You Teck's Blog

Vertical Farming

Posted by You Teck - 01/09/09 at 04:09:17 pm

I heard about the concept Vertical Farming from my buddy during one of our conversations. I thought the concept was pretty interesting from what he told me and decided to google it to find out more information.

The Concept

An idea headed by Prof. Dickson Despommierm, the concept is to build a high rise building which holds multiple storey of farm and power it using clean or renewable energy. Artificial light will be used as a replacement for natural sunlight.  The main advantage of the concept is that the farms that are housed within the building will be protected from destructive elements and thus ensure year round production.

Image source: Vertical Farming Main Site

Obstacles

Adoption of the concept is the central issue along with the many sub problems revolving around the central issue. The sub problems in my opinion consist of:

1. Overall profitability of the proposed system
2. Reception of the end users
3. Need of special knowledge workers to maintain operations

Point 1 could probably be the only concern for major developed countries but if we think under the global context, point 2 and 3 remains valid and critical. A solution no matter how beneficial would never will able to justify itself without a reasonable net gain. With regards to point 2 and 3, it will be a major obstacle for developing countries as the resource and knowledge to support the system could be far more costly than the conventional way of farming right now.

The problem of having insufficent farmland to support the growing global population in the future is there for all to see. The solution offered by the Vertical Farming concept is valid and it’s not so much of whether the idea is workable or not but rather when can the concept developed such that it is financially justifiable.

Source: Vertical Farming

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