Part 2— I am convinced, we need to advance Vertical Farming…

My notes from the book — The Vertical Farm by Dr. Dickson Dispommier. See Part 1 of this series here.

Image Credits — https://tinyurl.com/y9dds3uy

Today, the world is getting hungrier by the minute. Basic nutrition, 1,500 calories of disease-free food, is already considered a luxury in some parts of Africa and India.

• The origins of twenty-first-century agriculture can be traced back to the convergence of four things: the American Civil War, the discovery of oil, the development of the internal-combustion engine, and the invention of dynamite.
• Political battle for economic supremacy became the singular event that eventually forced Southern landowners to switch to mechanized farming equipment, replacing human labor with gas-guzzling clunkers. It would be the machines, and the many agricultural innovations that took advantage of them, that helped define the second great agricultural revolution.

Farming consumes some 20 percent of all fossil fuel used in the United States.

• Virtually any crop could bring in a profit in the early days of Midwest farming. The forest floor was rich in deep, black soil, an ideal situation for any crop species with a penchant for growing in a temperate zone.
• The Earth’s rapidly changing climate continues to point the way to an unprecedented upheaval in just about everything, but especially about where we can and cannot grow our food. Over the next twenty to thirty years we humans will experience a transition period in which established, proven agricultural practices will no longer be able to meet the needs of a rising population.
• Almost all farming requires some form of irrigation, and on a global scale uses around 70 percent of the available freshwater to do so. What suffers most in this case is the availability of drinking water. Water that’s free of infectious diseases and toxins is becoming scarce in many places, especially where drinking water was already at a premium. In some water-challenged countries a barrel of drinking water is now valued higher than a 55 gallon drum of crude oil.

In some water-challenged countries a barrel of drinking water is now valued higher than a 55 gallon drum of crude oil. It’s been widely speculated that the next war in the Middle East will be over water, not religion or oil.

• Rapid climate change (RCC) is the most important environmental issue that we face today, and it will continue to command our attention for the foreseeable future.
• It’s been widely speculated that the next war in the Middle East will be over water, not religion or oil. Food shortages now exist in many places, but as explained earlier, those are mostly due to the poor distribution of food, not the lack of it.
• Today in the United States, more than 90 percent of all seeds used in large-scale agriculture, regardless of the crop, are produced by just three companies. They are all highly domesticated strains with very narrow tolerance limits for temperature and precipitation. Environmental agronomists predict, based in large part on recent data regarding RCC, that crop failures will become more frequent in places in which they are now considered rare, and will become the rule rather than the exception in places in which they now regularly occur.
• Can a city produce most of its own food and recycle most or all of its own wastes? I believe the answer is yes. In fact, I know the answer is yes. There are many new modalities for growing produce of all kinds indoors that will make any urban food production scheme possible. It’s called controlled indoor environment agriculture

Over the next twenty to thirty years we humans will experience a transition period in which established, proven agricultural practices will no longer be able to meet the needs of a rising population.

• Abandoned urban spaces can then be fully utilized. In addition, vertical farms of varying heights can be constructed to meet the needs of restaurants, school cafeterias, hospitals, and apartment complexes.
• Biodiversity means there is competition among all the assemblages of plants and animals for resources. It also means that there is much recycling of nutrients going on. For that reason, competition on farmland, if allowed to go unchecked, would greatly reduce yields. Sharing resources with the rest of the surrounding wildlife is not an option for commercial farming, no matter how “ecological” the farmer claims to be. Therefore, the sole purpose of agrochemicals is to reduce — or, better yet, completely eliminate — the competition, favoring the crop of choice by killing off the insects and unwanted weeds. It should also be noted that over the past fifty years of implementing this two-pronged chemical strategy, numerous weed like plants have become more and more resistant to herbicides, while insect pests have become almost totally resistant to a wide variety of pesticides. It’s natural selection at work, no matter how clever we get in the laboratory.

Elimination of the use of human feces as fertilizer goes a long way to solving a major global health problem. Indoor farming would be an integral part of that solution.

• By applying state-of-the-art controlled-environment agricultural technologies as an integrated system contained within a multistory building — vertical farming — the world could rapidly become a much better place to welcome the next generation of humans.
• Implementation of the vertical farm employing large-scale hydroponics and aeroponics inside the cityscape is a potential solution for two problems: production of food crops to feed a growing urban population without further damaging the environment, and freeing up farmland and allowing it to return to its ecological setting.
• Advantages of the Vertical Farm Year-round crop production No weather-related crop failures No agricultural runoff Allowance for ecosystem restoration No use of pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers Use of 70–95 percent less water Greatly reduced food miles More control of food safety and security New employment opportunities Purification of grey water to drinking water Animal feed from post harvest plant material
• The design of the building will take into account the need for keeping out unwanted diners, such as insects and microbial pathogens.
• Fertilizers are essential for maximizing crop yields in nutrient-depleted soils. In contrast, the vertical farm will use pure water, into which a set of highly purified, carefully balanced nutrients will have been dissolved to satisfy the nutritional requirements of the plants. By adding additional nutrients that we also need, we will ensure that both the plants and the animals (us) will satisfy both parts of the equation. There will be no need to worry about contamination of our food with things like heavy metals, atrazine, diazinon, or human pathogens such as salmonella

Contrary to popular belief, plants do not require soil, per se. What they use soil for is a solid base of operations into which they can spread their roots. In other words, the earth serves as a physical support system.

• As long as there is enough water and dissolved minerals, and a source of organic nitrogen. Provided the soil type does not adversely affect the plant by being too acidic or basic, then it’s possible to get plants to grow nearly anywhere on the planet, even in the cracks of sidewalks or on the cliffs of mountains as bonsai plants.

Hydroponics

• Hydroponics, developed in 1937 by Dr. William Frederick Gericke at the University of California, Davis, is the method of choice used routinely by nurseries to get seeds to germinate and sprout roots before they are transplanted into some form of potting soil.
• Setting up a hydroponic facility is largely constrained by the kind of crop one wants to produce. The configuration is determined by the root system of the plant. The liquid portion of the operation is pumped slowly through a specially constructed pipe, usually made of a plastic such as polyvinyl chloride (or PVC), though it’s not a requirement that plastic be used. Bamboo in various diameters could also serve the purpose quite well, and since it’s one of the toughest natural materials we know of, bamboo would be ideally suited. Also, it’s very easy to grow. There is no need to lock into any technological niche to begin.
• Once the piping is set up, nutrients are dissolved into the water phase and circulated through the piping, all the while being electronically monitored for concentrations of each element and organic nitrogen. The result is uniform plant growth under optimal conditions.

Aeroponics

• Aeroponics, invented by Richard Stoner in 1982, takes hydroponics and “kicks it up a notch.” Small nozzles located under the plants spray a nutrient-laden mist onto the roots, supplying them with everything they need. It is so conservative with respect to water use that it consumes about 70 percent less water than hydroponics, and will undoubtedly become a major player in the next phase of controlled-environment agriculture.
• The essence of a good-tasting tomato is hard to beat and easy to recognize, so the greenhouse industry began to look into why theirs didn’t match up. By studying the outside conditions that produced tasty veggies (e.g., cold nights, warm days, or short periods of drought), they concluded that some stress was necessary in order to elicit flavonoids (complex organic molecules specific to plants). These molecules are the essence of why most vegetables have distinctive flavors and aromas. In addition, restricting the water a plant receives increases its sugar content, heightening the flavor even more. Today, many indoor growers have taken advantage of this information and now consistently produce the finest-tasting vegetables on the market. For example, EuroFresh Farms, located in Wilcox, Arizona, regularly wins blind-tasting competitions for its tomatoes.
• The amount of travel between the tomato and your plate will be measured in blocks, not miles.

Remember: Outside, we control nothing, while inside, we get to control everything. The choice is ours. I choose indoors every time.

Part 3 coming soon…

The future looks bright for the creation of new jobs for the new industry of vertical farming.