Farms: Vertical Farming Explained, with Dickson Despommier
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Dickson Despommier describes how vertical farming may be the solution to overpopulation. Don't miss new Big Think videos! Subscribe by clicking here: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5 Transcript: As of this moment WHO and the population counsel estimate that about 50 percent of us live in cities. And the other half, of course, lives somewhere else. The other thing we can learn from NASA of all places is how much land those seven billion people, half urban, half rural, actually need to produce their food every year. And it turns out to be a size of South America. So the size of South America in land mass is used just to grow our crops that we plant and harvest. I'm not talking about the herbivores like the cows and the goats and the sheep. So when you think about how much food is consumed by cities, let's say half, it takes half of the size of South America just to produce it. Now if the human population continues to increase which we expect it will -- so over the next 40 years you might have three billion more people to feed. And you look around for the land where that's gonna come from in terms of traditional farms and you don't find it. It isn't there. So the biggest problem facing us as a global species is where will the food for the next three billion people come from? So it could come from someplace other than a traditional farm and the question is, could vertical farming solve that problem. So by vertical farming and a vertical farm I mean any building that grows food inside of it or in which you grow food which is taller than a single story. There are many examples of vertical farms out there which are not traditionally thought of as towering gardens of Eden so to speak as the images on Google might suggest from some of the planners and designers that have submitted their own visions of what they think a vertical farm should look like. Most of those would satisfy the cover of any science fiction magazine I could think of and attract a lot of attention and get people to ask well what is that building and what is it doing? But we're not pretty close to seeing those yet. I think those are gonna be expensive and they're gonna take a lot of rethinking with regards to urban planning. But we don't have to do that in order to have vertical farms already. There's a vertical farm in Singapore. It's a brand new building. It looks like a greenhouse from the outside but it's four stories tall. But it's a clever design. It uses traditional growing systems though. It uses soil based potted plants on a series of conveyor belts which migrates the plants by gravity -- some kind of a grandfather clock like apparatus which actually moves this conveyor belt of plants near the windows maybe once or twice an hour so that every plant gets the same amount of sunlight during the day at least. Because it rains every day there's certainly no shortage of water for these plants either. And uses traditional fertilizer. And the guy has moved from a 2,000 square foot operation to a 20,000 square foot operation the same. There's a vertical farm that's been on the drawing board for a long time now. I'd say five years which is in the final planning stages and about to dig a hole to make room for the foundation in Sweden. It's called Plantagon and Plantagon Corporation is a combination of private investors and the Onondaga Indians of northern New York State. Hence the name Plantagon. And it's a very altruistic group of people. They want to show the world how to farm in another way so that indeed these 340,000 square miles of hardwood forest can start to be given back to nature and to perform the job that they were originally selected for. And so I think they should have their farm -- it's about a 14 story building that they're planning. It's a mixed use building because it's got offices on one side and a growing system across the entire façade of the building on the other side of the building. So imagine yourself sitting at a conference of some sort at 10:30 in the morning. It's about time to go out and pick lunch. So everybody gets up from the table when the meeting is over. They have their trays. They have their little bowls and they go and they go up and down an elevator and they select tomatoes and cucumbers and zucchinis and all kinds of green vegetables. And they come back and they sit at the commissary and have lunch... Directed/Produced by Jonathan Fowler, Elizabeth Rodd, and Dillon Fitton
Comments
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It would have an amazing effect on our environment if everyone just went vegan, and shopped vegetables grown in local vertical farms.
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I can definitely see vertical farms in space stations in a few decades
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Dickson! I want in! let's do it together! get in touch! Glen
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How about not letting 3 more billion humans on earth ? instead of using GMO and overconsumption....
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Read his book "The Vertical Farm" it's awesome!
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So instead of getting the population on board with sustainable, logical, planned parenthood, we just need vertical taco bells so liberals in suits can high-five each other on CNN while we hit 10 billion people all poor as shit. Ya that sounds like the absolute best plan, this is definitely a "thinking man's" video here.
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thinks he not an herbivore?
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Traditional farms have not worked efficiently since the Agricultural Revolution. Monoculture is essentially genocide in controlled areas, and even grazing livestock (mainly sheep) destroy entire ecosystems which can contain some of the most nutritious vegetation known to mankind (research mineral contents of dandelion, dock and most wild herbaceous plants). Why are all vertical farm designs above ground? The technology to hydroponically grow plants with artificial light has existed for decades, so in theory, vertical farms could have no footprint whatsoever if built underneath land that is used for something else (solar panels, for instance). Or even if people dedicated cellar space to the hydroponic production of all the vegetables they could ever need?
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The real problem is changing our paradigms about how and where we get our food. Vertical Farming is the right way to go, but has lacked mainstream acceptance and appeal. We have solved this problem. Visit Indiegogo/city-gardens-usa
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Like a 3D chess game :)
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how about we can triple the yield and also farm on shallow waters?
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Instead of the rotating shelves to allow the light to get to the plants could a system of mirrors not be set up to reflect the light evenly to each area? I know it would take a lot of thinking to get the angles correct but it would reduce the energy needed to move the plants.
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The deserts of the world should be terraformed before idiots start making giant indoor farms. If an indoor farm is not profitable, it shouldn't exist. Bull-doze the fucker. I wouldn't be surprised if algae is the food of the future - not for humans, but to feed our livestock on a mass scale.
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If every building roof add a greenhouse or garden, that would be a great start.
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Teaser videos on the bleeding edge of a technology mostly give me tons of questions. Well played sir.
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Well if we hurry up and invent replicators already then it'd be impossible to starve the population.
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The first vertical farm was a tower system developed by a dutch man in the 70's ... never got off the ground.. if you look at a recent ted talk about population you will see that population growth will probably peak at about 9 billion ... Africa has not really been agriculturally developed yet ... it would seem from a long term perspective not a likely option vertical farming ... the real population problem is energy source and the lack of real funding for alternative sun based energy ...
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Fascinating!
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Let's get one fact straight: Vertical farming did not "arise in your Columbia classroom in 1999." Jacque Fresco, Murray Bookchin & many other futurists have been talking about it since the 1970s. But thanks for giving yourself credit for ideas other people came up with.