Imagine a cluster of 30-story towers on Governors Island or in Hudson Yards producing fruit, vegetables, and grains while also generating clean energy and purifying wastewater. 150 such buildings could feed the entire city of New York for a year. Using current green building systems, a vertical farm could be self-sustaining and even produce a net output of clean water and energy.

So when does this go live? This would be useful to kick the agro lobby in the groin, of which more later.
2008-07-21: Land still too expensive for vertical farms in Manhattan

Would a tomato in lower Manhattan be able to outbid an investment banker for space in a high-rise? My bet is that the investment banker will pay more.

2014-05-18: LED lights can be tuned to the optimal wavelength for plant growth, lowering excess heat. 22h of light / day halves the time to maturity, and the indoor environment avoids pests and bad weather. This is probably the future of our agriculture. It allows to bring fresh produce into cities and lowers the huge footprint agriculture has on the planet. we lost 3x the size of the us since 1700 due to depleted soil, and agriculture is the #2 greenhouse factor.
2016-06-09: Newark may have better economics than Manhattan

Newark, NJ-based AeroFarms, the largest vertical farm in the world, employs aeroponics and LED lights to grow indoors all year round. Aside from aeroponics using 95% less water than soil farming and zero pesticides, we are able to grow locally, cutting out a very complex supply chain and enhancing shelf life versus products typically grown in California. We’re 75% more productive annually than the average farm because we bypass the complexity of it.

2017-01-09: It’s time to replace most agriculture around the world with this. Traditional agriculture has a huge water / co2 footprint, uses up a lot of land, and food is grown far away from where it is consumed. This uses 10% of the water.

Ed Harwood’s original prototype mini-farm still produces crops 6x every school year. The invention sits in a corner of the cafeteria by the round lunch tables and the molded black plastic cafeteria chairs, an improbable-looking teaching tool. Examining it, you feel a mystified wonder, and perhaps a slight misgiving about the inventor’s soundness of mind, remembering what happened to Wile E. Coyote. For concentrated ingenuity and handcrafted uniqueness, its closest simile is the Wright brothers’ first biplane, the Flyer, now on display in the National Air and Space Museum, in Washington. Like the Flyer, and like many other great inventions, Harwood’s prototype is also an objet d’art. Its dimensions are 1.5m wide by 3.6m long by 2m high. Essentially, it consists of 2 horizontal trays of thick plastic, both 25cm deep, 1 above the other, suspended in a strong but minimal framework of aluminum. Below the trays, at floor level, a plastic tank holds 1000 liters of water. The cloth is attached to the frame by snaps. On small pipes running along the inside bottom of the tray, Harwood’s special nozzles emit a constant, sputtering spray of water at a downward angle. The spray hits the bottom of the tray and bounces up, and some of it becomes the mist that nourishes the roots growing through the cloths. Eventually, most of the water drains down and returns to the tank to be reused.

2017-05-03: Different types of vertical farming

There are a lot of ways to farm indoors and below are 3 different soilless processes. Done properly at various scales, they’re as effective as at growing crops in skyscrapers as they are in studio apartments:

Hydroponics

One of the oldest and most common methods of vertical farming, hydroponics includes growing plants without soil and in a water solvent containing mineral nutrients. The simplest hydroponic method (called the floating raft system) suspends the plants in soilless raft like a polystyrene sheet and lets the roots hang to absorb the oxygen-aerated solution. Another common method is the nutrient film technique, which is popular for growing lettuce. Here, a stream of the nutrient-dissolved solution is pumped into an angled channel, typically a plastic pipe, containing the plants. This runs past the plants’ root mat and can then be recirculated for continuous use. New York’s Gotham Greens and Square Roots use hydroponics.

Aeroponics

It’s no surprise that NASA has been backing research on aeroponic growth for the past 20 years as it’s free-floating-roots aesthetic is typically used in futuristic scifi movies. With aeroponics, the dangling roots absorb a fine mist comprised of an atomized version of the nutrient solution sprayed directly onto the roots by a pump. Although aeroponics enables plants to grow much more quickly than hydroponics, it requires more solution and therefore is more costly. Newark’s Aerofarms uses aeroponics.

Aquaponics

Like hydroponic systems, an aquaponic system contains a soil-free plant bed suspended over a body of water containing nutrients necessary for plant growth. But within the body of water is a population of fish (typically herbivores) that produce waste that function as fertilizer for the plants. In turn, the plants help purify the water to make the water suitable for the fish.

Given that a balance must be achieved to ensure the system of both life forms, aquaponics requires greater attention than hydroponics or aeroponics although filtration and aeration systems can help manage these complications. Furthermore, the types of plants one can grow are much more limited as the necessary plant nutrients must be compatible with those necessary for the fish. Brooklyn’s Edenworks and Oko Farms use aquaponics.

2018-06-01: The economics are starting to work, even in NYC

Gotham Greens’ prices are competitive with local and organic lettuce brands, about $3.99 for a 4.5-ounce container. Still, the company is a small-scale producer vying for consumers faced with a financial decision: pay the price for local organic, save 50 cents by purchasing a well-known organic brand, or a whole $ for conventional greens from California or Arizona. “There is always a consumer who will pay for value. Gotham may be in a good position because they’ve got loyal regional markets, but replacing lower-cost producers will be tough.”

2021-08-27: Farmscrapers

Carlo Ratti Associati (CRA) has unveiled a project dubbed “the world’s first farmscraper,” to be built in Shenzhen, China. The 218-meter-high, 51-story Jian Mu Tower will contain a large-scale farm system with the ability to produce crops to feed 40k people per year, as well as offices, a supermarket, and a food court.

2023-07-29: Hydroponics comes to subsistence farming. Hardware costs are still too high and it needs a water solution for arid climates.

And the solution is replicable beyond India. Pastoralism is practiced in arid and semi-arid climates across South Asia, East Asia and Africa. Kamath has received inquiries from Bangladesh to Nepal, Bhutan to Kenya. “Many times I get asked how many fodder stations can be set up. Scaling up is very hard for hardware-based solutions”.

Perhaps the biggest challenge is the up-front cost –– setting up a hydroponic station costs $30k. “It takes 3 years to break even”. Even though Bahula invested in setting up the station on Palu’s land, she has to pay $20 each week to arrange water for irrigation, which is delivered by truck. “While the cost of the water is recovered from fodder sales, we do not make enough to cover labor costs”.

2023-09-16: The economics remain terrible

Vertical farming writ large is having a tough time. AeroFarms entered bankruptcy in July and Kentucky-based AppHarvest filed a notice of default in June. IronOx laid off staff at the end of last year. Dreyfus acknowledges the difficulties the industry is facing, but compares vertical farming’s progress to the early and much less profitable days of the solar industry, which once routinely lost money but has become more stable. “So many crops that were not profitable are going to become profitable” as more time is spent perfecting the technology and understanding the business.

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