permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

Let's Make This Clear: Vertical Farms Don't Make Sense
http://ecogeek.org/agriculture/2984
"
 Written by Philip Proefrock and Hank Green on 26/10/09

The inside of a skyscraper is, literally, the most expensive "land" in the
world. So it probably isn't the best place to grow our food.

The idea of vertical farming <http://ecogeek.org/agriculture/988> (growing
food in high-rise buildings in the middle of cities instead of out on
farms) has been gaining a lot of interest lately. Most recetly, it showed
up on 
BoingBoing<http://www.boingboing.net/2009/10/12/farms-as-skyscrapers.html>,
one of our favorite blogs. We've seen a few of these proposals, and we've
been following the concept for some time. It seems EcoGeeky enough, but a
quick glance at the actual economics of farming shows that this isn't ever
going to work.

At first, it seems to make all the sense in the world. Moving production of
food into population centers to eliminate shipping. Creating highly
efficient "food factories" that allow land elsewhere to be freed from
cultivation. But when you look at some of the practicalities behind
constructing buildings like these, vertical farms make no sense. As the
Vertical farm Project itself notes: "The Vertical Farm must be efficient
(cheap to construct and safe to operate)." And a vertical farm is the
opposite of efficiency."