Tuesday July 03, 2007

Vertical farming in New York

peakoil.com, slashdot.org -> news.bbc.co.uk :

Downtown Manhattan is hardly a place you would associate with agriculture. Rather, with its countless restaurants, cafes, shops and supermarkets this is a place of consumption. And so every morsel, every bite of food New Yorkers munch through every day must be trucked, shipped or flown in, from across the country, and across the world.

Now though, scientists at Columbia University are proposing an alternative. Their vision of the future is one in which the skyline of New York and other cities include a new kind of skyscaper: the "vertical farm". Imagine a 30-storey building with glass walls, topped off with a huge solar panel. On each floor there would be giant planting beds. There would be a sophisticated irrigation system. Crops of all kinds and small livestock could all be grown in a controlled environment in the most urban of settings. That means no shipping costs, and no pollution caused by moving produce around the country.

It's all the brainchild of Columbia University Professor Dickson Despommier. He and his students took existing greenhouse technology as a starting point and are now convinced that vertical farms are a practical suggestion. "Even if it's not quite natural ... a little bit factory-like in terms of its production, here's what you're going to get back: you're going to get back the rest of the earth. And I'll take that any time."

(2007-07-03 12:25:42 SGT) [Env] Permalink

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