren't any pesky practical limitations, what world-changing device would you invent? In the second installment of Babelgum and GOOD's new Big Ideas competition, Columbia professor Dickson Despommier imagines filling New Yorks skyscrapers with farms.

Category:

Comedy

Tags:

• Vertical
• Farming
• Urban
• Dickson
• Despommier
• Columbia
• New
• York
• City
• Local
• Food
• Comedy
• Environmentalism

[mountaindew171]

I like how the arms of the people harvesting at the end are brown. Even in vertical farming the mexicans are still the farmworkers!

[kennegun]

One experimental Vertical Farm = Cost of 2 cruise missiles. We can't afford that.

[UkyYanni]

So the 'only' advantage of this system is that space is saved.

[UkyYanni]

This ofcourse is a revolutionair idea, but what I see a problem in the amount of light that one tower consumes. I assume that Sir Dickson wants to build a lot of these next to eachother. But my estimation is that they will take eachothers sunlight. That way, building these is inefficient. So, one option is growing crops like we did, on the ground, the other option is doing it in towers, who are far away from eachother. Between these towers, building crops will be inefficient.

[letusvibe]

@kennegun We could if we stopped building missiles.

[jokesterpants]

@kennegun Can't afford what? The loss of two cruise missiles when we have plenty or the number of people this idea could feed. Put these in every metropolitan area in the world and you've just solved the global food crisis. Perhaps tensions in the world would decrease a bit if people aren't completely starving. Not to mention this would create jobs and it would drop the price of food to be more affordable. So I think the real thing is we can't afford to not do this.

[drjameswong]

This will work if the people in the city are prepared to pay US$ 8.00 per lettuce at today's price.

[errorstudios]

@gtpooh Brasseye was a spoof show, I was kinda joking... look it up on youtube

[gtpooh]

@errorstudios @errorstudios Of course it's not "new" . . . it's just you are out of touch. The website verticalfarm org has been around for nearly a decade as I recall. I have known about these ideas since the mid to late 1990s. If this was "new" to you . . . omg, you would NOT believe what is out here.

[errorstudios]

This isn't an original idea, it was on Brasseye, a TV show in the late 90s.

[schwiiZZZ]

do the plants or crops on the bottom floor have enogh sunlight./??

[XUltra00]

Fund it now