I've seen the future and it's vertical

[Cowabunga]

From BBC NEWS



Plenty, a San Francisco vertical farming start-up, has raised $200m (£154m) from big-name investors that include Japanese media giant SoftBank, Alphabet's Eric Schmidt and Amazon boss Jeff Bezos.

Plenty said it would use the money to expand in the US and abroad.

The firm, founded in 2013, has an indoor growing system that uses less space and water than traditional farms.

It plans to bring its first self-grown food to market this fall.

Snip

Plenty's growing system - kind of like a living wall - and control over the environment, allows for water to be recycled easily.

It also makes growing crops more efficient. The firm says it can produce up to 350 times more per square foot than traditional farms.

The firm is planning indoor farms on land of two to five acres - roughly the size of Home Depots or Walmarts. Mr Barnard said the food will be competitively priced, thanks in part to a shorter supply chain, and within reach of a range of incomes.

"We want to get nutrient-rich food into as many different budgets as possible," he said.

 

[Danllan]

That's going to be a hell of a grazing density for a decent herd of beasts, no matter how many floors they are on, and they'll sh*t on all the crops they don't eat or trample...

 

[yellowbelly]

Bring it on...........

....us sheep keepers have started practicing already

 

[Dead Rabbits]

Reckon it has its place, but have y'all been to this country? Talk about under and poor utilization of ground for growing food. We have acres and acres and acres of lawns here. Sections of parking lots and a standard cloverleaf interchange takes what, forty acres? This is without mentioning (shudder) suburbs, the most inefficient way to house humans ever contrived by man.

The low hanging fruit is not in creating artificial growing environments, it's in planning with rational thought, being less wasteful in our everyday lives and f**king up just a little bit less.

 

[marcusthehat]

However, I imagine it is aimed at salad crops, to feed the sandwich bar trade, to feed the urban multitudes that cannot even cut or butter their own bread.
Makes perfect sense to me, in a controlled environment, far fewer unpredictable losses & almost zero food miles
Specially if they use heat being dumped from data banks, AC or CHP systems to their advantage.
MTH

 

[foxbox]

Put that alongside "real" milk grown from yeast without the need for a cow and meat grown in the lab - food production in some parts of the world could look very different in 50 years time. From a purely consumer viewpoint the biggest risk I can see from this is putting food production in the hands of large multinationals; over production leading to suppressed prices could become a thing of the past and the repercussions of a manipulated food supply for financial gain is quite frightening.

 

[JD-Kid]

recall back in the mid 80's there was places in japan useing hydroponics growing salad type crops on buildings harvest and replant then keep them cycleing up the wall till next harvest
clever use
like fish farming in farm irragation ponds etc etc think smarter not work harder

 

[Campani]

Put that alongside "real" milk grown from yeast without the need for a cow and meat grown in the lab - food production in some parts of the world could look very different in 50 years time. From a purely consumer viewpoint the biggest risk I can see from this is putting food production in the hands of large multinationals; over production leading to suppressed prices could become a thing of the past and the repercussions of a manipulated food supply for financial gain is quite frightening.

Don't large multinationals such as Bayer and Monsanto already have a big hand in the worlds food production?

 

[KMA]

beat them to it, 20 strawb plants on the 'towers' with 10 tattis and a courgette plant underneath all growing very nicely thankyou

 

[foxbox]

Don't large multinationals such as Bayer and Monsanto already have a big hand in the worlds food production?

To an extent but they can't stop lots of growers making their own choices on what to grow, whether to grow or not to grow etc. Take it to the extreme; vertical farming is the main production method owned by large corporations. If you're the company producing food and you wish to maximise your profits you'd always ensure you didn't waste anything and controlled distribution carefully, in fact a slight shortage would work out very nicely thank you. Works well for Apple, Samsung etc.


The beauty of family farms is that none of us can work together; we each make our own decisions and take risks meaning a diverse food production and generally a great deal of honesty in the primary production process, as well as an over supply too. Nearly all of the major food scares (horsemeat), emissions scandals (VW) and the like come from corproate scale greed rather than cheating by someone at the primary production stage of a job. That could change if we're pushed out.

Right, on that cheery thought I'm off to brighten up a few more peoples day now .

 

[Gong Farmer]

As an agronomist with vertigo I can see the end of my career