Could vertical farming be the future?

Farm able to feed 50,000 people could 'fit comfortably within a city block'

By Bryn Nelson
MSNBC contributor
Updated: 7:41 a.m. ET Oct 8, 2007

Rice on the seventh floor. Wheat on the twelfth. And enough food within an 18-story tower to feed a small city of 50,000.

Vertical farms, where staple crops could be grown in environmentally friendly skyscrapers, exist today only in futuristic designs an on optimistic Web sites. Despite concerns over sky-high costs, however, an environmental health expert in New York is convinced the world has the know-how to make the concept a reality — and the imperative to do so quickly.

With a raft of studies suggesting farmers will be hard-pressed to feed the extra 3 billion people swelling the world’s ranks by the year 2050, Columbia University professor Dickson Despommier believes a new model of agriculture is vital to avoid an impending catastrophe.

“The reason why we need vertical farming is that horizontal farming is failing,” he said. If current practices don’t change by mid-century, he point outs, an area bigger than Brazil would need to become farmland just to keep pace with the demand.

More.... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21154137/

They did it long before anyone else, as far as I know.

Their rice paddies are done the same way.

Especially with declining oil meaning the end of Chilean grapes and other thousand mile-plus foods (at least on non-Chilean dinner tables). But it in no way will supply enough food for 3 billion people.

I think it would be cool and almost necessary in a high population density environment. Walmarts,abandoned in the burbs by then, would be good candidates for aqua-agriculture farms.

it would be far too energy intensive. We are already suffering from topsoil degradation and erosion on a massive scale, and losing arable land. In addition to this, current farming practices are already getting too energy intensive themselves, the fact is that we may end up with a population bust, and possibly another dustbowl as well.

If you have enough food to feed 9 billion people, then you'll get 9 billion people.

It's the same old story--we come up with ways to feed more of us than there are, thereby ensuring that the population will grow to the capacity we've set, then we have to find a new ways to feed even more people in a self-fueling cycle.

Sadly, the anti-woman behaviors of some cultures hasn't stopped them from gettin' busy either... :crazy:

On edit: Clarification

Whenever women are better educated and have access to birth control, the birth rate drops. The hard part is getting people to fund and do the educating and providing access to birth control.

running the tractor can be a real bitch! :hide:

is considering alternatives.