The Vertical Farm

I read a recent article about an "internal" farm over in Europe and was hoping to find out more in this book. Unfortunately, all I got was a bit of Utopian Urban Justice. The author thinks that "vertical farms" will appear in blighted urban areas, providing abundant well-paying jobs, and driving up real estate values. Oh, and by the way, they will also help feed the world.

The vertical farms will also be architectural wonders (like the apple store on 5th avenue) and people will clamor for one in their neighborhood. They would provide high quality, tasty vegetables for the local neighborhood. The government would provide the seed money to get the research off the ground, but then they would magically appear. Since all pests are controlled, there will be no need for pesticides. They will save most of their water, and even be a depository for treated waste-water.

It is all find and dandy, except for a few major gaping holes:
1) Why would they chose to go in the middle of an urban area? These are in essence vegatable factories. The big suburban office parks seem like the logical locations. After all, those areas are cheaper, and provide for easier trucking.
2) Economies of scale. If a small 1-acre "21st-century greenhouse" can provide food for a neighborhood, why not make a huge monstrosity of a building? Then the produce can be trucked all around.
3) If these are all they are cracked up to be, entrepreneurs would be starting them up. Money is money. Oh they wont make money? Well, why bother? Since they are envisioned to be "totally organic" that should make it even easier to turn a profit.
4) Pest control is to be carried out by keeping the environment totally pure. But quality of the produce is to be enhanced by "stressing" them enough to produce enough taste and beneficial compounds. A few problems here. Can we really have a totally sterile environment? And do we want to? The issue of waste processing could also cause public concerns. "Outside" organic farmers could easily mount a smear campaign comparing "wholesome" outside produce to sterile produce grown with sewage.
5) Workers. Why are these expected to be nice jobs? Even if a vertical farm overcomes obstacles to create an urban farm, labor will be an issue. A conventional farm may get migrants working for a small fraction of what the urban workers would demand. The urban workers could more easily unionize and further drive up the labor cost. That's nice for them, but not so nice for the farm trying to compete with others. Could the system change? Sure. However, it will most likely be the established farms that finally decide the smaller transport costs and image can compensate for the extra urban labor costs.

As to the actual biological and chemical processes, this book doesn't have much to say. Waste can be treated. Water can saved. Solar power can be used to provide light to help "power" the plants. (Hmm, reductionism. Weren't we already supposed to have chemical vitamin compounds that eliminated the need for food?) The sterile environment and decontamination room keeps out pests. The devil is in the details. Unfortunately, the details are not this book's forte.