Vertical Farming
As our Ecological Footprint project showed, land is becoming scarce due
to our lifestyle. You hear of all these
elaborate ideas to aid in this problem worldwide, but rarely close to home in
good ol’ SC. One of these very ideas is being incorporated in Charleston. Clemson
University has begun a Vertical Farm Design” Feasibility Study in Charleston.
This study is looking into the possibility of re-utilizing many of the old
factory buildings all throughout Charleston and converting them into vertical
farms. They are using Intelligent
River® cyber-infrastructure network. This is basically just a fancy term saying
that this is how they control the “weather” in this biome. They are having to
recreate an environment that these plants can thrive in.
Putting this idea into practice is relatively new. A book that introduced
this possibility came out in the early 90’s. Also, it would take a lot of money
to change the buildings into the state necessary to grow plants.
Yet even though there are these issues, in the
end, this is in all likelihood going to be our future. This would be reusing
land, transferring growth of our food to state side, you can grow crops year
round, so production will increase, you can adapt the building to withstand the
floods that frequent that area to reduce “weather-related crop failures”, all
in all it has a massive o=amount of benefits. Plus this is a concept with
unlimited possibilities, this is just the beginning.
This idea is to cool! It seems like this would be an obvious solution to the lack of land but I’ve never thought or heard of it. It seems as if the only obstacle would be the fact that the old buildings would have to be converted which like anything can add up to be very costly. However, like you mentioned Brittany farmers would be able to farm year round rather than just a selective season which could possibly offset the costs. With the average person needing over five earths to survive ideas like vertical farming will have to become a reality. Hopefully farmers will look into this idea. Also, I like the fact that Clemson is leading this project and keeping innovative ideas such as this one in SC.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Madison that this is an awesome innovation! According to some research that I did online, by the year 2050 80% of the world’s population will inhabit cities, or urban centers. By that time it is estimated that the world’s population will increase by about 3 billion people. Of course with more people we will need more land and crops, but with the massive growth of cities and increase in the population, land originally allotted for agriculture will be taken up and used for living space and stores. Since we cannot increase the amount of land on Earth, we must build upwards, as seen in most cities today that utilize skyscrapers. Also, vertical farming uses about 1/20th of the water required to grow crops in a field. When applied in cities vertical farming will reduce the carbon footprint and energy costs to transport food and meals. Despite the money it will cost to convert buildings into the state necessary to grow crops, the money saved in transportation and the benefits vertical farming will provide to the environment are definitely worth it.
ReplyDeleteLink to research: http://panacea-bocaf.org/verticalfarming.htm and http://www.verticalfarm.com/
I agree! Not many people think of this as a solution to our growing space problem. I think that if put to use on a large scale, vertical farming has the ability not just to cut costs and reduce the space needed but allow for more effective experimentation with plants and crops.
ReplyDeleteVertical farming is an excellent idea. It allows for farming and using empty buildings. It saves trees and forests from being torn down to make farmland. Although it may be costly, I feel the benefits are huge. The environment in the building could be controlled so crops wouldn’t die due to "bad weather". This would also help out with unemployment because people would have to go through the crops to harvest and water them. Vertical farming is the future of agriculture.
ReplyDelete