Posted on 08/20/2018 5:54:51 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The world’s largest vertical farm is coming to Dubai.
The indoor farm is a $40 million joint venture between Crop One Holdings and Emirates Flight Catering, who say it’s a way of producing pesticide-free crops while using a fraction of the water that traditional farming does.
The produce will feed passengers of Emirates and other airlines at Dubai’s Al Maktoum International Airport. The farm will be built near the airport, eliminating trucking costs and emissions.
But is vertical farming really as green as it seems?
HOW DOES IT WORK?
To feed a growing global population, which could reach 9.1 billion by 2050, world food production will need to rise by 70%.
In addition, most of us will be living in cities, and will likely want to source our food locally.
Many think that vertical farms offer a viable solution.
For one thing, this type of farming doesn’t need soil. The plants are stacked on top of each other in rows, their roots immersed in nutrient-rich water. This system, called hydroponics, uses 99% less water than field farming. The plants sit under LED lights which drive their photosynthesis.
The growing conditions are controlled digitally. The temperature, humidity, light, water and plant nutrients are all monitored by a computer, which constantly adjusts the levels according to what the plants need.
This also means that the farms can be set up anywhere, as long as there’s a source of electricity and access to distilled water. In the future we may see these farms on offshore oil and gas exploration facilities and in extreme climates.
In the new Dubai facility, the plants are stacked together four or five storeys high over 12,077 square metres. That’s enough space to grow greens for the 225,000 meals that Emirates Flight Catering produce daily.
THE BENEFITS
Proponents of vertical farming argue that the benefits are many. There’s no need for great swathes of land to grow food. Crop One says that the facility will produce the same amount on a single acre indoors that would normally require 400 acres of land. In addition, the food can be grown in cities, leaving redundant agricultural land to be taken back by nature.
No fertilizers or pesticides are used, so there is no agricultural runoff, one of the main sources of pollutants in our waterways. However, critics argue that the energy costs can be high.
Bruce Bugbee, a professor of crop physiology at Utah State University, says that even the best LED lights only have a 50% efficiency rate. “Transportation costs account for about 4% of the energy in the food system. The energy for electric lights is much greater than that,” he told The New York Times.
In addition, so far only a few types of crops are suitable for indoor farming, such as lettuces and tomatoes.
IT'S CATCHING ON
But it’s enough of an idea to interest investors, who are pouring millions into the start-ups revolutionizing the way we grow food.
The global vertical farming market was valued at $1.5 billion in 2016, and the hydroponics segment contributed nearly 42%.
According to research firm Allied Market Research, the global vertical farming market is expected to reach $6.4 billion by 2023.
That sounds good..can’t remember the name or author?
Good Lord, that sounds more grimdark than Warhammer 40k that has planets like Armageddon and nostromo and those planets when you read about em are places that cannot be described as a shithole, they are worse than that.
The hydroponic fertilizer liquid has to be replaced periodically. Where do you think that goes? You really think we’re ignorant?
The world’s population would quit growing so rapidly if we quit feeding the middle east. If they’re gonna make all the babies they should have to feed them.
Hard to beat the Hoosier maters I’m used to.
As for salads, that's a white privelidge Amy Winehouse kinda thing.
It's funny you're mentioning an old book that contains very useful tech information that is very applicable in our contemporary times. I have a dozen old books that I acquired on purpose or rescued from being discarded that have served me well. In fact, they have been key in several hundred million $$$ of process design work relating to industrial water treatment over the decades. When I retired, I finally relented and got rid of most of my tech library but kept these dozen books. Hauling a thousand pounds of books when I moved was a real pain!
One of the books though is just a fun one (for me anyway) having to do with residential passive solar design written by Mazeris (sp). No fun doing this living in GA but was a blast using SW architecture and adobe construction common to NM and AZ.
Every technical term in this article should be followed by a lengthy parenthetical explanation / definition - especially those technical terms which sound like ordinary terms and which lay readers will falsely assume they already understand.
"Agricultural run-off" can't happen in a hydroponic set-up because "agricultural run-off" is DEFINED as the UNCONTROLLED run-off of surface waters (incl. excess fertilizer and irrigation water) from LAND.
In a hydroponic set-up, everything is precisely regulated, and excess liquid RE-CAPTURED.
Regards,
Which it was not. Sticky specifics—always read the fine print. So this is not “agricultural?” Then what is it? Agriculture by another name, still growing a product for the masses, no matter by what name or mode of growth.
so....the way they’re claiming ‘no fertilizer’ is to call it “nutrient-rich water”. got it. Cute. but oh, so, misleading.
four most common problems with hydro verticals: bacteria, algae, black mold, and the enormous energy cost equally lighting the entire height of the planting for 18 hrs/day.
Then there’s the equipment: man-lifts to get to the top, constant pruning to keep one main vine on tomatoes, hand-pollination since no bugs (bees) will make it inside. (If bugs do make it inside, dollar to donuts there’ll be hornworms or the arab equivalent and those will have to be hand-picked off). Not to mention the leaching over time of pvc and assorted poly tubing exposed to acidic ‘nutrients’. And then there’s all that ventilation equipment - the hothouse will be both hot and very humid (the discharge of which will create its own local microclimate), bordering on human heat tolerance for workers and impacting mechanical tolerances for moisture and heat.
Lots of challenges...let’s see what they do.
I mean there are pros to doing it this way.
The cons are loss of power, loss of water, fire in the structure damaging things. Infestations of things could still occur even indoors.
A few years back, I was reading "Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and realized I had read that also during that period.
I found an article that describes a few books like that.
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/j-g-ballards-high-rise-feared-skyscraper-living/#!
Hey, Lady! I didn't author this article! Nor do I necessarily endorse it. I was merely attempting to help others make some sense of it.
Regards,
Would you nit-picking stop there? If I defined "re-captured" by saying, e.g., "the controlled redirection of the nutrient fluid blah-blah-blah," you would then probably demand that I define "controlled" or "nutrient."
As I pointed out in my previous posting: I am not the author of this article, nor do I endorse it. My initial posting was intended merely to help some people understand.
Regards,
Planes fly seven or eight miles up, just how tall is this vertical farm?
I used to have a garden and grew butterbeans and tomatoes.
I am not in a position to do that anymore. A friend brought me some tomatoes from her garden.
Oh, man they were good. Sweet as an apple.
Health reasons in recent years keep me from having my 1200 sf garden any more. Used to have a couple dozen mater plants of different varieties so they didn’t all mature at once and some were better for canning, whwle some were better for sammiches and others for just eating like an apple.
My daughter is here from FL with a friend and they are amazed at the difference.
fortunately, there’s a huge produce stand just a mile down the road from me.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.