Vertical Farming

I just read more of a "con" article on vertical farming, here are some brief notes I wrote up more on the "pro" side of things

Keep in mind transportation costs (environmental and actual prices which are passed down to the consumer) are HUGE as a percentage of total food costs, you can google this issue for more. As urbanization and population in general increases, trucks, on average, will have to travel even further to reach urban centers (where the majority of people will be living - they already do, at the end of 08, more than half the world lived in urban centers). Also, consider the political environment ... GREEN JOBS, INFRASTRUCTURE FOCUS, and FOOD SUPPLY SAFETY

Essentially, you can not use artificial light for this for it to work successfully in my opinion - ideally, it would be a completely self-sustained closed system by using natural light/solar mirrors/and organic decomposers which will turn organic waste into methane. In turn, the biogas would be harvested and feed back into the grid. Water would be another self-sustained cycle. Transpired water would collect on the walls and be recaptured and recycled within the system. There are a couple of cycles at work here (solar, decomposition/biogas, water).

As for the actual growing, it would scale up hyprodponic and aeroponic growing methods. The actual structure would mimic something preexisting in nature (a la Fuller), to maximize surface area of crop exposed to the sun. For the crop section not exposed to the sun, solar mirrors would be used to redirect light into the middle of the structure (I have this drawn out, albeit pretty terribly because I can't draw very well). I would want to see a "forest" of these structures placed directly outside urban centers.

Despommier argues that with current technology 1 vertical farm occupying 1 block, rising 30 stories could feed 10,000 - 50,000 people

Some benefits
-continuous crop production
-mitigate weather related crop failures
-reduction in farmland usage
-reduction in transportation costs
-reduced need of fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide
-reduced "true cost" of what we eat (when adding in environmental negative externalities)
-reduced water usage (70% of all water used by humans goes into food production)

If an idea is not outrageous and absurd at first, it probably has little merit (credit Einstein with that paraphrase)

"There is no final revolution. Revolutions are infinite."