More Vertical Farms

Cities have always been at the mercy of the countryside for food and raw materials. But what if cities could grow their own food, their own livestock, their own biomass, fuels, and fibres? Such a city-state might be a bit more sustainable through times of scarcity.

The City of Vancouver has ambitious plans to become the most sustainable city in the world. This spring they held the FormShift Vancouver Competition to develop and improve the city’s livability through greener, denser developments. The Harvest Green Tower received an honorable mention in the Primary category for a mixed use primary (arterial) site along a major Vancouver street that includes a rapid transit station. Their vertical farm concept is centered around sustainable food production as well as the creation of a multi-purpose space that can house, transport, feed and entertain people.

The tower consists of interlocking tubes that grow various fruits and vegetables, house chickens and contain an aquaponic fish farm. On top of the vertical growing tower is a rainwater cistern to collect and help water all the plants and animals. At the base of the tower is a livestock grazing plain, as well as a bird habitat and boutique sheep and goat dairy facility. Underneath that is a grocery store, farmer’s market and Harvest Tower Restaurant. Renewable energy is produced from rooftop mounted wind turbines and photovoltaic glazing on the building with the additional help of geothermal heat pumps and methane generation from composting. _ImpactLab

Eventually, a design team along with an innovative builder will get it right. Crops need sun, water, and nutrients to grow optimally. They must be protected from frost and other harsh conditions. But given the proper environment, even high latitude cities should be able to grow abundant crops year round. Energy costs will be higher than on a rural farm, but transportation and storage costs should be less.

Biomimetic Sky-Farm Captures Sun and CO2

Image SourceThe award winning "Dystopian Farm" incorporates some interesting architectural ingredients, in an attempt to create an urban high-rise agriculture for a rapidly urbanising world.

World population in urban centers is on the rise. Experts predict that by 2050 80% of the world's citizens will reside in an urban setting. These residents will need an estimated 109 hectares of arable land to provide their food. As space on the ground is limited, one increasingly attractive solution is to build upwards, creating vertical farms. _Ecogeek

Designed for the Hudson Yard area of Manhattan, Eric Vergne’s Dystopian Farm aims to provide New York with a sustainable food source while creating a dynamic social space that integrates producers with consumers. Based upon the “material logic of plant mechanics”, the biomorphic skyscraper is modeled after the plant cells of ferns and provides space for farms, residential areas, and markets. These organic structures will harness systems such as airoponic watering, nutrient technology and controlled lighting and CO2 levels to meet the food demands of future populations. _Inhabitat

Ideally, such a structure would incorporate novel grow-lighting methods including "light pipes", custom light cycling over a 24 hour period for optimal growth, and light spectrum customisation. As noted at Inhabitat, the DF will utilise aeroponic growing methods which do not require soil. CO2 levels should be controlled at much higher than ambient levels to better carbon-fertilise growing plants. Better methods of "nitrogen fixing" for a wide array of plant families are also needed, for such intensive urban farming.

Highly controlled, intensive urban farming methods should allow a reduction in the use of liquid fuels for shipping produce into cities. They would also provide more self-sufficiency for urban environments in the face of disruption of services and transport in the countryside. Finally, such test beds for closely controlled agriculture should prove useful when humans move their center of gravity off-planet, to less life-friendly surroundings.

Urban High Rise Farming Cuts Transportation Cost

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The largest driver of current high food costs is the high cost of energy. It requires energy to run farm machinery, and energy to transport the goods from the farm to the warehouse, and from the warehouse to the market. Why not grow the food in the city where it will be consumed, and save some of the energy cost?

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Advanced aeroponics growing systems can provide fresh-grown vegetables and fruit year-round, with minimal use of water and no soil required! Aeroponics-grown produce is free of disease, and requires less energy than most other growing systems.

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As biological systems are being modified to produce medicines and fuels, as well as food, the full range of crops and products could be grown in almost any urban environment.

We are only beginning to see the variety of approaches to building an urban high-rise farm. As the idea begins to be implemented, and the various problems of financing, marketing, and custom building are overcome, expect urban architects to bring a lot more imagination to the enterprise.

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The last image provides an architect's view of a "prosthetic add-on" to pre-existing buildings. These "vertical parks" could incorporate wind turbines and photovoltaics, as well as crop-growing zones. They could provide emergency exits from high-rises in case of fire, and could also serve as "skywalks" in cold weather, to allow people to brave the iciest of ice ages.

We live in a de-centralised world, in terms of food supply. In a single day, a person may consume food products from at least 3 or 4 different continents. But a lot of things can change to force food services and retailers to look much closer to home, for product.



H/T FutureScanner

Building Farms Up--Using the Third Dimension to Solve Two+ Problems at Once

By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth's population will reside in urban centers. Applying the most conservative estimates to current demographic trends, the human population will increase by about 3 billion people during the interim. An estimated 109 hectares of new land (about 20% more land than is represented by the country of Brazil) will be needed to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming practices continue as they are practiced today. At present, throughout the world, over 80% of the land that is suitable for raising crops is in use (sources: FAO and NASA).

Vertical Farm

By building "high-rise farms" we solve the problem of the shortage of agricultural land--AND--by building these farms inside urban areas and just outside the urban perimeter, transportation costs of bringing crops to market are slashed appreciably. The food will be fresher as well.

If only a portion of a high-rise was dedicated to hydroponic and aeroponic agriculture, the building would be able to process its waste water - as well as waste water from elsewhere on the utility grid - using it to water the plants AND to reuse as drinking water. Here’s how: The grey water extracted from sewage would be subjected to biological and mechanical filtration, then it would be used to water the plants. The plants, in turn, would transpirate heavily in the indoor environment, and dehumidifiers would harvest this water - this transpirated water would be pristine drinking water, able to be pumped back upstairs or into the utility grid for reuse. This concept of using transpiration from plants in a commercial high-rise agricultural operation to provide the last mile of grey water purification in the urban environment is revolutionary. Along with the surprisingly low, and dropping, cost of desalination, and advances being made in primary sewage treatment, this innovation could SOLVE the issues of potential water scarcity in the urban environment.

EcoWorld

But there are even more advantages to "vertical farming" than these three.

• Year-round crop production; 1 indoor acre is equivalent to 4-6 outdoor acres or more, depending upon the crop (e.g., strawberries: 1 indoor acre = 30 outdoor acres)

• No weather-related crop failures due to droughts, floods, pests

• All VF food is grown organically: no herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers

• VF virtually eliminates agricultural runoff by recycling black water

• VF returns farmland to nature, restoring ecosystem functions and services

• VF greatly reduces the incidence of many infectious diseases that are acquired at the agricultural interface

• VF converts black and gray water into potable water by collecting the water of transpiration
  

• VF adds energy back to the grid via methane generation from composting non-edible parts of plants and animals

• VF dramatically reduces fossil fuel use (no tractors, plows, shipping.)

• VF converts abandoned urban properties into food production centers

• VF creates sustainable environments for urban centers

• VF creates new employment opportunities

• We cannot go to the moon, Mars, or beyond without first learning to farm indoors on Earth
  

Vertical Farm

Aeroponic farming methods may hold the greatest promise for liberating farming from rural countryside. Aeroponic farming can be quite economical as the economies of scale and innovation come into play.

Finally, vertical urban farming frees up more land for recreation, animal reserves, and biofuel cultivation.

Thanks to EcoWorld