Dickson Despommier, Professor of Public Health in Environmental Sciences, Columbia University, discusses his vertical farm concepts, the need for a building prototype, and new energy, agricultural, and building technologies, such as plasma-gasification, aeroponics, and ETFE. Despommier views vertical farming as a critical potential tool for cutting down land and water-use inefficiencies, and the energy required to transport farm products. High-efficiency, local vertical farms could also help combat the food shortages that could arise from climate change.
Despommier explains that vertical farms would really just be high-efficiency greenhouses stacked on top of each other in urban areas. He notes, however, that there are a number of technical issues that need to be resolved before vertical farming can happen. “In fact, if you could take the high-tech greenhouse iteration that now exists in the Arizona desert or in places throughout England and the Netherlands and just stack them on top of each other, that’s the concept. Now, tell that to an engineer and they’ll just laugh at you because they realize that there’s a lot of integration of systems that needs to go on here in order to get this to actually work. So you have water use issues. You have waste energy issues. You have then germination issues of where do you get your seeds from; how do you choose your seeds; how do you make sure that you don’t introduce plant diseases indoors?
In Despommier’s conception, high-efficiency vertical farms would be extremely efficient in their water use, and use existing technologies, like hydroponics and aeroponics. “To get back to the water issue though, hydroponic farming indoors uses 70 percent less water than outdoor irrigation, and another technology called aeroponics, which is a take-off on hydroponics in which the roots are actually sprayed with a thin film of water, uses approximately 70 percent less water than hydroponic farming. So, if we were to choose hydroponic farming for most of our crops, we could save a tremendous amount of fresh water. The other side to the coin, which is also good, is that because you’re doing this indoors you can capture the water of evapotranspiration, which is what the plant puts into the air after it takes the nutrients out of the solution that it takes up by its roots. It’s an open system in which water is taken up through the stems into the leaves and then out into the atmosphere. When you see these big thunderstorms over Iowa, all that water was put into the atmosphere by corn because they irrigated the corn and the leaves of the corn plants put that into the atmosphere.”
Despommier wants to see a vertical farm prototype built soon, and hopes the design professions will get more involved. Despommier points to the range of unsolicited designs he has received through his web site as proof of interest among designers. “Just go to our web site Verticalfarm.com and look under the design section. What you have to realize is that none of those designs were actually solicited by us. These designs were submitted by people once they heard about the idea. They dropped what they were doing and created an image, which in their mind represents the way a vertical farm should look. Now, there is one called Eco-Laboratory by Weber Thompson. I don’t want to get too specific, but I think I have to mention them because they are the only ones that actually called me up and said, “We’re thinking of designing a vertical farm. What do you think it should look like?” And I said, “Well, what I think it should look like is a prototype and it should be a research facility, certainly an applied research facility in which the scientists and technicians live together in an apartment complex adjacent to maybe a five-to-ten story building, which has all of the fittings necessary to try out whatever crops you’re interested in growing.”
Image credit: Ecolab – Weber Thompson / Verticalfarm.com
What State’s or cities…if any …are working on or considering an agriculture self-sufficiency study as a means of creating at least a benchmark for discussing a more dispersed food growing and delivery network that might incorporate vertical urban farming?
Who is discussing photosynthetic building material? Algae-filled glass-block fed by occupant CO2, generate oxygen, can be harvested for biofuel or fodder. Yum.