6 ms·

Indoor farming looks pretty promising, but we shouldn't be building indoor farms in the middle of dense cities. If you live in a high-cost city, the best thing

Indoor farming looks pretty promising, but we shouldn't be building indoor farms in the middle of dense cities. If you live in a high-cost city, the best thing to grow in your backyard from an environmental standpoint is probably an ADU (backyard cottage for someone to live in), and the best thing to grow in your spare bedroom is probably a roommate. Displacing walking-distance housing to do farming is a huge loser from a climate perspective. Of course there is more to life than emitting as little CO2 as possible, but to the extent that urban farming has environmental benefits, it is in exploiting niches caused by shitty land use decisions in the past and present. (By way of illustration, the average car commuting 20 miles each way every weekday for a year emits 4.6 metric tons of CO2, so according to the article you could grow and transport something like four and a half tons of greens for the same carbon footprint. Maybe I'm weird but that's a lot more than I go through in a year.)

jessaustin 8y ago
Lots of cities have land that previously saw industrial use and is essentially unused at the moment. Sure, it might be better if people lived there but maybe they don't want to.
- ethbro 8y ago
  Minor caveat: make sure to perform soil testing on post-industrial soil, if you're using it
jillesvangurp 8y ago
Depends, people seem to appreciate being surrounded by green stuff for esthetic reasons. And there also positive side effects on air quality. You can actually improve air quality in a lot of buildings simply by doing some indoor/vertical farming. IMHO it would improve most offices I've been in. Also more green outdoors, would probably be not a bad idea in many cities. I was debating this with a friend some time ago while looking at the blank wall of an apartment across his street. Unused vertical space blasted by the sun most of the day. It gets hot indoor because of that. A layer of green would definitely help. Add water and nutrients and you have a farm waiting to happen. Also, it might look pretty and provide some space for birds and other critters. The point being here is that this is not a zero sum game; there are many benefits to growing stuff other than producing food. A lot of the vegetables grown in Dutch greenhouses mentioned in the article are actually exported; though other countries are starting to do the same now. This area here is the most well known and largest greenhouse area in the Netherlands (and probably world wide). It's comparatively tiny (about 100 square KM). https://www.google.com/maps/@51.986133,4.233423,25389m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@51.986133,4.233423,25389m/data=... https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA21986 https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA21986 The reason greenhouses are used there is because they produce way more per square meter than traditional farms can. That and access to cheap gas decades ago caused a boom in greenhouses to happen. Currently many of these greenhouses are switching from gas to clean energy. Over the last 4-5 decades, local farmers have optimized their production and they now run very efficiently. The Netherlands is (by far) the largest exporter of tomatoes world wide. Most of those are grown in these and similar facilities as well as many other crops (i.e. this is not dedicated to just tomatoes). It's a vastly more efficient way to use land. The point here is that it doesn't take much space to feed a city.
- frankus 8y ago
  Yes, to be fair, there probably are some exploitable niches unrelated to crappy land use (which I should point out is much more common in the parts of the US that co-evolved with the automobile). For example, fresh herbs cost a fortune in grocery stores here, and are festooned with single-use plastic packaging, and come in far larger quantities than one can reasonably use before they go bad. So it makes tons of sense to have a little herb garden in your house or yard, especially if you can grow things that are adapted to your local climate (e.g. my rosemary bush is taller than I am). But I think the optimal scale inside of expensive cities is probably closer to "houseplants that you can eat" rather than an urban farm.

jessaustin 8y ago

Lots of cities have land that previously saw industrial use and is essentially unused at the moment. Sure, it might be better if people lived there but maybe they don't want to.

ethbro 8y ago
Minor caveat: make sure to perform soil testing on post-industrial soil, if you're using it

jillesvangurp 8y ago

Depends, people seem to appreciate being surrounded by green stuff for esthetic reasons. And there also positive side effects on air quality. You can actually improve air quality in a lot of buildings simply by doing some indoor/vertical farming. IMHO it would improve most offices I've been in. Also more green outdoors, would probably be not a bad idea in many cities. I was debating this with a friend some time ago while looking at the blank wall of an apartment across his street. Unused vertical space blasted by the sun most of the day. It gets hot indoor because of that. A layer of green would definitely help. Add water and nutrients and you have a farm waiting to happen. Also, it might look pretty and provide some space for birds and other critters. The point being here is that this is not a zero sum game; there are many benefits to growing stuff other than producing food. A lot of the vegetables grown in Dutch greenhouses mentioned in the article are actually exported; though other countries are starting to do the same now. This area here is the most well known and largest greenhouse area in the Netherlands (and probably world wide). It's comparatively tiny (about 100 square KM). https://www.google.com/maps/@51.986133,4.233423,25389m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@51.986133,4.233423,25389m/data=... https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA21986 https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA21986 The reason greenhouses are used there is because they produce way more per square meter than traditional farms can. That and access to cheap gas decades ago caused a boom in greenhouses to happen. Currently many of these greenhouses are switching from gas to clean energy. Over the last 4-5 decades, local farmers have optimized their production and they now run very efficiently. The Netherlands is (by far) the largest exporter of tomatoes world wide. Most of those are grown in these and similar facilities as well as many other crops (i.e. this is not dedicated to just tomatoes). It's a vastly more efficient way to use land. The point here is that it doesn't take much space to feed a city.

frankus 8y ago
Yes, to be fair, there probably are some exploitable niches unrelated to crappy land use (which I should point out is much more common in the parts of the US that co-evolved with the automobile). For example, fresh herbs cost a fortune in grocery stores here, and are festooned with single-use plastic packaging, and come in far larger quantities than one can reasonably use before they go bad. So it makes tons of sense to have a little herb garden in your house or yard, especially if you can grow things that are adapted to your local climate (e.g. my rosemary bush is taller than I am). But I think the optimal scale inside of expensive cities is probably closer to "houseplants that you can eat" rather than an urban farm.