Farms of the Future

[GaryD]

Hi,

I was leapfrogging around YouTube and I came across this presentation.....Farms of the Future.

I then chased the name Despommier and vertical farming around......and happened upon......this.
My interest in 'vertical farming' is probably more geared to the backyard level but I love the idea of stacking elements......and integration of agriculture and architecture .....the integration of dwellings and food production systems.

Anybody else get excited by these sorts of things?

Gary

[Dia]

I've seen a lot of these on Inhabitat.com and thought they were a bit silly since if everyone used land/water to grow food instead of grass; and designed buildings so then instead of a roof there was a greenhouse on top then we would save tons of space and cut down on farm land. Also he talked about problem of feeding ever increasing population of the earth - 7 billion right now; with 1 billion starving to death. The vertical farm would have zero effect on those people and zero effect on the area of which the population is actually growing. In most western countries the population from births is actually declining.

It would be interesting however to compare how much energy that building consumes/takes to build compared to a farm that makes an equal amount of food and shipping food.

Backyard system with vertical farming on a smaller scale would be pretty cool though.

[ecosystem]

Hi Gary-

Yes - I am very interested in this type of thing. You might find this an interesting read, if you haven't seen it before. http://www.thirdmillenniumfarming.com/

[GaryD]

Hi Dia,

In most western countries the population from births is actually declining.

That's an interesting fact that many doomsday prophets seem to gloss over.

Backyard system with vertical farming on a smaller scale would be pretty cool though.

Vertical farming (say up to three or four tiers) for backyard purposes is a great idea.

The price of urban land is such that vertical farming is a no-brainer for small-scale food production. Greenhouses are relatively lightweight structures so having them mounted on top of another level (or two) is a great idea.

Stacking of elements is a key Permaculture principle and it also features in some of my Microponics designs.

ecosystem......I looked at the 3MF site. Interesting, but certainly out of my league. Some of the ideas illustrated on the site.....like insect flour.....evidence some out-of-the-box thinking.

Gary

[ecosystem]

Gary - yes insect flour is a bit out there - but at least they are acknowledging that the methods to get us where we are today, are not going to support a larger population. At some point we will have to deal with the unpleasant subject of population growth, or nature will take care of it for us in a possibly more dramatic fashion. Have you taken a Permaculture Design Certificate course? Or read the original text? I'm a huge fan of Permaculture, and wish it was part of school curriculum. It teaches systems thinking, instead of the usual small scope of how we look at things. And you can look at any scale from your home all the way up to human settlement patterns and beyond. There are 27 principles, and stacking elements is only one of them! I'm really interested to find out at what point the stacking inhibits the growth due to less light reaching the plant. Do you know of anybody that has studied that? I know that there can be a lot of diffuse light in a greenhouse, but at some density it obviously isn't feasible.

[GaryD]

Hi ecosystem,

Gary - yes insect flour is a bit out there

My initial thought was that it was unusual but then I remembered that the culinary cultures of many countries include the consumption of various types of insects......and insect flour would just make their consumption a bit easier for the less adventurous diner.....and it would make their use for general cooking purposes a lot easier.

Have you taken a Permaculture Design Certificate course? Or read the original text? I'm a huge fan of Permaculture, and wish it was part of school curriculum. It teaches systems thinking, instead of the usual small scope of how we look at things. And you can look at any scale from your home all the way up to human settlement patterns and beyond. There are 27 principles, and stacking elements is only one of them!

I haven't done the PDC course.....but I do have a copy of just about everything that Mollison and/or Holmgren (and a variety of other Permaculture writers) have produced.

Obviously, Permaculture has influenced my thinking to a marked extent when it comes to Microponics system design......as it has all other backyard food production advocates.

Like you, I think it should be part of the school curriculum......particularly when you consider all of the other less useful things that kids are taught.

I'm really interested to find out at what point the stacking inhibits the growth due to less light reaching the plant. Do you know of anybody that has studied that? I know that there can be a lot of diffuse light in a greenhouse, but at some density it obviously isn't feasible.

When I think of stacking elements, it's not necessarily just plants that I'm talking about. It might be fish tanks (or other very heavy elements) on the bottom......with micro-livestock housing above the fish tanks......and with a growing system above that.

It's not inconceivable that you could have as many as five or six such integrations in a structure that is the height of a shipping container (9.5'), for example. Imagine the amount of food that could come out of a 40' container that featured a system that integrated fish, worms, quail, rabbits, chickens vegetables and herbs

Gary

[ecosystem]

Hi Gary-

It's not inconceivable that you could have as many as five or six such integrations in a structure that is the height of a shipping container (9.5'), for example. Imagine the amount of food that could come out of a 40' container that featured a system that integrated fish, worms, quail, rabbits, chickens vegetables and herbs

Now you are talking - and if the feed was coming from various local "waste" aka "resource" streams you'd really be onto something - that's the direction I'm trying to take. Are you thinking of artificial lighting or would your container have access to sunlight?

[GaryD]

Hi ecosystem,

While I'm in love with shipping containers, the container idea is purely theoretical at this stage.

You could grow plants on top of the container......in the open or a greenhouse fabricated for the purpose. You could also build a sun-facing greenhouse along one side of the container.

If you had to grow inside of the container, you could use HPS or metal halide lights which not only produce a lot of light but heat also. In a cold climate, the heat would be valuable for moderating the temperature inside the container for the other fish, plants and animals that live in there, too.

You can build similar integrations on a much smaller scale, too. In fact, it's the true backyard-scale that most encourages a tiered approach to food production.....because of the restraints of space, cost of land, climatic conditions, etc.

Gary

[Dia]

Hm I remember watching a documentary ( I believe ) and in Africa there was a lake with huge swarms of flies and they use wet pans to collect the flies. They then bunch the flies up into patties and cook them like hamburgers. Thought it was pretty cool; and the host said they tasted excellent.

Interesting fact: "Nearly 80 percent of the world's population relies on bugs for food"

I like the shipping container idea though; could cut one into a L shape and make a lean to greenhouse and stack that above another shipping container with fish/live stock in it.

[drewb]

wow it amazes me where a bit of lateral thinking can and does lead the idea of using shiping containers as a food production unit is very interesting as in some countries there is a surplus of unused containers to the point that some countries are turning them into housing for low economic areas instead of building new homes...

Drew