equivalent of “three to five acres of farmland”,
using 97% less water through water recapture
and harvesting the evaporated water through
the air conditioning. As of December 2017,
the TerraFarm system was in commercial
operation.
Interesting points to consider are that plants
can exploit light that varies in intensity through
the day. Controlling light governs the growth
cycle of the plant. e.g., infrared LEDs can
mimic 5 minutes of sunset, stimulating some
plants to begin flowering.
Technology
Lighting engineers at Philips have
demonstrated LEDs with 68 per cent efficiency.
Energy costs can hence be reduced because
full-spectrum white light is not required.
Instead, red and blue or purple light can be
generated with less electricity.
A single container used for vertical
gardening. Note the extended roof which
allows natural lighting. Eugene Kim Urban Farmers
Box https://www.flickr.com/photos/eekim/6144496634
emerged in 1999 at Columbia University and
promotes the mass cultivation of plant life for
commercial purposes in skyscrapers.
Stackable shipping containers
Several companies have developed stacking
recycled shipping containers in urban settings
such as:
• The creation of complete off-grid container
systems.
• “Leafy green machine systems” a complete
farm-to-table system outfitted with vertical
hydroponics, LED lighting and intuitive
climate controls built within a 12 m × 2.4 m
shipping container.
• Podponics built a vertical farm in Atlanta
consisting of over 100 stacked “growpods”
while a similar farm is under construction in
Oman.
• Some offer a proprietary system of 40-
foot shipping containers, which include
computer vision integrated with an artificial
neural network to monitor the plants
remotely .
It is claimed that the TerraFarm system “has
achieved cost parity with traditional, outdoor
farming” with each unit producing the
AgriKultuur |AgriCulture
History
In 1915, American geologist Gilbert Ellis Bailey
used the concept of tall multi-story buildings
for indoor cultivation One of the earliest
drawings of a tall building that cultivates food
was published in Life Magazine in 1909. The
reproduced drawings feature vertically stacked
homesteads set amidst a farming landscape.
Dickson Despommier is a professor
of environmental health sciences and
microbiology. He reopened the topic of VF
in 1999 with graduate students in a medical
ecology class. He speculated that a 30-floor
farm on one city block could provide food for
50,000 people including vegetables, fruit, eggs
and meat, explaining that hydroponic crops
could be grown on upper floors; while the
lower floors would be suited for chickens and
fish that eat plant waste.
Although much of Despommier’s suggestions
have been challenged from an environmental
science and engineering point of view,
Despommier successfully popularized
his assertion that food production can
be transformed. Critics claimed that the
additional energy needed for artificial lighting,
heating and other operations would outweigh
the benefit of the building’s proximity to the
areas of consumption.
Despommier originally challenged his class
to feed the entire population of Manhattan
(about 2,000,000 people) using only 5 hectares
(13 acres) of rooftop gardens. The class
calculated that rooftop gardening methods
could feed only 2 percent of the population.
Unsatisfied with the results, Despommier
made an off-the-cuff suggestion of growing
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