Guess Who Leads The Future Of Food? Surprise!

reply to post by igloo


Yes indeed the hydroponic/aquaponic farming solutions are pretty dang wonderful, I've been contemplating starting a small setup for Salmon and other kinds of fish, but haven't really had the time.

~Tenth

Phage
reply to post by tothetenthpower

 

It's a great concept. If all you need to survive is lettuce.

But seriously, on an individual basis, can everyone provide all of their nutritional needs by this method? The image you posted shows a greenhouse, not a "green tower" that you can set up on the balcony of your apartment. (No, I don't live in an apartment but a lot of people do).

Can a system like this provide the megatons of food required to feed millions?

edit on 2/1/2014 by Phage because: (no reason given)

Yes, systems like this can provide megatons of food.

40 tons on 3 acres - enough to feed 10,000 people for a year:

40 tons of food a year from those 3 acres.

WA: You could quantify it in a number of different ways. We grow enough food there to feed about 10,000 people in a very intense and integrated food system.

Oh, and it's done in the middle of a city...

He grows food in ways that few have seen before -- and he grows it sustainably. Allen’s 3-acre farm sits in the poorest part of Milwaukee and now feeds 10,000 people a year.

link

reply to post by Phage


I've managed to get Moro blood orange seedlings through a winter outside, without a greenhouse, so maybe there's hope down the road for local food. They made it through some frost and I plan on doing more each year till I have a good group. It's been an extremely mild year here on Vancouver island but I keep the faith

reply to post by tothetenthpower


Would love to hear about it if you ever get round to it!

reply to post by igloo

The proof is in the fruiting.
It's too easy in the tropics. I'm spoiled. Gotta fight the damned plants back or they take over.
Bananas anyone? Mangoes? Limes?

reply to post by Phage


I've grown dragon fruit, watermelon and mangos in my greenhouse 3 years running with the proper LED lightning conditions.

Basically it thinks it's June to September in my greenhouse all year round lol

~Tenth

Maybe the Amish really want to "get isolated" and are gearing up for a life on Mars.


" Try running away to the big city now kids ".

reply to post by Phage


Agreed. Daylight hours would have to be extended with lighting.

reply to post by pianopraze

40 tons on 3 acres

Ok.
40 tons = 0.00004 megatons
So to produce 1 megaton with that system you would need 75,000 acres. Right? Want to check my math for me?

reply to post by Phage


That's per growing cycle though Phage. So hypothetically if you could grow food at 1/3 the rate that traditional farming can ( which you can with these systems if they are set up correctly) then you could hypothetically get the 40 Tons of food every 2 or 3 months..

Not the 1 mega tone of course, but these aren't supposed to be large scale anyway.

The whole point is to have many different providers at the local level.

~Tenth

reply to post by tothetenthpower


This is an excellent thread Tenth! Cheers.
I actually seen a small display of this in a grocery store here in Chiang Rai last week.
It was three different varieties of lettuce, but it blew me away!
I never expected to see hydroponics here. Very cool!

One should be able to grow various herbs and other "leafy greens" if lacking space I would think.
A small area in our back yard has been set aside for growing some veggies and growing vertical makes so much more sense.

I'm off to check out your links.
Cheers from here.
Aft

reply to post by tothetenthpower

It still takes 75,000 acres to produce that megaton right (assuming it scales linearly)? While that figure is better than what agribusiness can do it still requires a pretty enormous amount of land to feed the nation (much less those that are not able to do so on their own). Start adding the logistics of coordinating marketing and distribution to the costs and what do you get? Does it really work?

It works on paper at the most basic level but in the real world I'm not so sure.

reply to post by Phage

Start adding the logistics of coordinating marketing and distribution to the costs and what where do you get?

I think the problem is that you're still thinking LARGE SCALE. Which this isn't supposed to be.

This works at the community level. Where you spend for example a few million dollars for a 10 acre indoor growing space which could feed a million people year round.

Create this situation and scale it locally, even in big cities and the need to coordinate distribution no longer exists.

~Tenth

reply to post by tothetenthpower

This works at the community level.

Does it? Is the scaling linear?
Is a city of 5 million a "community"?
How does the energy requirements of all those LEDs (enough to light all those acres) scale?

Does it really even work "on paper?"

reply to post by Phage


It certainly does scale yes.

So in my community of just under 300K, one facility would be enough, because the city is generally small and travel isn't any kind of problem for most people.

Toronto for example, could not sustain just one facility, so you'd need of course a dozen or so different locations spread out across the various sections of the Greater Toronto Area to be effective.

This would be a community building aspect as well. I have a whole business plan for a non-profit type grocery store using this kind of setup.

The energy requirements aren't even that high, considering LED's don't use nearly as much wattage as standard does.

~Tenth

I liked this one for its simplicity. Low Tech

It is very cheap.

One thing I learned many years ago when using smaller pots was that picking the fruit or vegetable was often a waste. As an example, I would take a lettuce into the kitchen and put it in a window ledge. Keep rotating it with others very few days. When you want lettuce, you pick off leaves, you don't pull (Kill) the whole plant. Half a dozen plants can keep you supplied for a very long time. There is also less spoilage.

What wavelength LEDs do you use.

P

reply to post by tothetenthpower

So in my community of just under 300K, one facility would be enough, because the city is generally small and travel isn't any kind of problem for most people.

That's a relatively small community (city). Who feeds New York? Los Angeles? Tokyo? All the developing regions of the world? Or don't they figure into it?
Honest questions here, really. I would like for it to work, I'm not convinced it can.

reply to post by Phage


This is what I'm saying Phage, it's not ONE person or one facility, it would need to be dozens or hundreds of them spread out all over these cities.

You scale up or down based on need requirements. Not only that, but factor in community programs like cooking/growing courses, organic meat market for local distributors on site, and let's say a freezing plant for all the fresh produce that doesn't get sold, and you have quite the operation on your hands.

The only reason it hasn't been done yet, is the cost of electricity. Because I will admit the energy costs are very high if you aren't going to spend a few million dollars setting up some kind of renewable sources.

I feed perhaps 100 or so people with what I produce in my greenhouse, without really needing to do much work other than upkeep.

If i ever fall into a large sum of money, creating the very first of these facilities is exactly what I would spend it on.

~Tenth

I don't think there are enough Amish to produce enough food to feed a large population, so yeah, this is something people should look into. Very feasible to do with artificial lighting.

I'll have to research this more.

reply to post by tothetenthpower

This is what I'm saying Phage, it's not ONE person or one facility, it would need to be dozens or hundreds of them spread out all over these cities.

I understand that. It is the required area, power, and water requirements that I wonder about. Maybe large scale, small scale farming can work. I'm not convinced. I would like to be convinced because it would help to resolve a lot of problems which are a direct result of a growing population.

Maybe if some real numbers (watts/gallons/person/year) could be produced. I know that's asking a lot and I'm not trying to shoot down the concept but that's just the way I tend to look at things.