The Vertical Farm Blog

We're Moving!

2011-03-03T14:55:00.000-08:00

Dear Loyal Readers,

As part of an effort to refocus the Vertical Farm message, we're moving the blogging operation 100% over to the main VF site, http://www.verticalfarm.com/. There, you'll have access to all the information you've grown to love on this site, plus weekly articles written by the one, the only--Dr. Dickson Despommier.

It's been fun learning and writing about the world through the lens of Vertical Farming, and I hope all of you find the new set-up more useful and enjoyable.

Thanks a lot!!

The Vertical Farmer

New Vertical Farm Design

2010-10-15T10:50:00.000-07:00

The Incheon International Design Awards (IIDA) 2010 Award winners have just been announced on Design Bloom, and one of them is for a vertical farm. The designers, Benet Dalmau, Saida Dalmau, Anna Julibert, and Carmen Vilar expain:

We wanted to build a new environmentally-friendly town where the environment is considered as an important part of everyday life. We propose "Spiral Garden System": a public sustainable place like a green heart, easy to maintain and self-sufficient, created by a joint population that will stimulate social interaction among neighbors...To sum it up, we propose an ecological project in a way to give sustainable change to daily city lives, where humans and nature can coexist.

Sounds great to me! And after looking at the pictures, I say: Do it!

To read more about this project and other in the IIDA 2010 competition, visit Design Bloom.

Green Right Now Interview with Dickson Despommier

2010-10-13T10:55:00.000-07:00

Now that the book has been released, media outlets are increasingly interested in Q &A's with our VF guru, Dr. Despommier. Below is an excerpt from a recent interview done by Samantha Weinstein of Green Right Now.

What would happen if this was put into effect on a grand scale? What would happen to small farmers who are already struggling?

This is what happens already: The farms eventually fail and big corporations step in and say, “It’s okay. I don’t care if your farm fails. We will supply you with seeds and we will pay you a living wage to farm with our seeds.” So you have Monsanto and Cargill and other corporations taking over these small farms. Even if the farms fail on an annual basis for many years, it wouldn’t matter to Cargill because they own so much farmland that 80 percent will succeed regardless. That is why 2 percent of the farmers in the US control 50 percent of the farming. They take advantage of the farms that are already there. They buy their farms and say, “You can stay in business. We will even double the amount of money you made farming, but we want you to farm what we want you to farm.” And some farmers agree to that because they like farming. That’s not a solution though, is it? That’s an industrial application of a failing technology to an increasingly difficult situation where fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides have to be used more and more to produce the same amount of food. It wears out the land and spoils the environment.

To read the interview in its entirety, head on over here.

And if you haven't already, go check out the book!

Grab Your Copy In Bookstores Today!

2010-10-12T09:01:00.000-07:00

I began today with a stroll to my local Barnes and Noble. At long last, I was holding the finished product of over a year of hard work, and let me tell you, it was blissful.

This book is packed full of persuasive prose making the case for a new kind of agriculture. Pages of shiny images accompany the text, limning the words with carefully selected visual stimulants. If you don't already have your copy (it's day one, I know, but still...), I highly recommend grabbing one for you and one for your favorite niece or nephew next time you're at the bookstore. If anything, this book will spark the imagination--and for that alone, it's relevancy is indisputable.

How to Solve Crisis: Use Less Water

2010-10-07T08:11:00.000-07:00

I just came across a brief interview with the Director General of the International Water Management Institute, Dr. Colin Chartres. The IWMI is one of 15 international research centers supported by something called the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, whose official Vision is: "To reduce poverty and hunger, improve human health and nutrition, and enhance ecosystem resilience through high-quality international agricultural research, partnershp and leadership." (Seems like the CGIAR ought to have some good reasons to advocate vertical farming.) Anyway, the part I wanted to share with you was what Dr. Colin Chartres had to say when Nature asked about the worldwide water crisis:

What is causing the crisis?

Agriculture is the biggest user of fresh water, making up 70–90% of the annual water demand for many countries. This will have to change, because global food production is going to have to double over the next 40 years to meet the needs of a growing population. Farmers will have to increase production without using any more water than they do today.

(image from Eco Localizer)
Well all right. Can anyone think of a proven method of growing more food with less water? I can. It's going to be so important to increase the hydroponics education in order for vertical farming to have its best chance at success. Groups like the Institue of Simplified Hydroponics and Boswyck Farms here in New York are empowering people with this knowledge, and I commend their efforts. Still, if someone offered lessons to bodies like the IWMI and the CGIAR, I think we might see a broader shift in attitude around hydroponics--and attitudes can go a long way.

Robo-Plant

2010-10-06T13:00:00.000-07:00

I saw this from Andrew Price over at GOOD magazine.

This "nomadic plant" functions as follows:

Vegetation and microorganisms live in symbiosis inside the body of the Nomadic Plants robot. Whenever its bacteria require nourishment, the self-sufficient robot will move towards a contaminated river and 'drink' water from it. Through a process of microbial fuel cell, the elements contained in the water are decomposed and turned into energy that can feed the brain circuits of the robot. The surplus is then used to create life, enabling plants to complete their own life cycle.

The designer, Gilberto Esparaza, has a history of coming up with projects that make you think twice about the world we live in. For that, we thank you, Gilberto. The world benefits when we're pushed to think.

Urban Ag Status Update

2010-10-05T15:34:00.000-07:00

It seems like just yesterday I was sitting in a room with Newark's Deputy Mayor, Stephen Pryor, where he voiced Newark's support and pursuit of Vertical Farming in his town--our slogan, it was decided, would be, "Bringing the Garden Back to the Garden State." Then Chicago's Mayor Daley trumpeted the same message from his mayoral throne, only to announce his abdication from the position a few short months later. In New York, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer has been very consistent in his advocacy for Vertical Farming. And it makes sense that he should be: New York City is the most densely populated US city with more than 70,000 residents. Unfortunately, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been more tepid in his support.

I know it's easy to think that things are very stagnant in this sphere, that the naysayers are winning. Actually, they're not, and I'm going to look at a few recent initiatives that bode well for our ultimate goal of a Vertical Farm-fed world.

First of all, media coverage of vertical farming and the broader topic of urban agriculture has been way up in the past few months. Inhabitat, Financial Times, Sustainable Industries and the Wall Street Journal have published stories within the past month exploring the subject. It seems like every day there's some new story published heralding the wave of urban agricultural projects.

The Gazette focuses on the Chicago project, Plant Chicago, directed by developer John Edel, which will soon begin to grow food inside of a warehouse at 1048 W. 37th St. in Bridgeport, just outside of Chicago. This is going to be huge for urban agriculture: a tangible example of high-intensity aquaponics being done inside a city.

And then there's the new company EcoVeggies, which leases an aeroponic growing technology from AeroFarms, a company run by Ed Hardwood, whose past experience include working on Controlled Environment Agriculture at Cornell University. EcoVeggies was founded by three ex-Wall Streeters, which is important because it shows that finance-types see value in this industry. If money makes the world go 'round, then having these guys on board is a good leading indicator of where we're headed. The New York Times reports:

“The produce will be sold and used in the areas immediately surrounding Newark to start with, and then we expect to be able to service the [New York, New Jersey, Connecticut] area...We have a substantial pipeline of prospects and expect to close on a commercial- size growing facility soon," Richard Charles, one of EcoVeggies’ founders, wrote in an e-mail.

Point is, this is a good business now, and the prospects are looking even brighter down the road. Venture capital is taking note. (21Ventures, a New York City-based VC firm focusing on clean-tech companies, is behind EcoVeggies.)

But that's not all. Agirculture 2.0, whose tagline is, "Where the sustainable agriculture industry is being defined, built and funded," is only in its infancy, and already it's attracting major players. The annual conference, sponsored by the investment banking and advisory firm Newseed Advisors, brings together tech start-ups poised to capitalize on the burgeoning demand for urban agriculture with VC firms who've begun to drink the Kool Aid. By all accounts, it's a major success. (FYI, Dr. Despommier was a speaker at the most recent gathering.)

As venture capital looks to fund promising start-ups, there are existing payers that are quietly laying the groundwork for a robust ecosystem. Players here include Anna Lappe, the writer and founding principal of the Small Planet Institute, Annie Novak and Ben Flanner, and their Eagle Street Rooftop Farms and Brooklyn Grange Farm, respectively, and Lee Mandell of Boswck Farms, where they're focusing on integrating hydroponics into the middle school classroom experience. Then we've got Gotham Greens, which will hopefully have its rooftop greenhouses up and running very soon. And this is just in New York City. There are other players like Sky Vegetables and Cityscape Farms who, like Gotham Greens, have a head-start on up-and-coming urban agriculture companies, but aren't quite as far along as their non-hydroponic peers. These guys set-up shop about a year ago, so they're that much better positioned to take advantage of favorable government policies aimed at propelling development in this sector.

You've got action in Cincinatti. You've got Growing Lots and Growing Power in Milwaukee. You've got innovative "green" architects pushing the envelope. You've got waste-to-energy action in New Zealand. The pieces for vertical farming are really lining up.

The Financial Times recently reported on the progress being made in Seattle, which, in January, dubbed 2010, "The Year of Urban Agriculture."

The [Seattle City Council] has relaxed planning regulations to let buildings be 15 feet higher for rooftop greenhouses, and is encouraging people to grow food in places where gardening was previously deterred, such as house fronts.

One objective is to shorten the food chain and encourage local farmers to supply the city. To this end, planning permission has been granted for food processing plants, warehouses and farmers markets, which previously required weekly permits with inspection and charges.

It might not seem like much, but any action on the part of the government should be viewed as hugely positive. Seattle is progressive in its push for urban agriculture, and more cities should follow its example.

Urban agriculture will benefit from people pursuing urban agriculture, is one of the lessons we've learned over the past year. As communities become knowledgable about the food chain, they become excited at all the local possibilities. Then governments respond to this excitement because they realize that re-election could depend on whether or not they enact policies in support of urban farming. So all this momentum really is just going to keep building onto itself like a snowball.

I'm not sure when we'll ultimately see vertical farms. Newark might come through for us. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg's generous donation to that city will free up some funds to pursue VF. We might have to keep at it like we've been doing for a bit longer, building up awareness and support for urban agriculture as a general theme. That works for me.

Because at the end of the day, this is a question about values: do we value cheap food at the cost of our health, or are we willing to invest in smart farming options and an agenda to promote food education and healthy eating habits? For me, and probably for most readers out there, the choice is simple. If you agree, then tell people; spread the word. The more people know about urban agriculture, the more, I'm finding, they love it. And love can change the world.

(for this and more cool images, check outresults from the HP Skypine 2020 Online Competition.)

Plantagon Is Cool

2010-10-05T13:35:00.000-07:00

On listening to Dr. Despommier's interview on the Diane Rehm Show, it dawned on me that I've never posted anything about an interesting company called Plantagon. They seem to be interested in effecting the same kind of future as we are here at the Vertical Farm Blog, so they've got our support. This just goes to show that there's a ton of activity surrounding urban ag. Which is fantastic.

Dickson Despommier on the Diane Rehm Show

2010-10-05T07:59:00.000-07:00

Tune-in to the Diane Rehm's NPR show today to hear Diane speak with Dr. Despommier and Bob Young, the chief economist with the American Farm Bureau (and its catchy catch-phrase: the voice of agriculture).

Can't wait to hear how this discussion unfolds. If you listen to it, write your comments at the bottom of this post, or give DoctorDickson a "tweet" about it, we'd love to hear your thoughts!

Expermenting With Wordle

2010-10-01T10:37:00.001-07:00

Income Levels and Food Production/Person

2010-09-30T21:38:00.000-07:00

This amazing website, Gapminder, has assembled hundreds of thousands of pieces of data into a massive database where you, the user, can compare just about anything you want against just about anything else you want. Was that clear enough? If not, check out the website--it's definitely worth it to play around with the graphs yourself.

Here's one I came up with. (Follow the link, then click the "Play" button in the bottom left hand corner of the graph.)

If this whole operation works how it's supposed to, then the graph you're looking at show the income per capita on the X-axis versus the net production per captia of food--countries USA, India and China are in yellow, blue and red, respectively, each one's 2005 population level reflected in the size of its bubble. Get used to these graphs, because I'm sure I'll be coming back to Gapminder again to find some more interesting stories.

Next graph idea: by country and year, $ spent on fertilizers versus $ spent on crop insurance. Can a graph highlight the economic wastefulness of our present food system? I'll come back to this tomorrow.

If you have any good ideas for using Gapminder, please, share them in the comments section below...

Boat + Botanic = ?

2010-09-05T15:52:00.000-07:00

(Photo from David Report and also here.)

I just caught wind of Boatanic, a company created, as its website puts it,

...When [we] were walking around Amsterdam and realised that the typical tourist boat resembles a greenhouse. What if you replaced tourists with basil or tomatoes? The Boatanic was born.

Sounds great to me. Why don't we float some greenhouses down our canals? And while we're at it, let's power them with sun and wind energy, and maybe even integrate the food float with one of Mitchell Joachim's River Gyms. Anyway, let's keep these good ideas flowing, and let's get some deep pockets convinced that creativity in food production is what it's going to really take to propel our species into the future. We might be fine today, but if McDonald's wins over vertical farms and greenhouse boats, our grandchildren will never know the beauty of real food.

What do you think? How much would you pay to float through Amsterdam on one of these greenhouse boats?

1BillionHungry

2010-09-01T10:30:00.000-07:00

The FAO of the United Nations has recently launched a campaign to get people riled up about the one billion stomachs that don't get enough to eat.

If you want to sign the petition (like I did), head on over here and make your voice be heard.

(Caveat: with all its resources, this viral campaign is the least the UN FAO can do to stop the terrible, terrible inequity which is the 21st Century hungry human.)

Guest Blogger Series: Intelligence at the Supermarket

2010-09-01T10:18:00.000-07:00

Leading up to the release of the book (available for pre-order on Amazon.com), the Vertical Farm Blog will be accepting guest blog entries via email (theverticalfarm@gmail.com) from our readers around the world. The only condition is that your submission has to touch on some aspect of vertical farming--be it multi-use buildings or conscientous shopping choices--and it would be great if you could include pictures (people love pictures).

The first article in our series is written by Dan Grifen, a blogger over at Everything Left. Take it away, Dan.

Sustainability Through the Consumption of Things Conserved
"In other environmental issues we tell people to stop something, reduce their impact, reduce their damage," - US Ecologist Gary Nabhan

Since the beginning of the green movement, there has been a rise in the number of organizations and businesses that are doing their part in the promotion of sustainability through conservation. As human beings, we're told to reduce our carbon footprint, consume less unhealthy foods, and spend less time in the shower! But let's take a minute to step back and look at this from a different perspective; one that Gary Nabhan strongly suggests.

Gary Paul Nabhan, PhD., is a Arab-American writer/conservationist whose extensive farming work in the U.S./Mexico borderlands region has made him world renowned. Specifically speaking, Nabhan is known for his work in biodiversity as an ethnobotanist. His uplifting messages and attitude towards life and culture has granted us access to multiple beneficial theories including his latest of eat what you conserve.

According to The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization, about three quarters of the genetic diversity of crops been vanishing over the last century and that a dozen species now gives 90% of the animal protein eaten globally. In accordance, just 4 crop species supply half of plant based calories in the human diet.

Nabhan claims that by eating the fruits and vegetables that we are attempting to conserve/save, we're promoting the granular dissemination of various plant species. But this goes beyond what we typically buy in supermarkets, particularly because of price and abundance. We must remember to try new things and immerse ourselves in the very concept of diversity. Keep in mind- the benefits of splurging for that costly fruit/vegetable supremely outweigh the cons. Not only are you promoting biodiversity and further eliminating the needs of farmers to remove rare, less purchased crops off their agenda, but you're also effectively encouraging healthier lifestyles.

Agriculturist Marco Contiero mentioned, "Biodiversity is an essential characteristic of any sustainable agricultural system, especially in the context of climate change."[1] With sustainable crop efforts being lead by the CGI (Clinton Global Initiative) and the IRRI (International Rice Research Institute) the duo plans to provide a more sustainable crop that can withstand natural disasters, avoiding food shortages like Haiti is experiencing. Contiero goes on to state "We need to ensure this is the basis for the future…" – This is exactly what Doug Band, the CGI, and the IRRI are doing by engaging in sustainability efforts.

So remember, next time you're in the supermarket picking out a common varietal of navel oranges or strawberries, turn your attention to something that's a bit more exotic in nature. The same goes for salads/salad ingredients; shop outside the norm, picking spices and vegetables that you wouldn't normally incorporate into your everyday diet. During such economic downtime it isn't always easy to maintain the same level of grocery shopping intrigue, but we must also not forget that in this sundry of foods we can find fun!

Dan Grifen – Supporter of all things green and progressive.

Turn Plastic Into Oil

2010-08-25T13:51:00.000-07:00

A Japanese man and his company, Blest, have been touring the globe showing off a little machine they invented which can turn plastic garbage back into oil.

As the video describes, plastics are made from oil, so why shouldn't we be able to turn plastics back into oil once we're through with them? This is great thinking. Why do we dump tons and tons of plastic waste into landfills (and oceans) every day, when the technology currently exists to reclaim the energy in that waste and turn it into fuel?

Plastic waste, the video says, "are a treasure." I'm not sure why our species is so good at squandering.

Share your thoughts...

More Newark News

2010-08-03T09:28:00.000-07:00

Remember Newark? Well, Dan Albert and Peter Greaves of Weber Thompson recently issued a press release detailing a bit more about their involvement with getting a vertical farm up and running in Brick City. I'll let them tell you:

July 23, 2010

At a time when the world ponders how to feed its nine billion people, Seattle architects Weber Thompson have designed a Vertical Farm for the Garden State to help solve that problem. The Newark Vertical Farm (NVF) a radically new prototype for Newark, NJ, illustrates the ideas promoted by Dr. Dickson Despommier for an approach to high capacity controlled environment urban farming. Principal Peter David Greaves, AIA, LEED AP and Ecological Designer Dan Albert, Associate ASLA, LEED AP and Dr. Despommier made a presentation of the design to government officials including Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Stefan Pryor and City Councilman Donald Payne, Jr., along with leaders from the Greater Newark Conservancy and Brick City Development Corporation.

The term “Vertical Farm” was originally coined by Dr. Dickson Despommier at Columbia University. The vertical farming concept begins with a simple idea: grow food in a climate-controlled multistory building free of pollutants, pesticides and seasons while producing the highest-quality produce in an urban environment. The Vertical Farm, designed to supplement the existing food supply while bringing more healthful products to our cities, is but one of a host of solutions needed to address the complexities of bringing food to people. Despommier envisions buildings filled with stacked soil-less growing systems designed to produce the maximum yield and eliminate contamination. This concept has been illustrated by designs ranging from 10-story structures to dragonfly wing-inspired behemoths that tower over Manhattan.

The Newark Vertical Farm represents not only the next generation for Urban Agriculture and Vertical Farming but also an approach to design which incorporates integrated and overlapping sustainable design features. More than just a Vertical Farm, it is a research and development program for sustainable design in an urban context. It is an open system designed to attract any number of features for both demonstration and research into the best ideas for sustainable design of our cities. Both a demonstration project and a laboratory, NVF is envisioned to be a flexible armature for uses relating to vertical farming, urban agriculture, sustainable design and energy efficiency. The main building contains the vertical greenhouse, and research labs separated by a full height atrium for light and ventilation. The greenhouse space contains high intensity soilless growing systems and is designed to be flexible and adaptable. The ground floor showcases a demonstration green house for public interaction while the upper floors serve as an agricultural laboratory. The purpose of the building is to develop, test, and educate with the ultimate goal of a commercially viable building type.

The site is also designed to showcase sustainable site strategies in an urban environment. The buildings and the site are oriented to maximize solar exposure, with the Vertical Farm green house section facing due south and the more conventional urban agriculture plot with south to north rows. The spaces are arranged in a series of overlapping rooms that allow both observation and function to coexist. The parcel is organized to create numerous opportunities for both demonstration and research platforms relating to the study of vertical farming, urban agriculture, urban gardens, water conservation, constructed wetlands, on-site power generation, and more. The site, like the buildings, is designed to attract a range of uses and to be adaptable as these uses evolve over time.

Dr. Despommier, Peter Greaves and Dan Albert have spoken of the Vertical Farm concept and emerging ideas about urban agriculture at a number of conferences including The King County Government Confluence and the Living Futures 2010 unConference. Dr. Despommier and Dan Albert will also be on a panel this coming fall at the Cooper-Hewitt National Museum of Design on September 29th in New York, NY. This is the second prototype vertical farm structure designed by Weber Thompson. Their Eco-Laboratory project has won numerous national and regional awards.

Dr. Dickson Despommier is the author of The Vertical Farm: Feeding Ourselves and the World in the 21st Century to be released by Thomas Dunne Books / St. Martin’s Press on October 12, 2010.

For more information on the rationale behind Vertical Farms please see:

A new use for urban high-rises: farming by Dan Albert

The Vertical Farm Project - Dickson Despommier

To top it off, they've released pictures of what their finished project might look like. They're sweet.

Pulled Pork with Pickled Red Onions and Black Rice

2010-08-02T15:27:00.000-07:00

Pork shoulder is a cut of meat that is often overlooked. Perhaps because of its sheer size, which requires that it be cooked for a lonnnnnng time. As in 4 hours. To be exact, it's 4 excruciating hours of hovering around the oven as the tantalizing aroma of slow-roasted pork taunts your tastebuds. But once you take the first bite of the tender porky goodness, foiled by the pungent tang of the pickled red onions, you realize that you've never had 4 hours better spent. The avocado provides the perfect mellow reprieve from the heat and tartness, and the black rice provides a nutty base and turns this dish into a one bowl meal (but you can use whatever vehicle you want - eg. taco shell, tortilla, bread)

Pulled Pork
Mix up a spice rub to your own taste. I used salt, pepper, garlic powder, cayenne, and paprika.
Rub spice mix all over the pork shoulder. Use a heavy hand in seasoning the pork (look at how BIG it is!)
Place pork shoulder in a roasting pan. Cover tightly with foil and into a 350 F preheated oven. Roast for 4 hours. (no cheating!)

Pickled Red Onions
Slice red onions real thin.
Pour a cup of very hot water over onions. Drain water after 30 seconds.
Squeeze juice of one lime into non-reactive bowl and add drained red onions. Cover and refrigerate while the pork's-a-roastin'.

Billion Dollar Home Employs Hydroponics for Energy Efficiency

2010-07-20T12:14:00.000-07:00

Mukesh Ambani, the Indian billionaire ranked 5th on the Forbes list of richest men, is devoting part of he and his family's 27-story home in Mumbai to growing hydroponics crops. You might wonder, Why? Well, unfortunately, it's not because Ambani is actively endorsing vertical farming, like some other well-known men. No, instead, it's primarily an economic concern:

Hanging vertical gardens dot the exterior. While they make for good decoration, their key function has to do with energy efficiency: The hydroponic plants, grown in liquid nutrient solutions instead of soil, lower the energy footprint of the home by absorbing heat and sunlight and providing shade that helps keep it cool.

The architecture firms of Perkins + Will and Hirsch Bedner Associates are responsible for the design of this $2 billion skyscraper home, so I think we can safely assume that hydroponics is catching on as a financially viable design element within the architecture community. We'll take it.

This massive complex won't be considered a vertical farm, not even close. But it certainly will add to the growing body of work demonstrating that the ideas we've been promoting for the past decade are, in fact, the ideas for our cities' future. With each 27-story billionaire's home that integrates any element of what a vertical farm will perform, the chorus of support grows louder and louder.

Do you know of any similar developments that we should share with our readers? Let us know via email--theverticalfarm@gmail.com.

(Check out the full story (and pictures!) here)

Reforming the Chicken

2010-07-09T11:23:00.000-07:00

Dana Blankenhorn over at Smart Planet published a nice article about the FDA taking some initial steps to curb our outrageous food system towards something more sustainable, humane and less fattening. Here's an excerpt from it:

We’re fat because we are reacting rationally to the incentives government has placed in the food supply market. These incentives favor quantity over quality, protein over vegetables, and things like corn syrup over cane sugar.

Change the incentives in the production and manufacturing of food, I argue, and consumers will respond. Just saying “eat healthy” when you have an unhealthy production system won’t get the job done.

I recommend heading over there to check it out.

BEST. COMBO. EVER

2010-07-03T14:06:00.000-07:00

=Roasted Beets + Fried Egg

Scrub beet. Wrap beet in foil, skin and all. Roast beet in 400 degree oven for 45 minutes. Remove foil (carefully!). Wash beet under cold water and scrape off skin with spoon. Dice beet and mix with vinegar, dijon mustard, minced garlic, salt and pepper. Top with fried egg, however you like it. Break egg yolk and enjoy slowly.

Big Fish, Small Pond

2010-06-25T23:52:00.000-07:00

We’ve all seen it before – the massive, globe-like apples at the grocery store, strawberries the size of your fist, and peaches that give James and his peach a run for their money. Genetically modified food, or fruit in particular, is ubiquitous in our grocery stores. We're so used to seeing it around, that organic produce looks languid in comparison. But the second you put that GM strawberry in your mouth, you will the difference. Unlike the dewy rubies you used to pick from your backyard, the GM variety lacks that tangy, fragrant strawberry flavor you grew up with.

So main concern when I heard that genetically altered salmon would be hitting my local seafood counter was what the hell it would taste like. I have unnerving visions of pallid, flavorless sushi and bland lox bagels. What do you think it'll taste like?

Chicago's Mayor Daley Wants One Too!

2010-06-25T10:00:00.000-07:00

Thrilled at the notion of growing healthy food just blocks from where he spent his childhood, Chicago's Mayor Richard M. Daley said last Friday that he would support efforts to establish vertical farming in his hometown. Who will be first, Newark, Chicago, or somewhere else, I don't know. But the race is on!

Read the full story at Journal Sentinal Online.

Update: check out Plant Chicago, the group pushing for VF in Chicago.

Offally Delicious

2010-06-20T20:30:00.001-07:00

Pig ears, smoked tripe, chicken neck, and braised gizzards. As I scanned the items in the deli fridge at the Chinese supermarket on Walker St., it became obvious very quickly that I wouldn’t be finding roasted turkey much less any American cheese. To my delight the fridge was chock-full of all the bits, pieces, odds, and ends that never make it into deli counters at American supermarkets. Even duck tongues made an appearance.

In recent years, with chefs like Chris Cosentino popularizing all things offal, eating a plate of spicy honeycomb tripe at David Chang’s Momofuku has become a sorta right-of-passage in the ‘cool’ kids club in the foodie world. Now that offal has become a mainstay at fine-dining establishments everywhere, when do you think we’ll start seeing it at our local grocery stores?

Vertical Farming Gets...Stung?

2010-06-18T14:00:00.000-07:00

It's been terribly hard to keep this a secret, but now it's finally out: Sting has acquired the movie rights to the Vertical Farm Book! Check out Deadline, where the news broke first.

Basically, wherever the first vertical farm gets built, Sting has first dibs at making a documentary about it. Who knows, with Newark chomping at the bit, he might not have to wait long.

Also check out the Rainforest Fund, which he and wife Trudie founded.

BP Spill and VF

2010-06-18T10:37:00.000-07:00

I hope we’re all still outraged over the BP oil spill. I hope that those people out there who call this the Age of Indifference are wrong. I hope this catastrophe doesn’t get forgotten in all the miscellaneous hoop-la.

If you watched President Obama’s speech last week, you were probably left a little bewildered. What exactly is the plan? This oil accident is profoundly devastating to local economies which rely on a non-oil-laden ocean; hopefully, BP will recoup them for current and projected future losses. But this oil spill affects us all.

I have to admit, part of me is concerned that this is a spill from which the world will never recover. I thought how ironic it would be if this were the end of man; no atomic bomb, no massive sea level rise (by the way, what’s the deal with Al Gore?), no meteor; just an accident from capitalism as usual. But then I looked at a world map: Earth is BIG. It will recover; however, whether we’re fit to stick around is another matter.

As I sit here, typing away on my keyboard, I wonder about all the luxuries we’ve become accustomed to; is the BP oil spill the price we all pay for our cheap food and affordable toys; is this the cost of the American dream?

This oil spill shines a spotlight on an urgent need: the need to commit to an energy source that doesn’t come from a mile beneath the surface of the sea. Solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, (dare I say nuclear?); these methods are viable, today. The idea of pumping oil from the ground in one area of the world, then shipping it around the globe to the highest bidders, is simply a bad one. Spills happen. And they ruin lives. We can and we must do better. If that means making a huge investment in a country-wide renewable energy grid so that New Yorkers can use the solar energy harvested in Arizona, then so be it. I bet we could find some spare money in the $280 billion farm bill.

Now, I think vertical farming is something which should get more attention in light of the recent calamity. Not only because we could raise seafood in them, which is obviously a hot issue now, as our most productive Gulf Coast fisheries have been severely crippled; but we also have an energy incentive to move toward cities that are self-sustaining and move away from the Age of Big Oil.

The idea that the present state of the world is the best we can do, is simply absurd. Oil, when drilled, is toxic to our planet, and hence, to us. Who said it was OK to poison our air, our water, our fellow living things? Not me.

Please, BP, pay billions and billions of dollars to the people you’re accident has affected. We know you’ve got the money. But then, please, BP, do the good thing—which is different than the savvy thing—and encourage every government which panders to your wishes to adopt a different sort of capitalism.

It isn’t beyond the scope of human capacity to enact rules and financial incentives which encourage clean energy. I know it’s not easy; any economist will agree that adjusting incentives is ridden with the unknown. But the principle should be an easy one to stand behind: Enact laws reflective of our collective values. I hope I need not worry that care for our planet makes the grade. Don’t you?

If you're interested in anti-BP social groups, check this out.

What's in a Twinkie?

2010-06-09T14:57:00.000-07:00

The people over at GOOD have tipped me off to a fantastic photo project done by Dwight Eschliman: "37 Or So Ingredients," a visual tour of what it takes to make a Twinkie. I can't claim immunity to the sweet, sweet spongy deliciousness of Twinkies, or to most of the other Hostess deserts. But these pictures will at least make me think twice.

Also, it's worth noting how insane it is that there's a company bringing in over two and a half billion dollars in revenue in a given year, who markets and sells products which do nothing but increase the waistline and the blood pressure of the country. I really don't think I'm going out on much of a limb with this one: The world would be a better place if Twinkies didn't exist.

Thoughts?

CNN Highlights Hydroponics

2010-05-19T20:23:00.000-07:00

Watch the whole video to see our friends at the Science Barge and Lee Mandell of Boswyck Farms.

I think it's time hydroponics has a serious PR makeover. Anyone want to help me?

It's Happening in Newark

2010-05-17T16:29:00.000-07:00

This is very big news.

Last Monday, a group of government officials and businessmen gathered to hear a proposal for bringing vertical farming to the Garden State. In attendance were Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Stefan Pryor and City Councilman Donald Payne, Jr, along with leaders from the Greater Newark Conservancy and Brick City Development Corporation, among other groups. Dan Albert and Peter Greaves of Weber Thompson presented their site-specific project, which was inspired by their original Eco-Laboratory drawings, and the room sparkled at each change of the slide, as, one by one, the guests all fell for vertical farming.

After the presentation, Councilman Payne proclaimed, "This is something that should happen here," to which Deputy Mayor Pryor answered, "Absolutely. I agree."

Vertical Farm Technologies, LLC, a company which Dr. Despommier founded to develop vertical farms, gave a follow-up presentation discussing a proposal for financing the project that Albert and Greaves outlined. The plan includes a public-private partnership to benefit from NGO tax credits, and all the city of Newark would have to ante would be the site, which is currently vacant. The next step is for VFT, LLC to follow-up with a more detailed proposal for financing the project. Although interesting financing avenues were explored, nothing will be official until VFT can put a tidy business plan on Pryor's desk.

Pryor asked that I mention that Mayor Cory Booker's State of the City address in early February had as a centerpiece the goal of making fresh food more readily available to the people of Newark. So all the dominoes seem lined up.

Barring any unexpected set-backs from VFT, LLC, and assuming that Newark stays true to its word, which we fully believe it will, the first ever vertical farm as Dr. Despommier and his team have envisioned it over the years, will be built on a quiet block overlooking the Passaic River in Brick City.

Where should we put the next one?

Here It Is, the Book

2010-05-17T14:54:00.000-07:00

First of all, everyone should pre-order their copy of Dr. Despommier's upcoming book. October 12th is the release date listed on Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com, so I assume you'd get your copies right around the middle of that month. I bet that everyone has a special niece or uncle or sister or grandpa who would love this book, so maybe pre-ordering a couple copies is a good move.

Can't wait to hear what people have to say once it drops.

All Apologies

2010-05-17T12:54:00.000-07:00

Hello, loyal readers. The recent slack in blog posts will cease now. I can imagine that it's been difficult without someone keeping you up to date on all the goings-on around vertical farming, but I'm back, so here we go. Stringent chronology may be sacrificed as I recap the past month.

Earthday Round the Corner

2010-04-20T16:57:00.000-07:00

On this, the eve's eve of the 40th anniversary of Earthday, we should remember to still celebrate what April 22nd, 1970 was a call for. It was a call to improve the quality of life on Earth, to engage politicians, musicians, writers, business leaders and anyone else breathing, that the planet is a prerequisite to our own lives, and that beautifying it beautifies us.

So when John Tierney of the New York Times wrote an article--"7 New Rules to Live By"--I was struck that he did not mention vertical farming. You see, vertical farming is simply a creative expression of the solution to a handful of man-made problems: climate change, hunger, water scarcity, species extinction, all of these are problems whose solutions lie in producing daily behaviors that are in line with the world we hope to produce. So the first question is, What kind of world do we want to produce?

I'll start. I want to live in the world I produce; so it needs to be hospitable, first of all. I want the world we produce to generate more energy than operating it requires; the idea of taking energy from the natural world strikes me as extremely unsustainable; Great Northern Hydroponics is a hydroponic greenhouse company in Ontario that produces more electricity than it consumes, and it sells the excess power to the Ontario power grid, generating an additional revenue stream for the tight-margins business of farming. I want to live in a world that thinks of its sewers differently; it has been said that the sewer is the conscience of a city; we live in more squalor than we like to believe, as our sewers drain out into our oceans, and the clouds suck up that water, and then it pours down on us: the twice-Texas sized island of garbage north of Hawaii is the secret ledger that knows the sickliness of just some of our world's cities; the backyards of other forms of life are the trash cans of civilization; none of this helps human beings in the long run at all.

I want to live in a world where the beauty of natural things is appreciated, and slowed down for, and smelled, and touched, and sensed. I want to live in a world where cries of hunger and of thirst never break from the mouths of people, no mater the continent of their birth. I want to live in a world that our children, from whom we borrow the air, the rivers, and the land, can say that it was produced with foresight, wisdom, courage, (and its steadfast companion, humility), and with love, and that they say we raised the bar for them, we made them better by simply making ourselves better. We will never improve our behavior unless we can first expect better from ourselves.

So with Earthday just around the corner, I cannot help but think of what kind of world my behavior produces. One truth about today: a dollar is a vote. By backing products that have a sound ethos, dollars can remedy our situation(s). But it is people who perform the act of spending, and it is they who must temper ingrained impulses for cheap and convenient with the discipline of a scientist on the brink of a breakthrough. Live day by day with values in mind, and spend according to those values, and communicate your values to other people, and then one day you'll wake up and the world will have changed, and it will be better, and it will be because of you.

Tierney says, "Wilderness and wildlife can be preserved only if the world’s farmers have the best tools to feed everyone on the least amount of land." Vertical farms, by shifting the burden of farmer from countryside to city, allows human beings to behave as we're supposed to: to live within our means I couldn't agree more with Tierney's point, but I think he should make an addendum: feeding everyone on the least amount of land means taking all environmental factors about farming into consideration. When you do, urban agriculture is more promising than traditional agriculture. And vertical farming is a part of the best case version of urban agriculture.

Earthday should make all of us rethink our daily actions, and ponder which small changes we can follow through on. The best best for vertical farms dotting our urban landscapes are if that critical mass is reached where enough people care enough about changing the world for the better, just ever so much. Every little action that's in line with what vertical farming really stands for is a nod that it may someday, soon, become our reality.

Josh Tickell on Jay Leno

2010-04-20T15:45:00.000-07:00

Josh Tickell, whose movie, Fuel, illustrates a path for discarding our nation's oil crutch for energy needs, was interviewed on Jay Leno about one year ago. Leno seems especially enthralled by the notion of a solution in vertical farms. So that this clip doesn't gather cobwebs, I'll share it here, where hopefully it will be something pleasant to some, and something at least remarkable to most.

Leno Hosts FUEL Director Josh Tickell from Stacy Hess on Vimeo.
(Video courtesy of Vimeo.)

If there's one thing to take away from this, it's that good ideas are sticky. That means that the most important thing that supporters of vertical farming can do is tell people about it. Tell someone a good idea, and it will stick there, like planting a seed, and then germinate when one hears the idea again and again. If we spread this idea like gigantic wings, then it will fly.

A Quite Right Food Panel Night

2010-04-12T17:21:00.000-07:00

This past Thursday, on April 8th, Leonard Lopate of WNYC hosted a panel discussion on everyone's favorite topic: urban farming. Panel members included friends of Vertical Farming Annie Novak of Greenpoint Rooftop Farm and Manhattan Borough President, Scott Stringer, as well as urban ag all star Will Allen of Growing Power in Milwaukee, and artist Fritz Haeg, who created Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn, a book documenting the urban food movement around the country.

I've got to be honest--I haven't watched the whole thing. But I wouldn't be surprised if Vertical Farming came up in this discussion. Scott Stringer has made it very clear that he wants to have Vertical Farms in New York, and Will Allen is actually working on a sort of low-tech Vertical Farm outside of Milwaukee. (From what I understand, he is converting an abandoned warehouse into another of his urban food oases.)

Watch the whole conversation (87 minutes, heads up) on the Green Space (WNYC's studio for stuff like this) website here.

Vertical Farming on Huffington Post

2010-03-19T08:57:00.000-07:00

Just thought I'd share that Huff Po is featuring a "Vote For Your Favorite VF" article complete with pictures of some Vertical Farm designs. Check it out and vote. I'm interested to see the results.

Valcent's VertiCrop system somehow made it into the running, but let's not get confused: what they're doing is cool, but it's not Vertical Farming. No greywater remidiation, no waste-to-energy recapture, single story, etc. etc. etc. I know they're trying to capitalize on the buzz surrounding the VF name, which makes sense, but it's just a little too transparent for me.

Why Are Hamburgers So Cheap?

2010-03-15T11:50:00.000-07:00

Really though, why? The subsidies are part of it, of course. And the subsidies have to do with what we want to export: there's more money to be made exporting meat and wheat than cucumbers. Part of it is economies of scale: the b. model of McDonald's requires that there be thousands of locations to keep their prices so low.

Can we do anything about it?

Fortunately, yes. In capitalism, a dollar is a vote. As long as money makes the world go round and people use cliches, a person's consumer behavior is meaningful. Spending money responsibly and "being the change you wish to see" are the best bet I think. The deeper issue, and the one that McDonald's would use in its defense, is that people like hamburgers more than salads. Is that true? Is it changeable?

Update: Annie Leonard over at The Story of Stuff uses the term "manufactured demand" to discuss how bottled water companies convince people to buy their inferior-to-tap-water product. I think the term is great, and it obviously applies to the cheap hamburger discussion.

(Thanks to GOOD and PCRM for this story).

How Can We Feed Everyone?

2010-03-13T12:38:00.000-08:00

How to feed the world ? from Denis van Waerebeke on Vimeo.

Check out more from Fast Company. Is anybody still surprised that a global commodities market widens the gap between rich and poor, fed and unfed?

Feast Your Eyes

2010-03-10T13:05:00.000-08:00

On this.

Complete with ETFE, it's good by me.

(Design by Rahul Surin)

Dickson Despommier, A Top-Tenner for Inspiration in Sustainable Food

2010-03-09T08:42:00.000-08:00

Fast Company, a forward-thinking design, technology and business magazine, just published their top-ten list of "Most Inspirational People in Sustainable Food." And guess what: Dick Despommier made the grade. About the Vertical Farm guru, they say:

The Vertical Farm Project is the brainchild of Despommier, a professor at Columbia, and his students. Envisioning a world of sustainable farms housed in urban skyscrapers, the project proposes paying traditional farmers to simply plant trees on their land, in an attempt to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. Crazy? Maybe. But it's inspiring more thought, more solutions.

Really, this is no surprise. News outlets from the New York Times to Icon Magazine have covered the Dr. and Vertical Farms. He's galvanized urban farmers and rooftop dreamers all over the world. The creativity that skyscraper farms inspire will not be undercut by the broken-record arguments of those who think every feasable good idea already exists. For Vertical Farming, it looks like its time has finally come.

Could Manhattan Feed Manhattan?

2010-02-26T11:07:00.000-08:00

Hop on over to Droog's website to learn more about the designers behind this video.

2010: The Year of Urban Agriculture

2010-02-24T09:17:00.000-08:00

My home town of Seattle announced earlier this month that the first year of the new decade will be dubbed, The Year of Urban Agriculture. This is great news.

With the city helping to make local food more abundant and accessible, we should expect the coming months to be filled with urban farmers coming out of the woodworks to try their hand at sustainable food--expect everything from rooftop farms to countertop gardens to vertical farms. Urban ag is happening all over the country; I think it's time for everyone to brashly borrow all the good ideas out there and make something--anything!--happen at any scale. I haven't learned a single syllable from movements, political or otherwise, over the last 2 years if not that the team which jumps through the moon at every minor victory is far more likely to skid and crash than the relentless, billowing one. We must not now underestimate the power of the status quo.

But with this commitment from Seattle, plus the commitment from New York City more recently, I have a feeling 2010 will be more than just the year of urban agriculture: 2010 is the year the status quo adds Vertical Farming to the mix.

Manhattan Beefs Up Its Urban Ag Support

2010-02-19T14:04:00.000-08:00

Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer announced today a broad "sustainable food plan" promoting urban agriculture. From Mr. Stringer:

“By devoting serious attention to our food system, city government can in one stroke improve public health, sustainability, and job creation...In recent years, there’s been growing interest in this issue, but we’re still left with a grab bag of disjointed, independent initiatives. Now, with the help of hundreds of dedicated New Yorkers, the document we’re releasing today will for the first time present a single, comprehensive vision for food policy in this city."

This, on the heels of an article on aquaponics in the New York Times, gives those of us in the urban agriculture field reason to celebrate; we celebrate because the government has finally formally acknowledged how promising urban agriculture can be; but we must also become more vocal, because it's at times like these, when change is imminent, when something we all want to happen actually could happen, when we have public sentiment and government on our side, that we must follow-through like a Federer forehand.

See the whole story, and the entire document, here.

The Future of Farming: There Is Nowhere To Go But Up

2010-02-18T11:14:00.000-08:00

Written By Amber Sandoval-Griffin

In Salinas, California, Gary Caraccioli wakes up every morning by 5 a.m. and drives for 30 minutes through a bed of tulle fog so thick, he cannot see the purple mountains that flank the highway. This is the only route to get to his farm in Gonzales. He spends anywhere from 5 to 10 hours a day driving on muddy dirt roads in a Chevy truck between vast, flat, fields of emerald and neon greens and chocolate brown soil to keep track of his lettuce crop’s growth and his employee’s progress. When he isn’t driving, Caraccioli is conducting business meetings, or working in his office to make sure that his farm is running efficiently.

The Salinas Valley, touted as the “Salad Bowl of the World,” cultivates 80 percent of the world’s lettuce and produces 580 billion pounds of produce annually. Thousands of farmers, like Caraccioli, continue an orthodox method of farming by leasing out large plots of land and planting and harvesting in bulk. At Caraccioli’s ranch, which consists of the grower L&J Farms and labor provider Jackpot Harvesting, they cover 3500 acres of crops and ship 250,000 boxes of produce from their land daily.

(Laborers Harvesting Asparugus, Salinas, CA; Courtesy Amber Sandoval-Griffin)

Across the continent at 431 E. 91 St. in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the crop beds sit on top of a worn, industrial looking warehouse and are measured in feet rather than acres. You have to walk up four flights of creaky wooden stairs in the darkness, but once you finally make it to the top, you can escape the chilling winter cold, clattering noises and honks from down below to enter the best kept secret in town – a controlled 75-degree oasis where fruits and vegetables thrive year-round. Welcome to the first stages in the future of farming.

When Eli Zabar started Eli’s Vinegar Factory in 1993, his mission was to get as close as he could to the source of his own ingredients so he eventually built a greenhouse in 1994 on the roof of his grocery store and restaurant where he could grow them.

“I thought we could grow things that are not available locally and that I could grow things that are better and fresher than things being grown far, far away where somebody doesn’t really care about them,” Zabar said.

The project was very simple at first with just one gutter and hoop greenhouse design. Zabar had a structural engineer and an architect test the roof’s weight capacity and then he and some members of his staff built the greenhouse. He says the cost was so small, that he can’t even recall how much he invested, but it was not a substantial amount.

Now Zabar has five greenhouses on the rooftops of his buildings on East 91st street - one directly above Eli’s Vinegar Factory and four others across the street on the roof of his warehouse. Combined, the houses cover themselves in cost and make a small profit. Zabar and his staff grow a variety of fruits, vegetable, herbs and flowers from mixed greens and tomatoes to figs and strawberries.

The crew uses gas from the bakery below to heat the houses and has a compost system to recycle excess waste from crop production and from his bakeries. Although the crops are not certified organic, Zabar does not use fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides and every plant is watered and harvested by hand by two staff members who work in the houses 50 to 60 hours a week.

Though Zabar’s greenhouses are small, they have the potential of evolving into the world’s first vertical farm. Expand one of his greenhouses to encompass one full New York City block and add two more levels and this could be the future of farming. According to he creator of the Vertical Farm Project, Dickson Despommier, a 30-story farm would be able to feed 50,000 people a well-balanced diet of over 80 different types of fruits vegetables. He believes this farming model is the key to solving hunger and ecological restoration worldwide.

The Vertical Farm Project proposes a hydroponic growth method in rows, benches, or hanging systems situated in the high-rises of urban communities. Hydroponics use a mineral nutrient solution to produce a plant without soil. The plant can be placed in only the mineral nutrient or in an inert medium, such as foam, gravel, or mineral wool. Though there are other alternatives to hydroponics such as a drip irrigation system, aeroponics or aquaponics, a hydroponic system provides the most options for utilizing space.

Vertical farming has numerous advantages for the future of food production and the restoration of the environment, but there are also many obstacles to this method of farming. Cost, taste and light must be improved in order for this project to be a success. In a country where most people are accustomed to eating food from mass farms, the challenge of making this fantasy a reality is not only developing a functional system, but also teaching the public how to accept it.

Some experts believe that this new method of farming is completely feasible and necessary to human survival, while others who look at it from an engineering and scientific standpoint have found obstacles that leave them questioning if it can be done. Experts have proposed light restraints and outbreaks of epidemics in an indoor ecosystem as some of the obstacles while others worry if the food quality will change and where all the excess waste will go.

The concept is appearing more and more in the media, but at this point, vertical farms remain a vision for the future. Since Despommier made his project public, an entire slew of architects, engineers, students, professors, and scientists have solicited their own ideas and designs for creating a vertical farm. Many have even created similar projects or business plans that are related to the concept. But in a society of dreamers and visionaries, we have yet to see this system, which could potentially change the way we purchase and eat food, become a reality.

The project started in 1999, when Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University, was teaching a medical ecology class to a group of seven graduate students and they came up with a concept that could possibly revolutionize the way humans currently grow food. Week after week, class after class, the students would listen to Dr. Despommier’s lectures on the degrading environment and the earth’s health risks, which even the jovial and optimistic Despommier admits can become very depressing.

“Just imagine yourself as a student, every time you come to class, that’s all you hear about,” said Despommier. “You start to throw up your hands and say ‘I might as well quit school and get a job and wait for the earth to come falling down on me.’ But they didn’t do that.”

Instead, the students began to brainstorm what they could do to make a difference. At first, they envisioned the concept of rooftop gardening in Manhattan to see how many people they could feed by building gardens on vacant roof space. After working the entire semester, the students were disappointed again when they calculated that there were only 13 acres of non-commercial rooftop space in Manhattan.

The class decided to change the model from building gardens on rooftops to creating gardens on multiple levels in abandoned buildings. This initiated the Vertical Farm Project: a conceptual idea of farming indoors on multiple levels in urban centers to provide food for large groups of people while simultaneously relieving farm land of the strains of crop production.

Ten years later, on Jan 13, 2009 at Union Hall in Brooklyn, a line of people wait anxiously for over an hour to see if they could squeeze into an already packed room in hopes of catching a few words from 68-year-old Despommier’s talk on urban farming for the Secret Science Club. As the white bearded professor cracks poop jokes in relation to his theory of recycling human feces and uses analogies to children’s books like Old MacDonald Had An Apartment House by Judi Barrett to explain his theory, environmentalists and science freaks appear excited and bewildered. They are all curious to see how creating vertical farms in urban skyscrapers could radically re-vision the way we live and eat forever.

In 2004, The Food and Agriculture Organization reported over the next 50 years, the human population is expected to rise to at the least 8.6 billion which would require an additional 3.3 million square miles of land – roughly the size of the country of Brazil - to feed them using current technologies. The Food and Agriculture Organization also says that as of 2004, approximately 3,088,817 square miles of land or 38 percent of the total landmass of the earth is already committed to soil-based agriculture.

Eighty percent of the available land in the world is already being farmed according to Science Magazine. This includes grazing lands for cattle and land for feed grains. In order to support this type of large-scale agricultural activity, hundreds of millions of square miles of hardwood forest, grasslands, wetland, estuaries and coral reefs have been eliminated or damaged with significant loss of biodiversity and a disruption ecosystem functions. In addition to this damage, 70 percent of available fresh water is used for farming.

One of the most important reasons for building a vertical farm in today’s food market is to develop a source to alleviate hunger in countries that suffer from starvation due to depleted natural resources and poverty. Many countries like Palestine and Jordan can no longer grow crops in their vicinity due to years of resource absorption, toxic spills and waste related to military practices and weapon production coupled with an extreme climate.

“Sometimes it’s not necessarily the food that you eat but that you have food to eat,” said Despommier. And he has a great point. If a 30-story building can feed 50,000 people, this is a solution to better communities that are plagued by disease and starvation.

Proximity is another major benefit of placing a vertical farm in an urban community because it will provide people with fresh food that is farmed blocks or even steps away from where they live. Despommier’s vision for the model would attach vertical farms to schools, apartment complexes, senior centers, hospitals, office buildings and restaurants to provide people with fresh food on a daily basis. “Imagine working in a building where 10 feet out from where you’re working you had to look through a garden and the garden was actually growing the food that you could come down and eat?” Despommier asked.

Zabar’s store exemplifies how people want to know where their food is coming from, and they will pay more for that peace of mind. Although the greenhouse project started out as a personal endeavor for Zabar, who loves food and wanted to provide his customers with the freshest ingredients possible, it has created a large following where people will come specifically to buy the freshest produce in town because they know it was harvested that morning just steps away from the store.

“I think it brought a kind of recognition to me and the business,” Zabar said. “People know we grow things and they respect that. And nobody else is doing that. It adds a certain kind of interest.”
Though Zabar’s customers are willing to pay $7.99 for a pound of freshly cut arugula, most people cannot afford such high prices. A vertical farm would generate this type of fresh quality, organic produce on a much larger scale enabling the farmer to sell it for much lower prices while maintaining its value.

(Eli Zabar’s rooftop greenhouse, New York City; Courtesy Amber Sandoval-Griffin)

Urban farming also holds the promise of returning farmland to nature and restoring the ecosystem. “The Best reason for doing this, the only justifiable reason for doing this that I can think of would be to restore the damaged ecosystems that have become fragmented because of farming,” Despommier said.

In his Vertical Farm Essay I, Despommier provides historical proof of this concept where the earth naturally restored itself after an epidemic or manmade disaster. The dust bowl, which was created by farming the grasslands of the central Great Plains of the Untied States, is proof that an ecosystem can restore itself. From 1889 to 1895, hopeful immigrants settled in the Oklahoma territories where farming and rainfall flourished. Twenty years later, some of the worst droughts in history caused families to move further west, leaving the area virtually empty of human residents for the next 15 years. During that period where no farming was taking place, the ecosystem naturally repaired itself. Precipitation regimens returned, tall and short grasses rebuilt the soil and wildlife that had been long absent began to populate the region once again.

The ecosystem can repair itself if left alone, according to an experiment in Hubbard Brook, New Hampshire. The area was a mixed boreal watershed that had been harvested at least three times in the past 350 years. In 1967, Gene Likens, cut down a watershed and the wood was left in place to test the vegetation structure of the area and the effects of human activities on ecosystems. He looked at the chemical, physical and biological characteristics of the water, before, during and after the repair period.

After only three years, the water draining into the damaged area returned to its original high quality because the ecosystem supplying the water was able to repair itself. Despommier believes that according to these examples, if vertical farming were to replace the majority of the world’s food production models, then ecosystem services that provide a healthy lifestyle for humans and animals would eventually be restored.

“What I’m proposing is something that some people would call radical but I don’t think its radical at all,” Despommier said. “I think it’s absolutely reflective of where I know I came from. I came from an in-tact ecosystem.”

Beyond ecological benefits, a vertical farm also eliminates food miles and dramatically reduces our use of fossil fuels by cutting out the use of tractors, plows and vehicles for shipping. Carraccioli said that last summer a truck going from Gonzalez to New York with one thousand boxes of commodities cost him 7,000 dollars total, breaking down to seven dollars a unit. “Transportation is a major factor in our agriculture industry,” Caraccioli said. “One big advantage [of a vertical farm] is shipping. You’re there.”

The ideal vertical farm is three levels or higher and is capable of growing market produce from fruits and vegetables to herbs and flowers. If the farm implemented the soil-less growing method of hydroponics, they would use 70 percent less water than farming today. The farm also has the capacity for raising chickens, fish, mollusks and crustaceans and some believe that even pigs could work in certain type of floor plans like warehouses that span horizontally instead of vertically.

The model has solar panels on the roof to follow the sun and drive the internal heating and cooling system used to nurture the plants. A device placed in the ceiling of each level of the building called an evapotranspiration recovery system collects moisture that can be bottled as water and sold. The farm is also designed to have a black-water treatment system that will filter the wastewater and reuse it for irrigation and a pellet power system that can take non-edible plant matter and turn it into fuel.

To create a prototype where farmers, agrologists, scientists and ecologists could test the model and various types of crops to see if it could even work, someone needs to pay to develop it. Despommier estimates that is would cost 20 to 30 million dollars to create a four to five story building to cover an eighth of a city block. Though Masdar City in Abu Dhabi has asked Despommier to create a design for them, and the country of Jordan has expressed keen interest in the project, neither one has not discussed finances at this point or have finalized concrete plans.

Despommier recommends conducting a two-year trial period to help determine which types of plants can move forward in this type of an environment and which types of food and crops you need to create a well-balanced diet.

But therein lies another obstacle. Most experts will tell you that hydroponic growth systems cannot produce as high of quality food as soil. This system must be perfected to successfully provide thousands of people with nutritious food. “For where we’re going - a need for nutrient rich food – we would need to perfect that [soil-less] system,” said Jack Algiere, a food season grower and greenhouse manager at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. “Just because you can do it doesn’t mean that anybody would want to eat anything out of it.”

Although Despommier believes you could use supplements for hydroponics to replace the nutrients found in soil, many farmers and agrologists believe that it isn’t possible. “To me there is no comparison between a soil system and a water system,” Algiere said.

Twenty-six miles north of Manhattan, in Pocantico Hills, New York, Algiere works nearly seven days a week managing nearly 30,000 square feet of cold and warm greenhouses that produce fruits, vegetables and herbs for the center’s three restaurants, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Blue Hill Café and Blue Hill of Manhattan. He has been in the farming industry for over 15 years since the days where he ran a lab greenhouse in college at the University of Rhode Island.

As manager of agriculture production at Stone Barns since they opened in 2003, Algiere is devoted to organic agriculture and sustainable crop production, working daily on his hands and knees planting, watering, and harvesting his crops by hand. He also teaches classes on farming to the public and has several apprentices that he is training to run a greenhouse. If he isn’t driving around the farm on all-terrain vehicle with his Border Collie, Lily, seated next to him, you can almost always find him in works pants, brown hair disheveled, with dirt on his hands in one of the two greenhouses.

Algiere agrees that a hydroponic system indoors could work on multiple levels, but since hydroponics is just a growing medium, moving a plant from water to a foam, it does not create the same amounts of nutrients. He believes there are no real active spaces for biological actions, organisms are not eating each other and there is no cycle of life happening in that soil. Although humans can supplement some nutrients, we have yet to match the quality that can be found in a natural ecosystem.

Algiere and Caraccioli think there’s another obstacle: food grown through hydroponics often tastes bad. “I don’t know how the final commodity would taste being grown indoors” say Caraccioli. “You taste indoor hothouse tomatoes all the time. To me, they’re nothing special.”

Farming vertically avoids weather and pest related crop failures because the plants are contained in a controlled environment. However, this type of contained environment also requires additional attention in other forms. Vertical farms would require more labor than today’s greenhouses, yet on the bright side, in today’s economic climate that means an opportunity for more jobs. But these farms are more susceptible to epidemics because they are not being maintained by a natural ecosystem. They would require a team of experts like Algiere and Caraccioli, who have spent decades learning about the science and methodology of growing crops and who also have a genuine love for what they do.

Algiere says that there are enough people out there who want to learn, but there are currently very few people like him who want to teach them. “There’s lots of people and there’s lots of interest there’s just not a lot of training, Algiere said. “If something like vertical farming were to start, its not starting tomorrow. It would take a planning group a long time to get something really functioning and for a city to be on track.”

Food quality, taste and education aside, light is another major problem when situating a farm in the middle of an urban center like Manhattan. Some experts like Jack Rabin, Associate Director of the Farm Programs at Rutgers New Jersey Experiment Systems Agricultural, have questioned how the natural light from the sun is going to be evenly incorporated into a high-rise farm if the building is surrounded by other high-rises.

“I can’t see how you would ever get the number of photons [light particles] to make vertical farming really vertical,” said Rabin.

Zabar admits that one of his major problems with crop production in his greenhouses is a lack of sunlight in certain areas. A building on the east side of his greenhouses blocks the natural light in the afternoons and as a result he has experiences bad crops of melons, tomatoes and berries. He also believes that his fig trees would produce higher yields of crops if that building did not block out a large majority of sunlight.

Disposing of excess waste is also a problem. Harvesting creates inedible crops and many times, crops will go bad before you can sell them. Despommier’s model includes a compost system where you recycle what you don’t sell through the energy recapturing system. Some worry that a compost system in such a confined space like a large city will create foul odors and health hazards for those who live around the farm.

Gregg Twehues, Director of Nutrient Management at Stone Barns, who handles their entire compost operation, says that a forced air system like the O2 system he uses at Stone Barns is the solution to that problem. An O2 system cycles fresh oxygen enriched air into the compost container to minimailze unpleasant odors. The system he uses controls all of the pre and post consumer waste at all of their restaurants.

Twehues says that with an O2 system, “You can compost a large volume of material in a shorter amount of time, you can stabilize it in a shorter amount of time and it can be adapted to any size, vertically or horizontally.”

(Caraccioli Farm, Salinas, CA; Courtesy Amber Sandoval-Griffin)

Where there are doers, who have made farming a career and live by the traditional methods of crop production, there are also dreamers, who want to push farming to the next level. There are architects, economists, engineers, and ecologists who believe in the plan, having created designs and business models based on the vertical farm project.

Andrew Kranis, was the first to design a model for what a vertical farm would look like back in 1999 when he was a graduate student at the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University. Since then, more than 10 other individuals from all over the world have created there own designs for the project. This includes Despommier who collaborated with Eric Ellingsen to create a “Food Pyramid” model as a possible structure for Masdar City.

People like Bejamin Walmer, Johsua Klein and Stefan Boubill are working on similar projects that revolve around the idea of vertical farming. These visionaries behind the SEED/BED project plan on retrofitting an Airstream trailer (the SEED) into a livable garden and traveling around the U.S. to spread awareness for self-sustainability. The BED will be a roof top garden located in a location in New York City that is still to be determined, and will attempt to be a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) for the occupants below. Like a vertical farm, the BED will use recycled wind power and solar power and recycled storm water to sustain itself.

Walmer, who is very familiar with Despommier’s project, believes that the SEED and the BED will raise awareness for urban farming. He also thinks the BED could serve as a small-scale model to test how well a large vertical farm would work.

“People have got to try this out and start to work out the wrinkles and the kinks and the technologies and the techniques for growing a significant quantity of high quality food in an urban environment,” says Walmer. “If we went out and built a 70-story building right now, it could be disastrous.”

Keith Agoada developed his own form of farming vertically and made it into a business before he ever heard of Despommier’s model. In April 2008, during his senior year at the University of Wisconsin, Agoada won an entrepreneurial contest for developing a business plan of building greenhouses on commercial rooftops.

His idea consisted of building gutter greenhouses on the roof spaces of commercial buildings, specifically those with a grocery store underneath. The greenhouse could use soil, hydroponics, and aeroponic growth systems and would include rainwater storage tanks with an aquaponic system that utilizes fish waste as a fertilizer for the plants. The plan would also incorporate solar panels and a wind turbine for energy efficiency.

“A lot of people said it was a really bad idea until I went to Bret McCoun, my old professor who is the director if integrated agriculture,” Agoada said. “He told me, ‘Keith, you’ve got a million dollar idea.’ I was like ‘yeah right, you’re joking right?’ He was like ‘no, this could actually work.’”

And so far, it has worked. Agoada, 23, turned his college project into his first business, using the money he won from the contest to create a website, www.skyvegetables.com, and attract potential investors. Though his company, Sky Vegetables, has yet to build a physical structure, they have several large grocery chains, who request to remain unnamed, that are interested in the project. Agoada also has an investor that is backing the project who he cannot name due to legal reasons.

“There have been people who see the concept and understand the value and understand that it is not too far-fetched to think, ‘We could be growing food on a rooftop,’” Agoada said. “It might be quirky, it might be silly, but it’s not like creating the internet.”

As silly or quirky as it might be these people are making urban farming a reality and opening a window to the vertical world. Despommier has been called everything from a dreamer, to a visionary, to a radical, but he is not going to stop promoting the idea of farming vertically any time soon. He has heard the pros and cons and takes both sides very seriously, but at the end of the day, he just wants to provide people with an alternative way to survive and live long, healthy lifestyles.

“Why not enable a country to produce food in another way?” says Despommier, with a grin, his eyes beaming. “Wouldn’t this be a wonderful gift? Yeah, I know,” he adds with a shrug and as he throws his hands in the air. “Lots of luck on that one. Hey, I’m an academic type of person. I can dream. I can dream.”
-End-

Amber Sandoval-Griffin is a journalist and photographer who currently resides in Birmingham, AL. To read more from her and to contact her, visit her website.

Concrete Jungles Destroying the Wooden Ones

2010-02-09T08:29:00.000-08:00

(Borneo. Photo from here.)

David Biello, from Scientific American, says, in his most recent article, that

A statistical analysis of 41 countries revealed that forest loss rates are most closely linked with urban population growth and agricultural exports...even overall population growth was not as strong a driver.

Deforestation has always been considered a major culprit in climate change--as forests disappear, so too does the Earth's ability to self-regulate temperature--but this article, and the accompanying scholarly paper, paint a clear picture of the root cause of all this tree felling: urbanization. Interesting.

Although cities are widely considered to be far more energy and resource efficient living locales than someplace out in the boonies, the findings of this study show us that cities have a long way to go before they can rest on their laurels. What we need, since this deforestation is mostly a result of an increased demand for agricultural land, is a new way to produce food.
The only good thing to come out of farming is the food we eat, so if we can replicate the outdoors process indoors, and if we can do it where the bulk of the world' population lives, wouldn't that be a good thing? Not to mention the incredible regenerative abilities of the natural world: if we left the eastern half of the midwest untouched by farming, it would grow back into a hardwood forest within one generation, a hardwood forest that captures carbon from the atmosphere. Witness the Hubbard Brook project.

(Photo from here)

Humans are urbanizing; there's no question about that. Now it's time for the systems around them to catch up: it no longer makes sense to grow a whole bunch of food in the midwest and ship it all over the country and the world; it no longer makes sense (debatable is the question of whether it ever made sense) to clear-cut forests to make room for more farmland; it no longer makes sense to think of cities as disconnected from the natural world--indeed, this study shows that they are very related to its demise. The time has come to think holistically about how cities fit into the fabric of the planet, and one thing that will result from such a holistic approach is the need for cities to produce a large amount of the food they consume. I dont' want to witness the day when we're unprepared and unable to feed ourselves; let's get to work on urban agriculture today--with support from our government--so that tomorrow when we need it, we'll finally be ahead of the times.

3x3 Farm Box

2010-02-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

I've just caught wind of Australian industrial designer, Xavier Calluaud's, Urb Garden (clever; get it?), and thought I should share it with you. Touted as, "A vertical food garden for the urban gardener," this product (not yet available commercially) offers a way to grow a little food in a little space, in 9 little modular cubes.

Although we Vertical Farmers much prefer higher-tech systems like Plasma Arc Gasification to composting, the Urb Garden looks great for refurbishing a drab deck or kitchen area while also saving on food costs and cutting waste from food packaging. I'll say it again and again: I'm on board with anyone who wants to decentralize food production and increase urban farming.

(Story via Greenmuze)

High Steaks Gamblin'

2010-01-05T08:17:00.000-08:00

A country's meat consumption increases with its GDP per capita, but what happens to a country when foreign bankers make cold, hard wagers on its future food prices? The Food and Water Watch, a consumer NGO headquartered in Washington DC, published this report in November, 2009, which provides a startling look at the connection between Wall Street's investments (read: speculation) in the future prices of commodities--including food--and the sharp rise in global hunger attributable to higher food prices.

The FAWW explains why a commodities future market exists at all:

On the most basic level, the commodity futures market is a way for farmers to avoid having to sell their crops at harvest times, when the supply is high and the price is low. Instead, farmers can market their crops before they are harvested through a futures contract to lock in a price they hope will be better, or at least more predictable, than what they would get at harvest time. On the flip side, the buyers of agricultural products can ensure they have a steady supply of crops like corn or wheat at a certain price. The commodity futures market allows both the seller (farmer) and buyer (food manufacturer) to reduce their risk from volatile prices and uncertain supplies — allowing both to hedge their bets.

But, as the report explains and similar to the abuse we have come to expect from Wall Street, the regulations that were supposed to keep commodities speculation in check were largely undone or sidestepped over the past twenty years. With housing investments and other typical safe harbors run dry from misuse, the commodities markets soaked up cash by the boatloads. Every two-bit investment house scanned the horizon for a place to profit, and an inordinate amount of money landed in the commodities markets, where a billion dollar investment in the future price of, say, wheat, has a potentially life-changing affect in how much bread the 3 billion people who live on less than $2.50 a day can afford. So far from this being a place where Farmer Joe pre-sells his crop of corn to Food Processor Jack, now Investor Bernie can buy the crop with no intention of ever actually collecting X amount of corn. The outcome is that investors profit, but producers and consumers all along the food chain suffer. Why? Because Investor Bernie was never interested in eating--or doing anything at all--with the crop of corn he purchased. Instead, he's introduced an artificial demand for foods, which naturally raises their prices, which cuts out a huge segment of the market that could barely scrape by pre-price-hike.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler told the U.S. Senate in February, 2009, “I believe that increased speculation in energy and agricultural products has hurt farmers and consumers.”

It's like professional baseball players playing high school ball for a while just to bolster their own stats. In this case, the stats are profits (for smaller investors too, all of whom have handed their money over to big investment houses in expectation of a nice return) and if the high school teams give up too many home runs, or if the pitchers have too high an ERA, then some of the players die. It's an unfair game, and the rules seem extreme and sometimes arbitrary, but so it goes for human life; and those investors who enter this benign market to pillage the inexperienced are nimrods--their infantile pursuit of self-interest will prove to be nothing more than a hedonist's Guide to Dying.

But maybe the problem is deeper, maybe it lies in the tangled web of life, money, politics and appearances. Whatever the root, the hunger problem is a real problem in my eyes, and the best I can do is try to fix it. That doesn't mean betting on the price of corn next week.

"Only when the last tree is cut, only when the last river is polluted, only when the last fish is caught, will they realise that you can't eat money." - Native American proverb

Space Jam (I prefer Raspberry)

2009-12-14T09:10:00.000-08:00

Vertical Farming makes sense on this planet, right now. But I digress.

If you're one of those people who disagrees, who'd rather continue to depredate this planet, maybe we can find common ground in outer space.

From CNN Money's Chris Taylor:

The annals of entrepreneurship are full of world-changing ideas, pipe dreams and visionary projects plagued by missteps and skepticism. Then there's the space elevator, which is all of the above on steroids.

The principle behind a space elevator is simple enough: imagine you're holding a string with a tennis ball tied to the end of it. Now spin quickly in circles, holding the string steady in front of you like a golf club. The tennis ball floats up, and the string is taut. You're planet earth, the tennis ball is a satellite-type object that would be out in space orbiting the earth, and the string is the elevator. Sound tough to do? It is. But the possibilities afterward are pretty cool:

Because it would reduce the cost of getting people and materials to space by roughly 90%, a space elevator would...kick-start the space tourism business.

The space tourism business? So, space hotels, space spas, space restaurants? And viola: space Vertical Farms. But I say, let's perfect it here first, then try our luck in the last frontier.

If you're not on board with Vertical Farming on this planet, please at least join us in space. (Space suit not included.)

Mitchell Joaqim, Friend of Vertical Farms, Announced as a TED Fellow

2009-12-14T08:18:00.000-08:00

Today, Mitchell Joaqim, whom I've mentioned here, has been chosen as a TED Fellow for the upcoming 2010 TED Conference in Long Beach, CA. Here's a list of all the Fellows. Here's the short bio on Mr. Joaqim:

Architect and co-founder of Terreform ONE, a non-profit design group that promotes green design in cities.

If you aren't familiar with TED, you're missing out. Go to TED.com and watch presentations given by all the brightest people around on the most interesting topics you can imagine, for free. Dickson Despommier was a TED Speaker earlier this year, although his talk is not available on the website (I don't know why, but Chris Anderson could definitely fix that.)

Congrats to Mitchell for his (many) accomplishment(s), and I'm sure we'll keep hearing more and more from this leader in sustainable city design.

If you have some time, check out this (45 minute) CNBC interview, featuring Mitchell Joaqim, Dan Albert, and Dr. Despommier.

Why Have the Climate Talks Neglected Food?

2009-12-11T13:40:00.000-08:00

Seriously? It's no longer a secret that agriculture is a major contributor of greenhouse gasses. Reuters reports:

When that indirect effect [of deforestation] is included, farming accounts for
nearly a third of global greenhouse gases.

This report from Iowa State University (can't get enough of the Hawkeye state) tells a different story, but it still puts agriculture's impact on greenhouse gas emissions at a very noteworthy level.

Why would the Climate Change Summit ignore it?

Root for Local (Vertical) Produce

2009-12-10T15:59:00.000-08:00

GOOD, a group the Vertical Farmer loves, published this infographic (an image created to illustrate boring numbers data, see more here) showing how far "local" produce travels from plant to plate compared to that distance for "conventional" produce. The results are shocking.

The data is from Iowa, but the author - and the Vertical Farmer - thinks the data would look approximately the same for any state: conventional produce travels much farther than local produce. Vertical Farms could turn every city into its own produce producer.

Some people, often Conservatives, sometimes have trouble seeing past "what is" to "what should be." In this case, "what is" is a US food system where half of the food goes to waste (see: Half of US Food Goes to Waste and Jonathan Bloom's blog, Wasted Food), school lunches are less healthy than fast food, the government funds overproduction and ultimately is partly responsible for international starvation, and we endanger ourselves simply by eating (for a more in depth look at the food safety problem, read this TIME article.) That's what is. "What should be" is a system that feeds everyone, a system that is as efficient as we are capable of creating, a system that treats the destruction of the natural environment as a cost and not an externality. We need to revamp our food system.

Sometimes, conventional is a good thing. But is "conventional" worth protecting in this case? Should Iowa be growing its sweet corn 1,400 miles away? I know we spend less money on food as a percentage of our incomes than we did 50 years ago, but can people really defend a food system that leads to this kind of self-insufficiency?

AND ALSO, check out this trailer I found on Wasted Food for the movie Dive!

Climategate: Bad News For Vertical Farms?

2009-12-05T02:07:00.000-08:00

In case you haven't heard yet, Global Warming (GW) is a big hoax and Al Gore is a liar, a thief, a hypocrite, and soon to become the world's first carbon billionnaire. Oh, and he also has big socks and big feet...or at least a big footprint of carbon. The billionaire part is cool (can we have some?), but the other parts...not so much.

Emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University in Norwich, England were leaked a couple of weeks ago, and they spell bad PR for GW. Apparently many scientists from this influential unit-the reports published by the IPCC, which is unquestionably the leading authority in the public's eye on climate change, are based largely on reports done by the CRU-have omitted, falsified and nudged data to fit the maybe-true-maybe-false GW model.

Surprisingly, most media outlets have been slow to pick up on the story. Even more surprisingly, little has been mentioned in the way of this scandal's affect on the upcoming Copenhagen conference. Should Obama address Climategate? Maybe, maybe not.

While the Vertical Jury (me) is still out on what exactly Climategate implies for being green, there are a few important points to remember.

The first point is this: even if these emails are authentic (meaning that we assume they were either leaked by a whistle blower or a hacker, and not, as most reports aren't considering, falsified for some reason by GW-believers), nothing in them makes Global Warming false. People respond to dire news-20 feet of sea level rise!-more than to needing to apply a little extra sunscreen. Maybe the CRU scientists are just telling us what they think we need to hear in order for us to do the necessary actions to save our skin; the bummer of it would be when scientists lose all credibility with the public and GW turns out to be true. Oops!

But the truth of these emails doesn't necessarily matter for GW. James Hansen, a climate change expert if there ever was one, says, in response to being asked if the CRU emails undermine the science:

No, they have no effect on the science. The evidence for human-made climate change is overwhelming.

(Hansen is called the "grandfather of global warming" and, for what it's worth, he always holds steady to science and, laudably, doesn't think much of politicizing the issue. He has low hopes for Copenhagen.)

The second point to remember is that whether or not GW is true, the structure of getting food, water and energy to everyone is broken, bad, unfair, and it needs fixing. We-that's right, you and I, the people who have the luxury of internet and the free time to peruse blogs-need to concern ourselves with getting those much less fortunate than us up to our level. I know that's a hard thing for our nature-evolutionarily, humans are good at protecting their clan, but not that interested in improving the lot of the "others"-but I think we can use our big brains to get over the bias away from out-group altruism and start to actually demand some changes, both from ourselves and from our "leaders." To me, and to a growing body of supporters, Vertical Farming holds a lot of promise along these lines.

Is Climategate bad news for Vertical Farming? It's pretty irrelevant, honestly. (I brought this up in this post.) Until someone can convince me that it is morally acceptable for humankind to knowingly let millions starve every year (see here or here or here or here) and to enslave our planet for our own needs to this extreme, not to mention the erosion of beauty (see Manufactured Landscapes), GW is an after-thought to why Vertical Farming makes sense. Let's try it because the potential good outweighs the potential bad, because it's doable, and because growing food in a less centralized way is important to all of our personal safety.

A quick side-note to the Vertical Farmer's interest in Climategate. Some people think the real news in all this hoop-la is the fact that the emails were, hold your breath, stolen.

(Photo, showing Al Gore to have used a computer-generated image as fact in his documentary, from the blog An Inconvenient Alarm)

Vertical Farming Makes the TIME 50 Best Inventions List

2009-11-13T13:09:00.000-08:00

Valcent Technology's VertiCrop System, which I wrote about here, was just announced as one of TIME's 50 Best Inventions of 2009. It is number 16.

Congratulations to Valcent for this recognition for its work in sustainable agriculture!

But is this really a Vertical Farm? TIME thinks yes, but I think no. An article from Food, Nutrition, and Science thinks:

VertiCrop differs from Despommier’s multi-story vision in that it is a single story structure with food growing on vertical planes.

So, does this count as Vertical Farming? What do you think?

The UN Committed to Solving Global Hunger? Don't Be Fooled

2009-11-12T13:43:00.000-08:00

We must give money to farmers in developing countries. It is, according to Jacques Diouf*:

“The most effective way to eliminate hunger from the face of the Earth.”

Bloomberg News published that in an article today that expounds the UN's commitment to curing the global hunger problem through, essentially, financial aid. The article almost convinced me that the UN is doing everything within their power to rectify this horrifying injustice.

But then I thought about subsidies.

I cannot put the argument better than Chris Mallinos of the Epoch Times (in this two-part series, summer 2009), so I'll let him say it:

Under the warm Italian sun, G8 leaders stood in unity [in July] to announce a $20 billion pledge to help farmers in developing countries. They smiled, posed for pictures, and heralded their plan as an important step in the battle against hunger.

What’s more, like in any good photo-op, the leaders managed to entirely avoid questions on anything of substance—namely how their very own farm subsidies will render that $20 billion essentially useless...
For all the talk of free markets and competition so often heard in the West, global agriculture remains a surprisingly lopsided industry. That’s because these subsidies fund massive overproduction in the West, which leads to the dumping of food into global markets...
Thousands of miles away, African farmers deal with near-barren fields, drought, inadequate equipment and a flood of subsidized Western products that undercut local prices...
Until local agricultural industries are allowed to compete in their own markets, instead of being drowned out by subsidized foreign imports, farmers and the economies they support will remain weak, unstable and dependent on others.

But for that to happen, we must first stop treating food as just another political commodity to profit from and begin seeing it for what it really is—a necessity of life and a human right.

Does anybody else see this? Does the UN realize this? If not, that's not very good. But if so, the implications are almost sinister.

Bloomberg News reports:

Diouf will go on a 24-hour hunger strike on Nov. 14-15 in solidarity with the hungry, he said.

It's a nice gesture, but how about the UN spearheading the push to remove all farming subsidies?

*Jacques Diouf is the Food and Agriculture Organization Director General; the FAO is part of the UN

The Floating Vertical Farm

2009-11-09T08:57:00.000-08:00

Small ports, Grub Hubs, dot the city's seaboard, serving hospitals, schools and restaurants, receiving and distributing food day and night. Floating Farms run on Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC), which produces electricity and also turns seawater into fresh water, and underwater wind turbines that capture the power of tides (see: Verdant Power.) River Gyms act also as shipping vessels, bringing workers to the Vertical Farm, and delivering food to the dozens of Grub Hubs (also the name of a great website). Subways and Eco-vans further distribute the food, running fully on clean energy. Everyone is healthier. Everyone is happier. It's one vision; do you like it?

Vincent Callebaut, whose Dragonfly farm design appears on the right-hand side of this blog, is thinking the right things by designing his Vertical Farm into the Hudson. The Vertical Farmer is convinced that morality demands of us that we not let injustice--global hunger and thirst are unjust--persist any longer. And we have to get creative with it. A floating Vertical Farm is exactly what people need to be pursuing. What's your Too-Good-To-Pass-Up?

The complacency must stop now, we must let the compass that guides towards fairness and integrity rise to its rightful place at the helm of civilization, unshackled of petty greed and fleeting power. We must think of ourselves as patrons for the coming ages and create out of the human spirit something fresh and useful, lest our species be left behind. Failure is acceptable, but indifference is not. A new Levi's ad steals lines from Walt Whitman, but those lines apply here:

We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,

We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,

Pioneers! O pioneers!

Let's go.

(River Gyms image by Mitchell Joachim and Terreform 1)

Today's Sciene Fiction Is Tomorrow's Science Fact

2009-11-06T09:42:00.000-08:00

Some wonder whether Vertical Farms are too pie-in-the-sky. Some, like me, believe the idea is too good to pass-up. The true value of Vertical Farms, according to Cliff Kuang at Fast Company, may be the jolt of creativity it delivers to a bored world:

...I'd argue that part of the reason why small projects like [window farms and rooftop farms] capture our imagination is the very existence of far-out ideas like vertical farms. Those crazy concepts give imaginative scale to your daily life. And that, in itself, is valuable, because it connects something mundane with something grand--and that's good for motivating people to change.

I think he's right. Even if Vertical Farms are years away, the idea is now out in the public domain, and it is motivating people around the world to try things they might have otherwise left alone in a dusty attic of Wouldn't-That-Be-Cools. In a world that is in dire need of some fresh thinking, having an grandiose idea out there--Vertical Farming--allows people some room for creativity. "And that's," according to Kuang, "how technology always advances."

Through the Looking Glass

2009-11-05T08:56:00.000-08:00

If you don't already know the term "ethylene tetrafluoroethylene," listen up. A light-weight, durable, self-cleaning, transparent alternative to plastic that was introduced years ago may prove to be useful in Vertical Farms, whenever and wherever they pop up. This fluorocarbon-based polymer, commonly known as ETFE, and which weighs only 1% the weight of glass, has been called a wonder-material by some, and will likely find its way into more and more of the Vertical Farm designs from architects around the world. Go here to see more projects built with this material, and go here to learn more about a company steeped in its use.

The largest ETFE structure is the Beijing Water Cube, which was used for all water events at the 2008 Olympics. The inside and outside of the 17 acre Water Cube are shown below.

One of the more famous projects done using ETFE is the Eden Project in Cornwall, England (about 300 miles southwest of London), designed by Grimshaw Architects. Eight geodesic domes constructed with steel frames and ETFE "pillows" that have been built into what used to be the site of a clay pit now house temperate and tropical fauna year round, and host bunches of tourists, by controlling temperature and humidity inside the sinuous maze of greenhouses covering most of the 35 acre site. Each hexagon is approximately 25 feet from flat-side to flat-side...indicating that the domes are HUGE!

By the looks of things, Vertical Farms have a very bubbly future.

(Photos from Getty Images, this site, this site and this site)

A Vertical Farm...in Your Bedroom?

2009-11-04T13:34:00.001-08:00

You want the benefits of local food production but you don't want to wait for Vertical Farms? How about Home Farming by Philips Design? Intrigued by the consequences of long-term social trends such as "the growth in popularity of organic produce, implications of genetic modification...and rising food prices," teams at Philips developed a way to grow some of what we eat for dinner in our own kitchens.

Read more about the Food Probe, as Philips dubbed this design project, on Treehuger, Inhabitat or Designboom.

(photo from Philips)

There's a Movement Afoot

2009-11-04T08:18:00.000-08:00

It was a night to hobnob with farmers of the urban variety. In honor of Jane Jacobs, the writer and activist to first articulate the need for humans to live in cities, the Municipal Arts Society of New York City hosted its 2nd annual panel discussion last night, featuring five authorities on urban sustainability, entitled Re-Imagining New York: Designing Urban Farms to Feed Our City. Over 300 attendees prodded and applauded the panelists, who covered issues from politics to biology over the brief one and a half hour forum (and a reception afterward.) Here's a rundown, in reverse-alphabetical, of who last night's panelists are and what they said.

UPDATE: Listen to the entire panel discussion here.

Jenn Nelkin, Founder of Gotham Greens and CEA expert: Jenn, in the opinion of the Vertical Farmer, will have books written about her someday. She was highlighted here earlier, but it's worth recapping a bit: Master's degree in Plant Sciences from the place for CEA, the University of Arizona; developing hydroponic greenhouses on Antarctica; working for Bright Farm Systems in New York and directing the operation of the Science Barge; and now she has her own urban greenhouse company, Gotham Greens. The Vertical Farmer follows Jenn's logic on how to get this idea to blossom: public support is great, but in order for urban hydroponic food production to really take root, someone has to prove that it can be commercially viable.

Dickson Despommier, Columbia Professor of Microbiology & Vertical Farm Godfather: "We can solve the hunger problem." Dickson's reputation grows with each public appearance while he holds steadfastly to his vision of sustainable urban food production across the world. Neal Pierce, the moderator of Tuesday's Jane Jacobs Forum, described Dickson's name as being "synonymous with Vertical Farming." Indeed it is; the man and the idea are equally ingratiating.

Nevin Cohen, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at the New School, New York: "I like horizontal urban farming," he told me upon our introduction. He tempered the enthusiasm in the air with what some would commend--and others would scoff--as a "more realistic" take on Vertical Farming. The three biggest problems about today's food system, in Mr. Cohen's view, are its globalization, its industrialization and its centralization; he thinks we need to focus on resiliency now. With most of the discussion focused on hydroponic growing, Nevin Cohen's comment--"Let's not forget about organics"--elicited the largest ovation of the night. (NOTE: "organic" and hydroponic are not mutually exclusive.)

Colin Cathcart, Kiss + Cathcart Architects (NYC firm): Upon graduating from Columbia University with a Master's degree in architecture, Colin joined with Greg Kiss--whose family invented the photovoltaic cell--forming Kiss + Cathcart Architects. They have recently been in talks with New York City officials regarding the restructuring of city zoning laws in order to encourage the proliferation of rooftop greenhouses. Last night, Colin stressed the need to bring food to our built environment: "I want to replace asphalt with vine and fruit and root."

Dan Albert, Weber Thompson Design (Seattle firm): Pinned as the man who's principals and motivations as a designer most neatly mesh with Dickson Despommier's vision of a Vertical Farm, Dan Albert and his team will be, according to the Vertical Farmer, the leading architectural group on the world's first Vertical Farm. For Dan, the strongest reason to pursue Vertical Farming is that people should be connected to their food system; biophilia is what it's all about.

The forum was great partly because it forced me, and I presume others in the audience as well, to question my reasons for supporting Vertical Farms. Here's my reason: It is unacceptable for people to starve to death in a world of plenty. I don't care what it costs; let's feed everyone first, then deal with the next problems.

Colin Cathcart may have said it best: "It isn't a question of cost, it's a question of value." What could be more valuable than providing every single human being with adequate food and water?

Check out the MASNYC website for more info on the event.

Love from Lancaster

2009-11-02T13:33:00.001-08:00

Tracy Sutton, an editor at The Lancaster Daily News, wrote a piece about Vertical Farming on Friday. Thoughtful and informative, the article addresses concerns raised by Cornell Controlled Environment Agriculture research director, Dr. Louis Albright and quells each of them with excerpts from her phone conversation with Dr. Dickson Despommier.

One issue that Dr. Albright does not have with Vertical Farms is the matter of taste, and for good reason. Ms. Sutton explains:

The space age of hydroponic technology is all very fine and good, but what about the taste of hydroponic vegetables? Isn’t dirt primal? Doesn’t it give our food some essential flavor that water-soluble nutrient solution can’t?
No, says Despommier and gives a recitation of the chemical compounds that go into plant physiology. “What makes a plant taste good? Flavanoids. Too much water dilutes flavanoids, too little concentrates the sugars. With vertical farming you can control these variables.”

Control everything or control nothing? If you want the best tasting produce you've ever eaten, the choice is Vertical Farms.

Thanks, Tracy, for spreading the word.

Read My Lips: Vertical Farms Can Solve Hunger

2009-10-28T12:18:00.000-07:00

For some reason, lots of people have stopped caring about words. From movies and music to cell phones and laptops, it's never been easier to get by without careful consideration of what exactly one communicates than it is now. WTF, BRB, ROTFL: we effort more to do life quickly rather than well, it seems. But most of us are not law-makers and shakers (at least yet), and so this is not where the intoxicating disregard for words is troublesome.

The troubling thing is that those in positions of social influence have fallen victim to this perfidious use of the English language as well; theirs is perhaps more insidious because it is more subtle.

From the New York Times today:

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, feeding humanity in 2050 — when the world’s population is expected to be 9.1 billion — will require a 70 percent increase in global food production, partly because of population growth but also because of rising incomes.

From the Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government this year:

By 2030, the demand for food is going to be increased by about 50%. Can we do it?...We've got to somehow produce 50% more by that time.

Notice anything?

The problem with these statements is two-fold. First of all, they are wrong. What we need to do in 2030 or 2050, just like what we need to do in 2009, is to feed everyone. We produce plenty of food; that's not the problem. It’s the distribution that’s the problem. In fact, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the Stockholm International Water Institute and the International Water Management Institute authored a policy paper in August of 2008 entitled "Saving Water: From Field to Fork - Curbing Losses and Wastage in the Food Chain," in which they show that 50% of the food we produce is wasted. 50%! Unbelievable. What we need to do is not produce more; we need to drastically change the distribution. And we need our influential experts and those people who can reach large audiences to recognize the difference between the two: this is the second problem.

It's OK for Average Joe to occasionally falter on these points: his effect on the general public is not much. But in times like these, when game-changing legislation is imminent, and when it will likely shape our world for the next 100 years or more, those in influential positions--the people on whose words millions form opinions--owe it to all of humanity to not misspeak. And I can only think that it is misspeech, because the alternative—that they actually believe what they say—bodes unbearably bad for the prospect of the planet.

Indeed, the food, water and energy crises are enormous challenges. And coupled with those of global warming, our situation is dire. If we hope to remedy the planet, then we must demand of our leaders that they remedy their speech. They must say what they mean to say, which is this: we need to figure out a way to feed everybody.

Guess what? Vertical Farms are part of the solution.

Is "Wow Big Idea" a Bad Thing?

2009-10-28T08:30:00.000-07:00

In response to the general public's fascination with, and support of, Vertical Farms, some people have recently written rebuttals of the idea. At least two blogs have attacked the economic viability of Vertical Farming, echoing one another in an empty whimper suggestive of unimaginative minds plodding along with a vague conviction that the status quo is a heaven-sent utopia.

EcoGeek just posted an article called "Let's Make This Clear: Vertical Farms Don't Make Sense" in which they write that two things need to happen in order for "Vertical Farms to make sense":

You need the price of food to increase 100 fold over today's prices, and you need the productivity of vertical farms to increase 100 fold over traditional farms. Neither of those things will ever happen.

Sci-Fi author and blogger, Tobias Buckell, writes:

...The fact is, the existing land sprawling out around New York and the US and gasoline to transport the goods from the heartland to NYC is still far cheaper [than building Vertical Farms] when an accountant crunches the figures.

These people are missing the point entirely. First of all, if anyone thinks that today's agricultural system is perfect, he is wrong. If anyone thinks that we don't need drastic change, consider the following: we produce enough food to feed 12 billion people, yet we fail to distribute adequate food to even six billion; agriculture is the number one source of water pollution in the world; rapid ecosystem loss due to deforestation due to the need for more farmland has partly contributed to what many scientists are calling The Sixth Mass Extinction, which could claim our species; and the list goes on. Wendell Berry said, "Eating determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used." He's right, and we're using it embarrassingly badly.

Secondly, who's to say Vertical Farming is not economically viable? Cars weren't economically viable, until they were. Cell phones weren't economically viable, until they were. The computer I'm pounding on wasn't economically viable, until it was. Who's to say that Vertical Farms won't become economically viable once they're tried? As traditional farmland becomes unusable, which is happening with climate change, the demand for all alternative methods of food production will increase, partly increasing the demand for Vertical Farms; as this happens, money will flow into Vertical Farm research, and the cost of constructing and operating Vertical Farms will decrease. More to the point, I've seen business plans for a Vertical Farm, and it is economically viable, today.

Dickson Despommier has been clear that the best way to proceed with Vertical Farms is not to go straight in to a 30-story building, but rather to build a prototype that will serve as a Vertical Farm research lab where the scientists, engineers, architects and horticulturalists will smooth out the kinks in what will surely be a very kinky--not that kind--operation. As soon as all of the experts have determined what works and what doesn't work in this structure, then it will be time to raise both the stakes and the height of the greenhouse. This research lab will also have the distinction of First Vertical Farm, and so will command prodigious tourism from around the world. But the point is to get started on research now because we will need and want functional VFs later (actually, we need and want them right now), and the Vertical Farmer, mirroring Despommier's thinking, thinks it would be best to fix the mistakes in the lab. So, five stories now, 30 stories later.

Vertical Farming is already economically viable, and it will happen, regardless of naysayers.

Vertical Farming should be pursued because it is a simple solution to a number of human world problems that does not involve further encroachment into the natural world. Most of our "simple solutions" to date have involved the destruction of the natural world and have proven to be quite complex when we account for ensuing environmental problems. But this one actually shields the natural world from our heavy footprint of progress. Its intuitiveness and its simplicity are actually its greatest strengths. As EcoGeek puts it:

At first, [Vertical Farming] seems to make all the sense in the world. Moving production of food into population centers to eliminate shipping. Creating highly efficient "food factories" that allow land elsewhere to be freed from cultivation.

Exactly.

(VF design by Oliver Foster)

Bamboozled: Vertical Biofuel Farms in Croatia?

2009-10-23T11:02:00.001-07:00

Croatian architecture firm UPI2M has proposed growing bamboo and algae in Vertical Biofuel Farms in that country's capital, Zagreb, that would be placed on top of existing gas stations, turning these notoriously hard-to-find locales into international landmarks. As treehugger puts it:

It is a clever idea. We all support the idea of local food, why not local fuel? The reduction in fuel miles, ending of reliance on foreign supplies, and absorption of CO2 by the growing plants would make our car based culture viable again.

But is that really the road we want to take? Is it more worthwhile and desirable to prolong our "car based culture" than to work towards developing a culture based on something else entirely? What about Gross National Happiness?

The Vertical Biofuel Farms might allow us to keep buying Hummers, but would their vitiation really be a bad thing?

One thing that the Vertical Farmer does like is the idea of growing bamboo, one of the fastest growing and most versatile crops, indoors, but not necessarily for use as a biofuel.

What do you think?
Check out UPI2M's website her e.

NY Times on Urban Farming

2009-10-23T08:14:00.000-07:00

The New York Times ran a story today that adds nutrients to the solution of urban renewal and sustainable food out of which a Vertical Farm will one day sprout. In another of the long line of press that urban agriculture in general, and Vertical Farms in particular, has received, this piece highlights someone new to the Vertical Farm Blog, but someone seasoned in the hydroponics world, Jennifer Nelkin, and her company, Gotham Greens.

Ms. Nelkin has a Master's degree in Plant Sciences from the University of Arizona, where she honed her hydroponic skills in the Controlled Environment Agric ulture Center (CEAC) while working with CEA all-stars Merle Jensen and Gene Giacomelli. Ms. Nelkin was also part of a team that grew plants on the South Pole, feeding a team of researchers. When it comes to CEA know-how, this lady is ripe and ready.

Gotham Greens is building a 10,000 square foot (1/4 of an acre) rooftop greenhouse above a church on Archer Avenue in Queens, which, once completed, will be the largest urban hydroponic operation in the world. With a (small) $1.4 million budget, and with (big) goals like creating green jobs and growing litigious amounts of local food, Gotham Greens helps us see what our cities could look like as more of this kind of farming is implemented.

The bigger vision is, of course, Vertical Farms. Maybe the leap is too far today, but Jenn Nelkin and other urban farmers like her are the bridge that will carry us to sustainable urban food production tomorrow.

Dear Mr. Bill Gates...

2009-10-21T14:16:00.000-07:00

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in an effort to beget the second Green Revolution, as it is called, has decided to pour $120 million into organizations that will work to assuage hunger in Africa. The particularly noteworthy part of the Foundation's generosity is this: it believes technology can and should be integral in addressing and solving this problem. The Gates Foundation has a history of pursuing these kinds of solutions, and its choice to fund organizations that share its vision speaks to the growing body that rejects the notion that technology and nature are somehow inexorably opposed:

“Productivity or sustainability — they say you have to choose. It’s a false choice," [Bill Gates said]. Rather, we need farming techniques that are both environmentally responsible and highly productive, and technology will help bridge the gap, he said.

The Vertical Farmer couldn't agree more. First of all, the idea that farming as it is currently practiced is "natural" is bogus. Dickson Despommier says that farming is the most unnatural thing we do. Not only is it unnatural, but it's not working. Farms all over the world are failing, and an unacceptable number of people are facing weary straits. Why would we not pursue technological cures--humans are pretty good at technology!--for an ailment that, if we trace the story to its origin, resulted from the use of technology? Vertical Farms seem like a logical recipient of Gates Foundation capital:

Bill Gates...wants to help accelerate a second green revolution in agriculture — again boosting yields, but this time paying more mind to the environment and turning to some technologies that could help deliver a truly sustainable movement.

Providing abundant yields of healthy food, creating drinking water through remediation, generating electricity, restoring damaged ecosystems, and diminishing Sub-Saharan Africa's dependence on foreign aid, the Vertical Farm is the technological solution that the Gates Foundation has been seeking.

Hey Mr. Gates, got a minute?

Read the whole story from earth2tech here.

Vertical Zoo-topia

2009-10-19T07:29:00.000-07:00

Valcent Products Inc., a subsidiary of, and fully-owned by, Valcent Products EU Limited, has developed and installed VertiCrop (top), a "vertical growth system," at the UK's Paignton Zoo Environmental Park in Devon. Even though this Vancouver, B.C.-based company won't be feeding its local population or even feeding humans at all, this is further proof that verticality in hydroponics is catching-on. The "vertical growth system" is a step in the right direction, both in thinking and in doing, towards the goal of sustainable food production that a Vertical Farm will achieve. This Horticulture Week article explains:

A zoo may sound like the last place you would expect to find cutting-edge horticulture. But [the zoo] is pioneering what it describes as a "revolutionary" system to maximise crop yields in a tight space, which could open the door to large-scale "high-rise" growing worldwide.

"We have the first commercially viable vertical growing facility," says Tom Bentley, business development manager at Valcent, developer of the VertiCrop system.

For fairness, we also want to draw attention to HydroStacker (bottom), a "vertical hydroponic growing system" developed in Florida that is a similar product to VertiCrop and should not be overlooked. In fact, Valcent's claim is false: HydroTaste, a Florida hydroponic farm whose owner, Chester Bullock, also owns the patent on the HydroStacker, has been a "commercialy viable vertical growing facility" for much longer than has the VertiCrop system at Paignton Zoo; I guess one lesson today is: don't believe everything you read.

In any case, the VertiCrop system's recent installation is sure to prove influential in the ongoing push from many for alternative ways to grow dinner (for you and your zoo animals.)

Global Warming: Political Alarmism or Scientific Certainty?

2009-10-16T08:25:00.000-07:00

Dr.s William Gray (pic. @ bottom), Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University, and Kevin Trenberth (pic. @ top), head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, recently participated in an in-paper debate on climate change. The author Ray Harvey, "Leave Us Alone," is responsible for bringing together these two for the debate, and should be thanked for it; I hope this debate's being bespeaks of more like it to come.

Dr. Gray is a Global Warming (GW) skeptic for many reasons. For one, he says:

"It must be pointed out that most climate research is supported by the federal government. All federally sponsored researchers need positive peer-reviews on their published papers and grant proposals. This can be difficult for many of the “closet” warming skeptics who receive federal grant support. Many are reluctant to give full expression of their views, primarily because of worries over continuing grant support. It is difficult to receive federal grant support if one’s views differ from the majority of their peers who receive support to find evidence of the warming threat. The normal scientific process of objectively studying both sides of the question has not yet occurred.

On the other side of GW is Dr. Trenberth. Dr. Trenberth argues that climate change is real, is unwelcome and is our fault. He rebukes Dr. Gray:

"I have found that the only scientists who disagree with the IPCC report [which said, “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal” and it is “very likely” due to human activities] are those who have not read it and are poorly informed...[The IPCC's] mandate is to provide policy makers with an objective assessment of the scientific and technical information available about climate change, its environmental and socio-economic impacts, and possible response options...The strength of the IPCC report is that it is a consensus report. Far from being a “gross exaggeration” as claimed by Gray, the IPCC report is really solid and conservative. It is not [as Gray claims] the latest “trendy scientific idea"..."

Without quesiton, the issue of man-made climate change is one that elicits some of the strongest emotions when offered for discussion. Often, it is muddled with agendas of politics and philosophy. This debate gives much-needed clarification to the litany of talking points profusely spouted by both sides.

Here's my question: Even if GW theory is false, are there still good reasons to pursue Vertical Farms?

What do you think?

Read the whole debate here.

Vertical What!?

2009-10-15T19:43:00.000-07:00

Farm. Restaurant. Hotel. Amusement park? Absolutely! says Dutch design firm, Tjep. Plans for the "huge people processor," as the website puts it, have recently hit the 'net, and, ladies and gentlemen, it is something to behold:

Oogst 1000 Wonderland is a self-sufficient farm, restaurant, hotel and amusement park for 1,000 people per day. All food for the restaurant comes from the central structure and directly adjacent fields. Oogst 1000 combines extreme fun with extreme usefulness.

Well, it certainly does look fun, even if its usefulness isn't its most evident quality. Take a virtual tour of the complex with this fly-through.

In addition to all of this, apparently the operation utilizes waste-to-energy technology, exactly the kind of thinking that full-scale Vertical Farms will demand. They say:

Oogst 1000 Wonderland toilets are also linked to to a bio-gas energy system, so Oogst 1000 offers the worlds first toilets were you actually get paid Euro 0.50- per visit.

As Dickson Despommier says in the movie FUEL, by Josh Tickell, "Power to the poopers."

Read more about Oogst 1000 h e re.

Shenzen, China: City In the Sky

2009-10-14T14:57:00.000-07:00

Much more than a Vertical Farm, the Vertical City is a proposal for integrating all aspects of our lives into one behemoth building that incorporates farming, shopping, working, sleeping and eating, according to the pictures. The architects responsible think that they've created something reflective of the communities we desire:

“We had to realize that to make a vertical city is not to make a tower. A city offers a complex set of social and spatial interactions while a tower offers mostly one condition: an elevator to connect a series of repetitive floors. The elevator is the link to everything and therefore your only chance to meet anyone. It is for that reason that we don’t live in towers,” explains [JDS Archi tects].

What do you think? Check out more pictures and the full story here.

Everybody, Meet Will Allen

2009-10-14T10:41:00.000-07:00

In case you don't know him already, the Vertical Farmer is pleased to introduce to you Will Allen, an urban farmer in Milwaukee. He has recently made the GOOD 100 list of people, products and ideas that are making our world a better place. Mr. Allen was awarded the prestigious $500,000 MacArthur grant in 2008, nearly 15 years after founding Growing Power, a community farm aimed at providing healthy, local produce for an inner city food desert, bringing salubrious diets to the malnourished.

Will Allen is one of the most recognizable faces in the crowd of those taking whatever steps they can to bring food production back to where the food is consumed. For his work in promoting urban agriculture, Will Allen's is a face we should all be proud to know.

Read what GOOD has to say about Will Allen here.

Eco-College-Ey

2009-10-13T12:36:00.001-07:00

Bucknell University students have shown that when it comes to changing the world for the greener, it may be up to the young'ens to lead the charge:

"It's really important to make the commitment to change, even if it's small things," said [Ali] Blumenstock, [20], one of the drivers behind the Sustainable Cooperative at Taylor House, a green residence project formed by the environmental club at [Bucknell]. "It's more than energy efficiency. It's a whole lifestyle."

Some argue that this "lifestyle" is atypical of college students. While intuition may nudge us in that direction, "Not so fast," say some:

"More and more students are saying, 'We want to know how green the campus is before we come there,' " said Paul Rowland, executive director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.

What would happen if all current high school seniors organized themselves and demanded specific sustainability requirements be implemented at colleges and universities, or else the students would not attend? These institutions are largely dependent on a consistent flow of student tuition in order to function. What happens if that money stops flowing?

The debate may continue as to whether or not sustainable behavior on the part of the students is atypical, but one thing remains clear: the students are in the driver's seat. Hummer of hybrid? That's up to them to decide.

Read the whole story here.

Vegetarians Save the Planet...?

2009-10-13T09:05:00.000-07:00

From a report on Earth Save, the "Healthy People Healthy Planet" website:

Global warming poses one of the most serious threats to the global environment ever faced in human history. Yet by focusing entirely on carbon dioxide emissions, major environmental organizations have failed to account for published data showing that other gases are the main culprits behind the global warming we see today. As a result, they are neglecting what might be the most effective strategy for reducing global warming in our lifetimes: advocating a vegetarian diet.

What do omnivores out there have to say?

Read the report here.

Vertical Algae Bio Reactor: Huh?

2009-10-13T08:41:00.000-07:00

Höweler + Yoon A r c h itecture has proposed a temporary vertical algae bio reactor built from prefab pods--Eco Pods--in order to stimulate Boston's downtown area. According to the story:

The pods will serve as bio fuel sources and as micro incubators for flexible research and development programs. As an open and reconfigurable structure, the voids between pods form a network of vertical public parks/botanical gardens housing unique plant species a new Uncommon for the Commons.

So, Vertical Fuel Farms? What do you think?

Read the whole story here.

How Can I Help?

2009-10-13T07:55:00.000-07:00

As a follow-up to the last post, here's something from the Mayors Climate Protection Center:

Throughout the nation there is clear evidence that mayoral leadership is producing business and community support for policies that reduce emissions. While progress is already being made in many cities, our goal must be to increase the number of cities involved in the effort, and to equip all cities with the knowledge and tools that ultimately will have the greatest impact on undo the causes of global warming...

...The establishment of the Mayors Climate Protection Center takes us a giant step beyond advocacy of a stronger federal role in reducing emissions. It acknowledges that while mayors recognize the need for a federal partner in this effort, they cannot and will not wait to act until Washington is ready to move on this problem.

Want to know if your mayor is part of this? Check out the list.

And if you fall on the side of those who think that the food crisis is in fact a crisis of governance, and if you think pursuing Vertical Farms is the answer, maybe you should let your mayor know. Write a letter, demand it.

The Vertical Farmer says: change requires only that the next step be taken.

The Hunger Problem: Whose Is It?

2009-10-13T05:46:00.000-07:00

European farmers protested low milk prices last week, saying poor governance is to blame for the global food crisis. "Hunger is a political problem," said farmer Sieta van Keimpema, the leader of one protesting group. Others agree:

"It is not the free market that is perverted, but the players in an imperfect free market," says Michiel Keyzer from the Centre for World Food Studies in Amsterdam. He points the finger at governments that created chaos by stimulating the use of biofuels and limiting trade by putting export barriers in place. "Institutions like the G20 don't pay enough attention to the problems that it, meaning the governments themselves, creates."

But some suggest that dumping milk in protest is a waste, and that the milk should have instead been used to make butter that could be sent to Africa.

What do you think?

Read the whole story here.

Jakarta Crop Failures: "Use Hydroponics," says Ag Expert

2009-10-12T09:17:00.000-07:00

An agriculture expert from IPB recommends using hydroponics methods to protect against crop failures in Indonesia. Warning that El Nino and La Nina threaten national food self-sufficiency efforts,

Herry Suhardiyanto [An agriculture expert from IPB]...recommended [that] farmers should increasingly use glass-houses and hydroponic methods to help prevent crop failure due to unstable weather patterns.

Read the whole story here.