4 ms·

This was pointed out in the previous thread, but I'd like to remind people that the photos of gorgeous, 100-story spires in the heart of Manhattan are pure pipe

This was pointed out in the previous thread, but I'd like to remind people that the photos of gorgeous, 100-story spires in the heart of Manhattan are pure pipe dreams by architects and designers. However, if you look at vertical farming as a series of low-rise greenhouse warehouses ringing a city, like a lightly stacked up Thanet Earth, then I think there's a strong case for them. http://www.thanetearth.com/ http://www.thanetearth.com/

Retric 16y ago
The only way vertical farming becomes reasonable is with cheap energy, and high food costs. Cattle actually come close to this because they don't need sunlight to grow so you can have multi story feed fed cattle farms. However, it's still cheaper to use more land than to build multi story cattle farms.
- michaelchisari 16y ago
  Thanet Earth has already shown that indoor agriculture is competitive, and as we run out of arable land, and as shipping costs increase, it becomes more so.
  - Retric 16y ago
    Greenhouses are competitive. Greenhouses with supplemental lighting can be competitive when growing specific plants. Multi story agriculture is only going to take off after most Greenhouses use supplemental lighting.
- elblanco 16y ago
  > The only way vertical farming becomes reasonable is with cheap energy, and high food costs I'd argue it'd only become tenable with high land costs. The cheaper energy is, the less sense vertical farming becomes since it makes the transport costs from far away, cheap-land areas even lower. If real-estate in and out of a city are roughly the same (no cheap pasture land!), then the farm can be more or less any location, that includes in a city. But for that to happen, would probably imply some kind of Judge Dredd continent swallowing city first.
  - joe_the_user 16y ago
    Extremely high energy costs combined with low building costs might also make this feasible. The scenario for this would be if the green houses grew themselves... which isn't utterly unimaginable. Consider a red-wood sized tree/vine that gave high-protein fruit. Perhaps it would use just a bit of human-built scaffolding.
- rbranson 16y ago
  The bottom line is that it's a cute futuristic fantasy. We need to get PEOPLE off of the farm land and into vertical buildings FIRST. There are millions of acres of arable land totally wasted by people's unused front lawns and abandoned parking lots. We have to protect this precious land and not just let developers sprawl all over it in the name of cheap, discardable pseudo-communities.
  - anamax 16y ago
    > We need to get PEOPLE off of the farm land and into vertical buildings FIRST. There are millions of acres of arable land totally wasted by people's unused front lawns and abandoned parking lots. We have to protect this precious land and not just let developers sprawl all over it in the name of cheap, discardable pseudo-communities. Why? While suburbia may offend you, replacing suburbia with hive-living wouldn't significantly increase the amount of arable land in use. The places that have food shortages have them because of bad governance, which hive-living won't fix.
    - michaelchisari 16y ago
      The ecological benefits of urban density are much greater than you give it credit for. And I think a characterization of "hive-living" doesn't nearly do justice to the cultural, social, and economic benefits of a vibrant city.
      - anamax 16y ago
        > The ecological benefits of urban density are much greater than you give it credit for. And you know this, how? Let me suggest that you probably overstate the costs of suburbia. > And I think a characterization of "hive-living" doesn't nearly do justice to the cultural, social, and economic benefits of a vibrant city. You're assuming that everyone values the things that you do in much the same way. That may be true of the other folks in your tribe, but extrapolating universality from that demonstrates my point.
        16y ago
- joe_the_user 16y ago
  The only way cattle are "eco-friendly" is in the cattle+marginal land equation. Even modern feedlots only takes cattle after they've spent a while grazing and quality of the resulting meat has been criticized. Cattle that spent all of it's life indoors could plausibly have many more problems than one see for today's meat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedlot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedlot

Retric 16y ago

The only way vertical farming becomes reasonable is with cheap energy, and high food costs. Cattle actually come close to this because they don't need sunlight to grow so you can have multi story feed fed cattle farms. However, it's still cheaper to use more land than to build multi story cattle farms.

michaelchisari 16y ago
Thanet Earth has already shown that indoor agriculture is competitive, and as we run out of arable land, and as shipping costs increase, it becomes more so.
- Retric 16y ago
  Greenhouses are competitive. Greenhouses with supplemental lighting can be competitive when growing specific plants. Multi story agriculture is only going to take off after most Greenhouses use supplemental lighting.
elblanco 16y ago
> The only way vertical farming becomes reasonable is with cheap energy, and high food costs I'd argue it'd only become tenable with high land costs. The cheaper energy is, the less sense vertical farming becomes since it makes the transport costs from far away, cheap-land areas even lower. If real-estate in and out of a city are roughly the same (no cheap pasture land!), then the farm can be more or less any location, that includes in a city. But for that to happen, would probably imply some kind of Judge Dredd continent swallowing city first.
- joe_the_user 16y ago
  Extremely high energy costs combined with low building costs might also make this feasible. The scenario for this would be if the green houses grew themselves... which isn't utterly unimaginable. Consider a red-wood sized tree/vine that gave high-protein fruit. Perhaps it would use just a bit of human-built scaffolding.
rbranson 16y ago
The bottom line is that it's a cute futuristic fantasy. We need to get PEOPLE off of the farm land and into vertical buildings FIRST. There are millions of acres of arable land totally wasted by people's unused front lawns and abandoned parking lots. We have to protect this precious land and not just let developers sprawl all over it in the name of cheap, discardable pseudo-communities.
- anamax 16y ago
  > We need to get PEOPLE off of the farm land and into vertical buildings FIRST. There are millions of acres of arable land totally wasted by people's unused front lawns and abandoned parking lots. We have to protect this precious land and not just let developers sprawl all over it in the name of cheap, discardable pseudo-communities. Why? While suburbia may offend you, replacing suburbia with hive-living wouldn't significantly increase the amount of arable land in use. The places that have food shortages have them because of bad governance, which hive-living won't fix.
  - michaelchisari 16y ago
    The ecological benefits of urban density are much greater than you give it credit for. And I think a characterization of "hive-living" doesn't nearly do justice to the cultural, social, and economic benefits of a vibrant city.
    - anamax 16y ago
      > The ecological benefits of urban density are much greater than you give it credit for. And you know this, how? Let me suggest that you probably overstate the costs of suburbia. > And I think a characterization of "hive-living" doesn't nearly do justice to the cultural, social, and economic benefits of a vibrant city. You're assuming that everyone values the things that you do in much the same way. That may be true of the other folks in your tribe, but extrapolating universality from that demonstrates my point.
      - 16y ago
joe_the_user 16y ago
The only way cattle are "eco-friendly" is in the cattle+marginal land equation. Even modern feedlots only takes cattle after they've spent a while grazing and quality of the resulting meat has been criticized. Cattle that spent all of it's life indoors could plausibly have many more problems than one see for today's meat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedlot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedlot