Adam Stein on Vertical Farms: "Pie in the Sky"
by Sami Grover, Carrboro, NC, USA on 07.24.08
Downtown Real Estate Too Expensive for Food Production?
Vertical Farming has gotten us TreeHuggers excited on more than one occasion. From this diagonal tower to a lively debate in our forums, the concept of moving food production closer to population centres is certainly an intriguing one (not to mention reducing the geographical footprint of a farm). However, there are dissenters. And the ever thoughtful Adam Stein of TerraPass is one of the most eloquent. This from his latest blog entry on the apparently “half-baked” concept of vertical farms:
“I’m as concerned about food as the next guy — scratch that, I’m more concerned about food than the next guy — which is why I find it somewhat dismaying to see a serious and complicated set of issues turned into a sort of fetish. I really don’t know what other word to use to describe the notion of spending “hundreds of millions” of dollars to build weird, poorly sited temples of food production in areas much better suited to dense, green residential and retail space.
Brooklyn was once one of the most agriculturally productive regions in the United States. Manhattan was once home to innumerable factories. There’s a reason that farms and factories decamped to more suitable locations. Using urban real estate in this manner is incredibly wasteful: bad for the economy and bad for the environment. Local food has its merits, but that’s what New Jersey is for.”
Adam’s point that urban real estate is too valuable for farming makes a lot of sense, although with food and fuel prices rising the economics may change somewhat. Perhaps a partial answer lies in integrating food production with our built environment more intimately, so living roofs and other “vertical farming” spaces provide recreational or other services to residents living in buildings. Of course we're unlikely to ever feed the world with roof gardens.
Adam’s ultimate contention that climate change and resource depletion will not be addressed by singular, futuristic, even “fetishistic” ideas, but then I doubt that any vertical farm advocate is claiming that they have "the answer". As Adam says, we need systemic changes that reprioritizes our resource use - namely carbon pricing. If fossil fuel users were paying a rate that truly reflected the environmental cost, you can be pretty sure that the market would separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to efficiently and effectively cutting our emissions. In the meantime though, you can hardly blame people for thinking outside the box.
::TerraPass::via site visit::
More on Vertical Farming
Vertical Farming: The Future of Agriculture
Diagonal Farming
View Forum Topic: Vertical Farming
Mithun Architects’ Vertical Farm for Seattle
Vertical Farming is Already Here: Organitech
How about taking already poorly utilized space that is being taken up for public storage of personal property (aka parking garages, or street side parking spaces) and turn them into hyper local micro farms. There is no need to build new infrastructure, and in the case of street-side parking, the retro fit would cost mere thousands as apposed to billions.
The benefit to the community would be astronomically higher than the benefit of storing peoples weekend getaway cars.
It would cut down on unnecessary car use, and promote biking walking and the use of public transit.
Sure, some will squeal, "but where am i supposed to park my car". A valid argument, and they are right, cars are a burdensome thing to have in a city. They can sell them to offset the cost of their contribution to their own spot in the micro farm.
Sure, it probably isn't economical to build new structures in downtown cores to grow vegetables. However, there are systems already developed that can transform derelict buildings in crappy neighborhoods into highly productive plant factories.
New York may have New Jersey, but what about Reykjavik, Minot, or Tokyo? These are all either too cold, isolated, or space constrained (respectively) to have produce sustainably imported or grown nearby on farms.
Adam's completely right. But there can be a bothe-and solution.
There's lots of room for gardening and farming in Cities: look to rooftops, vacant lots, backyards, alleys, parks, and some portions of some buildings.
\Far greater damage has been done by proliferating sprawl which has usurped prime farmland near cities, because that land is generally flat, well drained, already cleared and easy to develop on while have optimum access to city centers. That's where we've lost the bulk of prime farmland, meadows, pastures and orchards.
I really want to see further progress on this concept because I think this is could be a solution to are rising food shortage…I am involved in a campaign to build the first functioning tower: http://www.thepoint.com/campaigns/vertical-farm-in-new-york-city
See the sorts of Urban reclaimation garden stuff that various groups are doing: Depave in Portland and other locations (www.depave.org), Rhizome Collective (esp. their work on brownfield reclaimation) in Austin (http://www.rhizomecollective.org/), and the Food Project in Boston, Lynn, Beverly, and Lincoln http://www.thefoodproject.org
I really don't see this as a problem, just move these vertical farms to the rural areas right next to cities as is suggested by commenters and the post. That is the compromise. instead of changing the core urban areas into food production multiply the food output of close by food production where the agricultural infrastructure is already in place and would just need to be expanded or updated.