How then, do we move backwards? How does a society, with most of the people having no clue of future events, move from being dependent on a vast and intertwined network of goods and services produced by the indigenous people of whereever, to a local resource and renewable energy based society, and do so in the timeframe available (20-30 years using the most liberal extimates, 10-20 with resonable estimates, 5-10 with worst case scenarios), all the while prices on everything increasing, world politics getting more militaristic, governments continuously reducing civil liberties, shortages of goods on the market and weather patterns resembling bad Hollywood movies?
Joined: Mar 26, 2005 Posts: 3669 Location: over here
Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 11:43 am Post subject: Skyscraper Farms (What?!)
Just read this article on BBC news:
Quote:
.....And so every morsel, every bite of food New Yorkers munch through every day must be trucked, shipped or flown in, from across the country, and across the world.
Now though, scientists at Columbia University are proposing an alternative. Their vision of the future is one in which the skyline of New York and other cities include a new kind of skyscaper: the "vertical farm".
The idea is simple enough. Imagine a 30-storey building with glass walls, topped off with a huge solar panel.
On each floor there would be giant planting beds, indoor fields in effect.
Though it solves some of the problems we discuss on this board, my gut tells me this will never work. Let's pick it apart. _________________ "The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time."
Joined: Mar 26, 2005 Posts: 3669 Location: over here
Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 12:14 pm Post subject: Re: Skyscraper Farms (What?!)
RonMN wrote:
It'll work...But only with abundant, cheap energy.
well, they are actually saving energy by not having to transport food into the cities anymore. Also plants are only about 1% efficient with sunlight, so in theory a 30% efficient solar panel could supply 30 floors of plants with only that frequency of light that the plants can use.
Still the capital investment required seems huge to me compared to the expected returns, unless of course, food prices rise dramatically, and that's actually quite reasonable to expect in the future, especially in the big cities. _________________ "The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time."
Joined: Jan 06, 2006 Posts: 508 Location: Pacific Northwest
Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 12:14 pm Post subject: Re: Skyscraper Farms (What?!)
Hmmm....will this be hand farming? Heavy farm equipment cold be problematic with fumes and such. Soil is a problem, would it be hydroponic? I can see how that might be workable, and I would like a office complex with growing things. Assuming that the food it produced payed off the structure I am not sure there is anything really wrong with it other the the growing cattle bit.
I think it could be done, but should it be done? I don't know. _________________ We stand here, as the light of other days surrounds us.
"Hail the Dead"
Joined: Mar 26, 2005 Posts: 3669 Location: over here
Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 12:45 pm Post subject: Re: Skyscraper Farms (What?!)
Hawkcreek wrote:
I was looking at this article also. If they have a bldg of 300 feet in diameter (couldn't go more and have any light at all to the inner portions), the would have about 50 acres total. A minimum of 10 percent would be unusable because of equipment needs and dead space, so they might have a 45 acre farm. Land in NYC would cost a fortune, and I think the building would cost at least 2-300 million.
It looks to me like they would be buying farmland for somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 - 10 million an acre.
May be a cool idea, but I will bet my favorite pistol against a nickel that it will not be built.
They'd probably be built on an old rusting industrial plot of land instead of manhattan. Still the cost of the building itself (millions if not tens of millions) seems to me to big of an investment in a time when we'll need all of our resources to built new energy infrastructure like solar. _________________ "The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time."
Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 12:46 pm Post subject: Re: Skyscraper Farms (What?!)
Well as a very rough guide, commercial construction over here costs about €2,000 per square metre of floor space. Now whatever size the building is say about 25% of the space will have to be used for services, access paths etc. That makes our 1 sq m into 0.75 sq m of useable space. Pick lettuce as a fairly average plant. A lettuce plant cost about €0.50 to buy. Using the square foot gardening method you can grow 4 lettuce per sq foot or 36 per square metre or 27 per 0.75 sq metre. 27 x 0.5 = €13.5 of food worth per sq metre.
€2,000 / 13.5 = 148 growing seasons.
Using indoors and solar lighting we could expect 3 growing seasons per year. 148/3 = 50 year payback.
As food prices increase, this figure reduces. Of course the plants, especially ones like lettuce could be grown in tiers so you could have mutliple racks of lettuce in 1 sq m of floor space or dozens even hundreds of plants. Sounds very feasible to me.
I apologise in advance for my simplification of this and fully expect to get my ass ripped apart by other more informed people here.....
Joined: Mar 26, 2005 Posts: 3669 Location: over here
Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 1:15 pm Post subject: Re: Skyscraper Farms (What?!)
I think at least 50% of the price of lettuce goes to the middleman and taxes etc. So you'd better make that a 100 years to pay for paying back. And then we still have to think about the upkeep of the thing, labor costs etc. Nobody invests in anything that has a longer payback then ten years, so I guess you'd have to look at lettuce of 10 Euro before these things will get built, and I don't see that happening even with PO.
The most probable scenario in which this was to become reality is a situation in which we have (near) free energy in the form of fusion and a serious overpopulation/environmental problem forcing us to go this way. _________________ "The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time."
- Abraham Lincoln
Last edited by Bas on Tue Jun 19, 2007 1:19 pm; edited 1 time in total
Joined: Apr 07, 2005 Posts: 225 Location: West of Chicago
Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 1:18 pm Post subject: Re: Skyscraper Farms (What?!)
Fascinating idea, I'm surprised it hasn't come up sooner.
It would depend on the foods grown -- the more space they take up, the less return received. I like the racks idea -- figure 10' or 12' ceilings...hm.
Here in Chicago there are plenty of derelict buildings that could be converted. Use the fire sprinklers for water? Trap rainwater on the roof to supplement fresh water and water the building downward from floor to floor? Use waste from nearby buildings for compost?
I think it could be done. Ballsy, buy I think it could be done. Completely reworks the idea of a farmer's market...
Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 3:19 pm Post subject: Re: Skyscraper Farms (What?!)
What struck me immediately is there's no way they could extract enough energy from one rooftop solar panel to power the lighting for every floor, let alone the other electric needs. Lighting is a big expense for indoor grow operations, especially plants that need something approximating high calorie sunshine. In fact I doubt they could get enough electricity to reliably power one floor. To grow quickly many crops require powerful lighting, like high output fluorescents or HPS/metal halide. You can't grow crops efficiently under energy efficient office lighting.
It would make more sense to design the building to use the sunlight directly.. but this would only work at high latitude locations (like the UK) where the sun never gets very high in the sky (that way every floor would get some light, but only the ones facing south).
If there were an alternate source of electricity, like a nuke plant, it might be a viable idea. So I think it's a neat idea but a non-starter, at least using solar power.
{EDIT - just took a closer look at the article, and there's NO WAY you're going to get enough power from one rooftop solar panel to power the lighting and other energy requirements for a 30 STORY building.. lol I like the cute artist rendering of how the building might look tho..}
Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 5:29 pm Post subject: Re: Skyscraper Farms (What?!)
The ultimate Doomer Castle!
The question has come up a number of times, how do you protect your farm in the event of a crash? Amusingly, these designs look an answer to that, doomer castle farms! Lets say Donald Trump was a doomer, I can imagine him owning a protected hydroponics skyscraper castle... I don't see it as being better then a functional farm, but I do think this could be used to give a few elites some breathing room as the climate changes and as other factors come into play. For example: This could insulate elites from Farm Raiders, which is a common result of economic and famine related chaos.
The biggest reason for wheat moving north on the map below is because of lack of available water, AKA projections of the South turning into a dust-bowl. So perhaps in the future, farmers who still farm in the south will use reflective greenhouses to keep in water and reflect the sun. Not as effective as a nice large self irrigated field, but farms that still have food will still have value, so I could see people needing to implement something like this...
Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2007 6:23 am Post subject: Re: Skyscraper Farms (What?!)
As an enthusiastic and sometimes overly optimistic hobby gardener, I have learned many lessons about growing veggies the hard way. Strong direct LIGHT is an absolute necessity. Things can grow inside, but do better outdoors - but on high lattitudes like mine (Stockholm Sweden, 59 north) things mainly grow May-Aug. NOTHING will grow without strong artificial light (and indoor for temperatur) Nov-Feb. (You can get things to germinate and get their first leaves by using the stored energy in the seed, but they will not grow further)
TEMPerature is essential - plants may have different requiremnts, but generally 12-28 C is necessary for growing. Many veggies die at first frost, some can survive a few degrees below freezing. For me, things rarely die of heat, but things like radishes, lettuce, spinach still can get destroyed by bolting or getting bitter. Greenhouses easily get too hot, as do hotter climates than mine.
Plants do not like chlorinated water - rainwater is preferable.
Roofs of city buildings certainly are possible places to grow things, and you will have no problem with deer or rabbits, or slugs probably. Birds and flying insects are a different story.
Balconies and window plantings (outside is much better, if you can prevent potted plats falling down on people's heads) are possible, too. In a city, of course, buildings are often shaded by other buildings, or face the wrong way, so not all windows can be used.
Plants may only utilize 1 percent of the energy of the light (I think I have seen other numbers, up to 4 percent), but they certainly can not grow in weak light.
In highrise office buildings with glass walls and AirCondtioning it should be possible to grow veggies by the windows part of the year, enough for a little supplement to the office workers lunches. Remember that a head of lettuce takes months to grow.
Veggies generally have stricter requirements for light and temp that houseplants for decoration.
Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2007 2:06 pm Post subject: Re: Skyscraper Farms (What?!)
That glass pyramid hotel in Vegas would work. (The Luxor??) It would capture all kinds of sunlight. The hookers you guys spoke of in another thread could do the weeding.
Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2007 3:08 pm Post subject: Re: Skyscraper Farms (What?!)
I like the way you're thinking snowshoegal.
They would have to do the weeding before the other activities mentioned could take place. The last thing we need is stoned prostitutes pulling up leaf beet seedlings. _________________ www.askaboutenergy.com
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