Op-Ed: ‘Vertical’ farming growing nicely, but issues remain

Vertical farming is essentially a form of hydroponics, using high rise buildings to grow crops. It’s far more efficient than dirt farming, and infinitely cheaper in terms of resources, but getting the concept into mainstream business has taken a while.

The basic theory of vertical farming is that you can grow crops year round in a building. The main crops currently being grown are leafy type vegetables, in modified hydroponic trays. There’s a utilitarian look about the process that may get some groans from those who understandably feel that farms and supermarkets should look different, but the science and horticulture are a sort of consolation. Fortunately, some of the building designs are now showing a lot of imagination. This could be a new Agricultural Revolution. The last one was 10,000 years ago, and removed the hunter/gatherer obligations from humanity. Vertical farming has some major economic benefits: 1. The method allows for drastically better water management on a global scale. That’s a huge issue in agriculture, and the hydro methods allow for proper recycling of water. You can use hydro mixes an average of three times, compared to one in traditional farming. 2. Anything can be grown this way. Many difficult crops and specialist plants can be cultivated. That’s a near impossibility for farmers and horticulturalists, who need to balance the degrees of difficulty with returns. 3. Even major grain crops can be grown like this. Rice is an obvious candidate. The big grains, like corn, wheat, and barley, can be grown as dwarf species with improved yield, and a with damn sight less logistics. We’re talking about millions of tons per year in this case, and reducing production costs, which in dirt farming also means burned out soils, is the only working option. (No mystery to this, I’ve grown wheat in a box with composted bamboo myself. Got a 100% germination rate, too.) 4. Demand for food, when the next 3 billion people arrive in 2050, is likely to crash current supply capacity. The present equation, in which it takes 12 lb. of soil to produce a loaf of bread, isn’t likely to be any more efficient than it is now. The usability of the soil goes down with each crop, and the lucky farmer has to spend a fortune on fertilizers, which have their own issues, to revive the soil. The only really efficient and flexible method of dirt farming is the multi crop, integrated permaculture method, which seems to be beyond the intellects of the agribusiness gurus. 5. Vertical farming allows for containment of plant diseases, particularly viruses, and pests. As things are, any form of these expensive dangers, if they get loose in the environment, can crash a whole industry. (This is why environmentalism isn’t some sort of hobby for crackpots, as it’s still portrayed in MSM. This is real science, and it’s costing real money in the billions annually for the farm sector getting wasted thanks to the failure of agribusiness to address environmental issues.) 6. Vertical farming uses 10%, maximum, of the land required for dirt farming. That’s important, because the amount of arable land available is shrinking dramatically, thanks to political and economic myopia. Yield volumes are getting tougher to get, overall, relative to land use. One drought or even a lack of rainfall can revise a whole year’s production downwards, and poor soil quality is adding dollars per cubic foot to real costs of production. 7. Relative to population, the ratio of food production to people is shrinking a lot faster. There is in fact an actual food surplus, very unevenly and wastefully distributed, but not for much longer. The 50% increase in global population, and the increased demand from Asia will sink the current models very thoroughly. Vertical farming provides an option which can streamline most of the major issues quickly and effectively, based on volumes. 8. Agriculture accounts for a very large percentage of land use. There’s only so much land, and only so many habitable places. The naïve theory of making the deserts bloom has been happening in reverse. The deserts themselves are expanding, partly thanks to unwise land management, and partly due to the fact they tend to destroy nearby land at the slightest opportunity. Vertical farms are immune to desertification. You could build them in the Sahara, with their own systems, and they’d still work. 9. Power requirements: Solar power can do most of the necessary work required in vertical farms, particularly if someone gets off their butts and starts using infra red, not visible, light. The heat comes from the IR range. Methane from green waste grown in house can also help. Plants only require so much light per day in growing cycles, and that can be managed pretty easily without major demands on the overstrained power grids. There are some interesting examples of current vertical farming regularly hitting the news and press releases. Treehugger.com has a piece on vertical farming in which Robert F Kennedy Jr. emerges as a supporter of vertical farms. The growing system in the image is pretty typical of the current level of technology in vertical farming. Trays and other structures can be modified easily for any form of crop growth. A Huffington Post article includes some video footage of a Paignton Zoo in England, which is using the method to grow fresh food for its herbivores. The comment from the zoo worker about better food quality is more accurate than she knows. Fresh food, particularly flowers, is far more nutritious in the first few hours after harvest. TIME Magazine named Canadian Valcent’s vertical farming concept one of the top 50 best innovations of 2009. It must be said that vertical farm designs are getting a lot more ambitious, and starting to reflect some obvious considerations in terms of their own use of space and light. (Some vertical farming systems don’t even use natural light, but others do.) This one, a skewed “rice paddy” type of design, is a good example of some of the architecture which vertical farms will produce. This is potentially important in terms of architectural and engineering techniques, too, and could be the beginning of some very bio and human friendly architectural developments. Because of the high physical volumes involved in commercial scales of harvesting, don’t be surprised to see a John Deere Robot or one of its relatives in a vertical farm, looking like a ducted air conditioner or a runaway DIY haircutting set. Although current vertical farm systems are easy enough to work with, major harvesting will need to adapt, preferably without ridiculously overloaded retooling requirements for vertical farmers. Harvesting seed heads for grains currently requires more equipment than some military units, in terms of costs and time. It’s doable, but it has to be done efficiently and cost effectively. Don’t be surprised to see some engineer win a Nobel Prize for designing the salad tongs that feed the world. You could even mill flour on site, using excess power from the solar and waste facilities. There’s a current solar car model which recharges itself, using the solar starter charge and (of all things on a car) a fan belt system… high tech, eh? The good news for consumers is that you will, for once, be getting what you pay for, uncontaminated, with no little “surprises” in toxins, pesticides, molds, insect droppings, diseases, soil viruses, runoff leachates, and other joys of modern agriculture. Well, it’s almost organic. Tough life, eh?