Vertical farming is cultivating plant or animal life within
a skyscraper greenhouse or on vertically inclined surfaces. The modern idea of
vertical farming uses techniques similar to glass houses, where natural
sunlight can be augmented with artificial lighting.
Types
"Vertical farming" was coined by Gilbert Ellis
Bailey in 1915 in his book Vertical Farming. This was not the current
meaning—he wrote about farming underground with the use of explosives. Modern
usage refers to skyscrapers using some degree of natural light.
Mixed-use skyscrapers
Mixed-use skyscrapers were proposed and built by architect
Ken Yeang. Yeang proposes that instead of hermetically sealed mass-produced
agriculture that plant life should be cultivated within open air, mixed-use
skyscrapers for climate control and consumption (i.e. a personal or communal
planting space as per the needs of the individual). This version of vertical
farming is based upon personal or community use rather than the wholesale
production and distribution plant and animal life that aspires to feed an
entire city. It thus requires less of an initial investment than Despommier's
"The Vertical Farm". However, neither Despommier nor Yeang are the
conceptual "originators", nor is Yeang the inventor of vertical
farming in skyscrapers.
Despommier's skyscrapers
Ecologist Dickson Despommier argues that vertical farming is
legitimate for environmental reasons. He claims that the cultivation of plant
and animal life within skyscrapers will produce less embedded energy and
toxicity than plant and animal life produced on natural landscapes. He moreover
claims that natural landscapes are too toxic for natural, agricultural
production, despite the ecological and environmental costs of extracting
materials to build skyscrapers for the simple purpose of agricultural
production.
Vertical farming according to Despommier thus discounts the
value of natural landscape in exchange for the idea of "skyscraper as
spaceship". Plant and animal life are mass-produced within hermetically
sealed, artificial environments that have little to do with the outside world.
In this sense, they could be built anywhere regardless of the context. This is
unlikely to be advantageous with regards to energy consumption as the internal environment
must be maintained to sustain life within the skyscraper. However, this is not
necessarily the case, as one of the most important features of a vertical farm
is that it would contain some form of renewable energy technology, be it solar
panels, wind turbines, or a water capture system, and could contain all three.
The vertical farm is designed to be sustainable, and to enable nearby
inhabitants to work at the farm.
Despommier's concept of "The Vertical Farm"
emerged in 1999 at Columbia University. It promotes the mass cultivation of
plant and animal life for commercial purposes in skyscrapers.
History
A commercial high-rise farm such as 'The Vertical Farm' has
never been built, yet extensive photographic documentation and several
historical books on the subject suggest that research on the subject was not
diligently pursued. New sources indicate that a tower hydroponicum existed in
Armenia prior to 1951.
Proponents argue that, by allowing traditional outdoor farms
to revert to a natural state and reducing the energy costs needed to transport
foods to consumers, vertical farms could significantly alleviate climate change
produced by excess atmospheric carbon. Critics have noted that the costs of the
additional energy needed for artificial lighting, heating and other vertical
farming operations would outweigh the benefit of the building’s close proximity
to the areas of consumption.
One of the earliest drawings of a tall building that
cultivates food for the purposes of consumption was published as early as Life
Magazine 1909. The reproduced drawings feature vertically stacked homesteads
set amidst a farming landscape. This proposal can be seen in Rem Koolhaas's
Delirious New York. Koolhaas wrote that this 1909 theorem is
“
'The Skyscraper as Utopian device for the production of
unlimited numbers of virgin sites on a metropolitan location' (1994, 82).
”
Other architectural proposals that provide the seeds for the
Vertical Farm project include Le Corbusier’s Immeubles-Villas (1922) and SITE’s
Highrise of homes (1972).[9] SITE’s Highrise of homes, is a near revival of the
1909 Life Magazine Theorem. In fact, built examples of tower hydroponicums are
quite well documented in the canonical text of "The Glass House" by
John Hix. Images of the vertical farms at the School of Gardeners in
Langenlois, Austria, and the glass tower at the Vienna International
Horticulture Exhibition (1964) clearly show that vertical farms existed more
than 40 years prior to contemporary discourse on the subject.Although
architectural precedents remain valuable, the technological precedents that
make vertical farming possible can be traced back to horticultural history
through the development of greenhouse and hydroponic technology. Early building
types or Hydroponicums were developed, integrating hydroponic technology into
building systems. These horticultural building systems evolved from greenhouse
technology, and paved the way for the modern concept of the vertical farm. The
British Interplanetary Society developed a hydroponicum for lunar conditions
and other building prototypes were developed during the early days of space
exploration. During this era of expansion and experimentation, the first Tower
Hydroponic Units were developed in Armenia.
The Armenian tower hydroponicums are the first built
examples of a vertical farm, and is documented in Sholto Douglas' seminal text
"Hydroponics: The Bengal System" first published in 1951 with data
from the then-East Pakistan, today's Bangladesh, and the Indian state of West
Bengal. Contemporary notions of vertical farming are predated by this early
technology by more than 50 years. Contemporary precursors that have been
published, or built, are Ken Yeang’s Bioclimatic Skyscraper (Menara Mesiniaga,
built 1992); MVRDV’s PigCity, 2000; MVRDV's Meta City/ Datatown (1998–2000);
Pich-Aguilera’s Garden Towers (2001).
Ken Yeang is perhaps the most widely known architects that
has promoted the idea of the 'mixed-use' Bioclimatic Skyscraper which combines
living units and opportunities for food production.
Early prototypes of vertical farms, or "Tower
Hydroponicums" existed in Armenia prior to 1951 during an era of
hydroponic and horticultural building system research fueled by space exploration
and a transatlantic technology race.
The latest version of these very idea is Dickson
Despommier's "The Vertical Farm".
Dickson Despommier, a professor of environmental health
sciences and microbiology at Columbia University in New York City, modernized
the idea of vertical farming in 1999 with graduate students in a medical
ecology class. Although much of Despommier's suggestions have been challenged
and strongly criticized from an environmental science and engineering point of
view, the idea's popularization in recent years has been largely the result of
Despommier's assertion that food production can be transformed.
Despommier had originally challenged his class to feed the
population of Manhattan (About 2,000,000 people) using 13 acres (5.3 ha) of usable
rooftop gardens. The class calculated that, by using rooftop gardening methods,
only 2 percent would be fed. Unsatisfied with the results, Despommier made an
off-the-cuff suggestion of growing plants indoors, vertically. The idea sparked
the students' interests and gained major momentum. By 2001 the first outline of
a vertical farm was introduced and today scientists, architects, and investors
worldwide are working together to make the concept of vertical farming a
reality. In an interview with Miller-McCune.com, Despommier described how
vertical farms would function:
“ Each
floor will have its own watering and nutrient monitoring systems. There will be
sensors for every single plant that tracks how much and what kinds of nutrients
the plant has absorbed. You'll even have systems to monitor plant diseases by
employing DNA chip technologies that detect the presence of plant pathogens by
simply sampling the air and using snippets from various viral and bacterial
infections. It's very easy to do.
Moreover, a gas chromatograph will tell us when to pick the
plant by analyzing which flavenoids the produce contains. These flavonoids are
what gives the food the flavors you're so fond of, particularly for more
aromatic produce like tomatoes and peppers. These are all right-off-the-shelf
technologies. The ability to construct a vertical farm exists now. We don't
have to make anything new.[15]
”
Architectural designs have been produced by Chris Jacobs and
Andrew Kranis from Columbia University and Gordon Graff from the University of Waterloo's School of
Architecture in Cambridge, ON. Together with Graff, and after disagreeing with
Despommier's technical assumptions regarding energy and water balances in 2011,
Tahbit Chowdhury and a multidisciplinary team from Waterloo's Dept. of
Environmental Engineering and Dept. of Systems Design Engineering augmented the
concepts with a focus on low-energy economically-intensive protein-production.
Along with Chowdhury, others who have disagreed with Despommier's approach
include Pierre Desrochers of the University of Toronto and Dennis T. Avery of
the Center for Global Food Issues, affiliated with the Hudson Institute.
Chowdhury and Graff applied advanced industrial engineering
design philosophies to modernize current greenhouse technology as it pertains
to hydroponics and aeroponics. The results of the Waterloo team's work showed
that there is sufficient technical grounds to begin implementing Despommier's
ideas for skyscrapers. However, Chowdhury and Graff showed that the designs
will be dramatically different from what Despommier envisioned at Columbia.
Mass media attention began with an article written in New
York magazine. Since 2007, articles have appeared in The New York Times, U.S.
News & World Report, Popular Science, Scientific American and Maxim, among
others, as well as radio and television features.
As of 2012, Vertical Harvest is working on raising funds for
an urban, small-scale vertical farm in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Advantages
Several potential advantages of vertical farming have been
discussed by Despommier.[23] Many of these benefits are obtained from scaling
up hydroponic or aeroponic growing methods.
Preparation for the future
It is estimated that by the year 2050, close to 80% of the
world’s population will live in urban areas and the total population of the
world will increase by 3 billion people. A very large amount of land may be
required depending on the change in yield per hectare. Scientists are concerned
that this large amount of required farmland will not be available and that
severe damage to the earth will be caused by the added farmland. Vertical
farms, if designed properly, may eliminate the need to create additional
farmland and help create a cleaner environment.
Increased crop production
Unlike traditional farming in non-tropical areas, indoor
farming can produce crops year-round. All-season farming multiplies the
productivity of the farmed surface by a factor of 4 to 6 depending on the crop.
With some crops, such as strawberries, the factor may be as high as 30.
Furthermore, as the crops would be sold in the same
infrastructures in which they are grown, they will not need to be transported
between production and sale, resulting in less spoilage, infestation, and
energy required than conventional farming encounters. Research has shown that
30% of harvested crops are wasted due to spoilage and infestation, though this
number is much lower in developed nations.
Despommier suggests that, if dwarf versions of certain crops
are used (e.g. dwarf wheat developed by NASA, which is smaller in size but richer
in nutrients), year-round crops, and "stacker" plant holders are
accounted for, a 30-story building with a base of a building block (5 acres (20,000
m2)) would yield a yearly crop analogous to that of 2,400 acres (9,700,000 m2)
of traditional farming.
Protection from weather-related problems
Crops grown in traditional outdoor farming suffer from the
often suboptimal, and sometimes extreme, nature of geological and
meteorological events such as undesirable temperatures or rainfall amounts,
monsoons, hailstorms, tornadoes, flooding, wildfires, and severe droughts. The
protection of crops from weather is increasingly important as global climate
change occurs. “Three recent floods (in 1993, 2007 and 2008) cost the United
States billions of dollars in lost crops, with even more devastating losses in
topsoil. Changes in rain patterns and temperature could diminish India’s
agricultural output by 30 percent by the end of the century.”
Because vertical farming provides a controlled environment,
the productivity of vertical farms would be mostly independent of weather and
protected from extreme weather events. Although the controlled environment of
vertical farming negates most of these factors, earthquakes and tornadoes still
pose threats to the proposed infrastructure, although this again depends on the
location of the vertical farms.
Conservation of resources
Each unit of area in a vertical farm could allow up to 20
units of area of outdoor farmland to return to its natural state, and recover
farmlands due to development from original flat farmlands.
Vertical farming would reduce the need for new farmland due
to overpopulation, thus saving many natural resources, currently threatened by
deforestation or pollution. Deforestation and desertification caused by
agricultural encroachment on natural biomes would be avoided. Because vertical
farming lets crops be grown closer to consumers, it would substantially reduce
the amount of fossil fuels currently used to transport and refrigerate farm
produce. Producing food indoors reduces or eliminates conventional plowing,
planting, and harvesting by farm machinery, also powered by fossil fuels.
Burning less fossil fuel would reduce air pollution and the carbon dioxide
emissions that cause climate change, as well as create healthier environments
for humans and animals alike.
Organic crops
The controlled growing environment reduces the need for
pesticides, namely herbicides and fungicides. Advocates claim that producing
organic crops in vertical farms is practical and the most likely production
Halting mass extinction
Withdrawing human activity from large areas of the Earth's
land surface may be necessary to slow and eventually halt the current
anthropogenic mass extinction of land animals.
Traditional agriculture is highly disruptive to wild animal
populations that live in and around farmland and some argue it becomes
unethical when there is a viable alternative. One study showed that wood mouse
populations dropped from 25 per hectare to 5 per hectare after harvest,
estimating 10 animals killed per hectare each year with conventional
farming.[33] In comparison, vertical farming would cause very little harm to
wildlife.
Impact on human health
Traditional farming is a hazardous occupation with
particular risks that often take their toll on the health of human laborers.
Such risks include: exposure to infectious diseases such as malaria and schistosomes,
exposure to toxic chemicals commonly used as pesticides and fungicides,
confrontations with dangerous wildlife such as venomous snakes, and the severe
injuries that can occur when using large industrial farming equipment. Whereas
the traditional farming environment inevitably contains these risks
(particularly in the farming practice known as “slash and burn”), vertical
farming – because the environment is strictly controlled and predictable – reduces
some of these dangers. Currently, the American food system makes fast,
unhealthy food cheap while fresh produce is less available and more expensive,
encouraging poor eating habits. These poor eating habits lead to health
problems such as obesity, heart disease, and diabetes.
Urban growth
Vertical farming, used in conjunction with other
technologies and socioeconomic practices, could allow cities to expand while
remaining largely self-sufficient food wise. This would allow for large urban
centers that could grow without destroying considerably larger areas of forest
to provide food for their people. Moreover, the industry of vertical farming
will provide employment to these expanding urban centers. This may help
displace the unemployment created by the dismantling of traditional farms, as more
farm laborers move to cities in search of work. It is highly unlikely that
traditional farms will become obsolete, as there are many crops that are not
suited for vertical farming, and the production costs are currently much
lower.[citation needed]
Energy production
Vertical farms could exploit methane digesters to generate a
small portion of its own electrical needs. Methane digesters could be built on
site to transform the organic waste generated at the farm into biogas which is
generally composed of 65% methane along with other gases. This biogas could
then be burned to generate electricity for the greenhouse.
Technologies and devices
Vertical farming relies on the use of various physical
methods to become effective. Combining these technologies and devices in an
integrated whole is necessary to make Vertical Farming a reality. Various
methods are proposed and under research. The most common technologies suggested
are:
Greenhouse
The Folkewall and
other vertical growing architectures
Aeroponics /
Hydroponics / Aquaponics
Composting
Grow light
Phytoremediation
Skyscraper
Controlled-environment agriculture
Plans
Despommier argues that the technology to construct vertical
farms currently exists. He also states that the system can be profitable and
effective, a claim evidenced by some preliminary research posted on the
project's website. Developers and local governments in the following cities
have expressed serious interest in establishing a vertical farm: Incheon (South
Korea), Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), and Dongtan (China), New York City,
Portland, Ore., Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Seattle, Surrey, B.C., Toronto, Paris,
Bangalore, Dubai, Shanghai and Beijing. The Illinois Institute of Technology is
now crafting a detailed plan for Chicago. It is suggested that prototype
versions of vertical farms should be created first, possibly at large
universities interested in the research of vertical farms, in order to prevent
failures such as the Biosphere 2 project in Oracle, Arizona.
In 2009, the world's first pilot production system was
installed at Paignton Zoo Environmental Park in the United Kingdom. The project
showcased a technological solution for vertical farming and provided a physical
base to conduct research into sustainable urban food production. The produce is
used to feed the zoos animals while the project enables evaluation of the
systems and provides an educational resource to advocate for change in
unsustainable land use practices that impact upon global biodiversity and
ecosystem services,
In 2010, the Green Zionist Alliance proposed a resolution at
the 36th World Zionist Congress calling on Keren Kayemet L'Yisrael (Jewish
National Fund in Israel) to develop vertical farms in Israel.
In 2012, the world's first commercial vertical farm was
opened in Singapore, developed by Sky Greens Farms, and is three stories high.
They currently have over 100 towers that stand at nine meters tall.
Problems
Economics
Opponents question the potential profitability of vertical farming.
A detailed cost analysis of start-up costs, operation costs, and revenue has
not been done. The extra cost of lighting, heating, and powering the vertical
farm may negate any of the cost benefits received by the decrease in
transportation expenses. The economic and environmental benefits of vertical
farming rest partly on the concept of minimizing food miles, the distance that
food travels from farm to consumer.[original research?] However, a recent
analysis suggests that transportation is only a minor contributor to the
economic and environmental costs of supplying food to urban populations. The
author of the report, University of Toronto professor Pierre Desrochers,
concluded that "food miles are, at best, a marketing fad."
Similarly, if the power needs of the vertical farm are met
by fossil fuels, the environmental effect may be a net loss; even building
low-carbon capacity to power the farms may not make as much sense as simply leaving
the traditional farms in place, and burning less coal.
The initial building costs will be easily over $100 million,
for a 60 hectare vertical farm. Office occupancy costs can be very high in
major cities, with cities such as Tokyo, Moscow, Mumbai, Dubai, Milan, Zurich,
and Sao Paulo ranging from $1850 to $880 per square meter, respectively.
Energy use
During the growing season, the sun shines on a vertical
surface at an extreme angle such that much less light is available to crops
than when they are planted on flat land. Therefore, supplemental light, would
be required in order to obtain economically viable yields. Bruce Bugbee, a crop
physiologist at Utah State University, believes that the power demands of
vertical farming will be too expensive and uncompetitive with traditional farms
using only free natural light. The environmental writer George Monbiot
calculated that the cost of providing enough supplementary light to grow the
grain for a single loaf would be about $15. An article in the Economist argued
that "even though crops growing in a glass skyscraper will get some
natural sunlight during the day, it won't be enough" and "the cost of
powering artificial lights will make indoor farming prohibitively
expensive".
As "The Vertical Farm" proposes a controlled
environment, heating and cooling costs will be at least as costly as any other
tower. But there also remains the issue of complicated, if not more expensive,
plumbing and elevator systems to distribute food and water throughout. Even
throughout the northern continental United States, while heating with
relatively cheap fossil fuels, the heating cost can be over $200,000/hectare.
To address this problem, The Plant in Chicago is building an
anaerobic digester into the building. This will allow the farm to operate off
the energy grid. Moreover, the anaerobic digester will be recycling waste from
nearby businesses that would otherwise go into landfills.
Pollution
Regular greenhouse produce is known to create more greenhouse
gases than field produce,[55] largely due to higher energy use per kilogram of
produce. With vertical farms requiring much greater energy per kilogram of
produce, mainly through increased lighting, than regular greenhouses, the
amount of pollution created will be much higher than that from field produce.
As plants acquire nearly all their carbon from the
atmosphere, greenhouse growers commonly supplement CO2 levels to 3–4 times the
rate normally found in the atmosphere. This increase in CO2, which has been
shown to increase photosynthesis rates by 50%, contributes to the higher yields
expected in vertical farming. It is not uncommon to find greenhouses burning
fossil fuels purely for this purpose, as other CO2 sources, like from furnaces,
contain pollutants such as sulphur dioxide and ethylene which significantly
damage plants.This means a vertical farm will require a CO2 source, most likely
from combustion, even if the rest of the farm is powered by 'green' energy.
Also, through necessary ventilation, much CO2 will be leaked into the city's
atmosphere.
Greenhouse growers commonly exploit photoperiodism in plants
to control whether the plants are in a vegetative or reproductive stage. As
part of this control, growers will have the lights on past sunset and before
sunrise or periodically throughout the night. Single story greenhouses are
already a nuisance to neighbours because of light pollution, a 30 story
vertical farm in a densely populated area will surely face problems because of
its light pollution.
Hydroponics greenhouses regularly change the water, meaning
there is a large quantity of water containing fertilizers and pesticides that
must be disposed of. While solutions are currently being worked on, the most
common method of simply spreading the mixture over a sufficient area of
neighbouring farmland or wetlands would be more difficult for an urban vertical
farm.
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