Farms: Father of Vertical Farming Answers: Can This Really Work?
Productivity | Information | History | View | Quality
--Dickson Despommier, Professor Emeritus of Microbiology and Public Health at Columbia University who has been working on vertical farming after conceiving the "urban farm skyscraper," joins David to discuss the pros and possible cons of vertical farming On the Bonus Show: Chinese company unveils passenger drone, Thailand's April heatwave, Paramount sued over product placement, more... Support TDPS by clicking (bookmark it too!) this link before shopping on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/?tag=thedavpaksho-20 Website: https://www.davidpakman.com Become a Member: https://www.davidpakman.com/membership David's Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/david.pakman Discuss This on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow/ Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow TDPS Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/davidpakmanshow David's Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dpakman TDPS Gear: http://www.davidpakman.com/gear 24/7 Voicemail Line: (219)-2DAVIDP Subscribe to The David Pakman Show for more: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=midweekpolitics Timely news is important! We upload new clips every day, 6-8 stories! Make sure to subscribe! Broadcast on April 28, 2016
Comments
-
The cost of electricity/HVAC/harvesting to create one pound of veg in an indoor vertical farm exceeds the price of said veg many times over. Blaming the lack of food on climate change to justify vertical farm energy usage is just plain stupid. Perhaps he receives a kickback every time he mentions climate change and that then offsets the costs of growing indoors. There is NO substitute to growing under the sun.
-
Simple approach to the 'but you're using energy for your lights which means fossil fuels have to be burned';
consider when produce isn't transported cross-country, those fossil fuels can be 'freed up' to generate electricty.
Tractors which don't need to be run free up fuel for electricity generation.
General transport costs on/around farmlands in terms of fuel expenditure are reduced.
For the arguments surrounding 'but you're using things which have to be manufactured'; you have to use things which are manufactured in open farmland agriculture as well; 'material costs' are transferred and typically reduced where instead of a tractor you've got the framework for your vertical farm 'greenhouse'.
In other words, it's generally quite easy to draw up the parallels for material input costs and thus to determine how much is being spent or 'consumed' where, what for, and what its long-term implications are. -
Proper pruning of fruit trees would make them viable in vertical farms as well. Espalier is a technique for keeping fruit trees manageable in a small space. Nuts should be doable also. Cotton might be easier to maintain in a vertical farm as might flax and other fiber sources. LED lighting is not essential although it increases productivity on overcast days and regions and seasons where it is dark for longer periods of the day. Closed systems are a bit of a pipe-dream though. If the purpose is to produce products for sale then nutrients will be leaving the system. New inputs will always be necessary. Fortunately, cities have an abundance of potential inputs in the form of trash and sewage. Utilizing these inputs as resources would also reduce the carbon-footprint involved in removing these materials in the first place.
-
I hope i can explain this well. What i suggest would cost trillions but here goes my idea. Consider a large valley somewhere with a small river in the bottom. Build a structure over the river from hill top to hilltop then another structure several hundred yards later and continue. Put a roof over between the structures. Clean the valley all out down to bed rock and pave the ground and spray fibreglass on the valley walls to hold the bedrock in place.. Plug in a nuclear power plant for the power and heat. Now you have an empty roofed building with a river running through it. The ceiling in this maybe up to several 1000 feet up from the river bottom and maybe 10-20 miles long perhaps longer. That all depends on the valley that's picked. Install large racks from the paved floor all the way to the ceiling ( this too will help hold the roof ). I would like to see rice, beans and wheat grown with automatic planting and harvesting. This would likely be enough to feed most of the worlds population. Most of the technology for such a endeavour is already invented but we will need some new technology. There ya go ....
-
HOW MUCH FOR TRACTORS & TOOLS AND WATER IRRIGATION FOR OUTDOOR FARMING? AND HOW MUCH FOR LIGHTING EQUIPMENT AND BEDS?
-
"How do you respond to the problem of this costing more than it returns"
"Well you see it costs less in other ways"
This is not a response, you are a poor quality journalist. -
The energy & full-spectrum lighting needs problem is solved with Plasmatic Magnetic Energy. (PME)
PME is far less expensive, & far more reliable than all other choices. -
Finally an intelligent interviewer, i looked at a couple ppl interview this guy as well as others in the in the vertical farming industry. They asked the most basic obvious questions, no depth, no perspective.............its so easy to ask a few intelligent questions: Ask about logistics, economics, scale, how the technology works, criticism, comparisons, barriers etc............The worst part of the other interviews besides me not learning anything is they insert the most corny unfunny transitions wasting my time even more. good job btw +David Parkman Show
-
Very interesting. Almost everything that I buy, I can plant the seeds. I have a small space but have lots of things growing. Love to learn.
-
Somethings to consider beyond the obvious for indoor verses outdoor farming are:
It is a lot better environment to harvest and pack a crop
indoors verses outdoors. Imagine picking mature green tomatoes in 100 degree
weather. Carrying to five gallon buckets up to fifty feet and then handing them
up four feet to the person dumping them in the trailer. Is a lot harder work
than picking tomatoes in greenhouse.
The same is true of head lettuce except the weather is
usually milder.
NO herbicides are used.
Fungicides should be zero.
Pesticides should be zero to the use of safe pesticides and beneficial
insects. No need for herdicide ready seeds.
Product is produced where it is shipped from.
California will never have an abundance of water again.
Because of where the water is, isn’t where it is needed. Urban population needs
are expanding not good or bad just a fact. High energy cost to pump, lift and
pressurize water for drip and sprinkler irrigation. California farmers do not
waste water. It is too expensive and too valuable to do that.
There is a reason no one produces the quality and quantity of
produce that California does and never will.
Climate California has the coastal climate, high desert and
low desert. These three districts give California a year round growing environment
without rain (usually) in the harvest season.
Highly skilled labor force.
Infrastructure.
Support business from tractor repair to welding shop and
everything in between.
Most people do not really understand what it takes to
produce a crop and get it to the consumer.
Everybody wants cheap. Well cheap is going to be thing of
the past.
Small urban indoor farms are great and they make sense. They
can be economically profitable.
Biggest problem is how you sell your produce. The big
companies can’t and won’t buy from the small grower. From grocery stores to
fast food. They want volume, price and terms. They want you to wait a month to
get paid.
Then there is the new regulations, testing and documentation
maze. That is cost prohibitive and time consuming for small growers. This will eventually
eliminate the majority of small growers.
The playing field is tilted to multinationals and mega
farming.
I am all for small urban and rural farms of any type. The
consumer has a responsibility to educate themselves to the realities and
obstacles the small farm faces. Knowledge is power.
My hope is that you will educate yourself and use that
knowledge to make a difference. If you want cheap and are unwilling to divert
some of your dollars from _____ to what you want. Then don’t complain. You can
with your dollars, your voice and your vote.
Adopt a farmer. There many left. -
The process has to be taken as a whole. This mostly focused on energy usage and even then didn't really do a comparison. With energy you have to look at all energy used from production to even the chemicals used in outdoor farming since they are petroleum based and take energy to manufacture. The obvious one is transportation energy which nearly disappears in locally grown food. All hydroponic systems use radically fewer chemicals than outdoor farms and don't contribute to things like the Gulf Dead Zone which is caused by farm run off. The energy usage isn't as great as people think given most use LEDs that are tailored to the light spectrum plants need. Leafy greens don't need a lot of light in the first place. A massive factor has to be the water usage since 90% of lettuce is grown in California. Drought water is being shipped around the country, lettuce is 90% water. Leafy greens also have a high rate of evaporation given their leaf surface area and in an outdoor farm that water is lost where as it can be reclaimed in an indoor farm. Farming cities probably can't offset a 100% of their food needs but even 10% has a significant impact. High output micro farms can also ring cities which still reduces transportation from thousands of miles to tens of miles. Other than chicken and red meat 90% of a city's food can be grown within a 100 miles of the city's center and I'm sure a percentage of eggs and chicken can be raised within that sphere. The change will happen because there will be no choice. We're still living on cheap oil. When oil hits $200 a barrel, and it will, apples from New Zealand and Tilapia from China will be too expense given transportation costs. While foreign food and outdoor grown food continues to increase in cost the cost of indoor food has the potential to go down and will eventually stabilize. I'm shocked that we are starting to see vegetables commonly selling for $4 a pound. We used to complain when meat cost that much. It's not uncommon to see meat selling for $10 a pound with cheap cuts like hamburger selling for $4 or $5 a pound. What happens when those costs go up two or four fold? Our current food production system is unsustainable much like our current energy system. We need intensive indoor farming to feed people and provide a reliable food source.
-
Wow I am shocked. Not one of you Dumbass's get that overpopulation is a problem. He says the people are moving to the cities because of farm failure due to climate change. There are too many people and a vertical farm although a good idea is NOT GOING TO FEED 10 BILLION PEOPLE YOU MORONS~ !!!!!
-
Wow! I didn't know vertical farming existed. I thought it was an idea I came up with that nobody else had thought of. It is a cool idea. Hope it catches on.
-
BORING!
-
mushrooms are one of the easiest and best things to grow indoors no light
-
Disney world does this
-
I'm going to open a 400 acre farm in downtown Manhattan and grow corn.
-
I'm not completely sold on the idea but I think it has potential to work but only for certain (limited) types of produce. The reasoning behind the concept is that if you grow produce indoors you can "control the elements" thereby reducing or eliminating the problems of pests, disease, and climate changes. But as the guest admitted there's a lot of stuff that cannot be grown indoors unless we genetically modify them. And the scale of these "vertical farms" would have to be enormous in order to be feed the population. As far as I know there is no large-scale vertical farm in existence today nor under construction. So right now it's little more than a pipe dream and history is riddled with those. As a side note, the drought in California appears to be over (end in sight) at least for the north which is most important in terms of agriculture.
-
Grow the grains on the roof tops.