Sharing Sustainability Innovation

A new concept that has created quite a lot of buzz lately is “vertical farming“, i e indoor farming in high rise bildings with many floors.  In essence, vertical farming addresses a few of the limitations of traditional farming;

• Limited land
  Vertical farming is a way of addressing the needs for agricultural land with continued growth of global population. Of course, it may also be a way to create artifical land with extremely high fertility for farming.
• Unstable climate and seasonal changes
  Natural land has different limitations in different regions. In warm regions, it may be too warm, in cold too cold. Droughts, floods, storms etc make the possible yield in different areas limited. An artificial, very stable climate may overcome all these limitations.
• Water use
  Water is a limited resource and incerasingly so around the world. Vertical farming will have extremely efficient water systems where no water is “lost”.
• Urban areas
  The globe is increasingly urban, and the distance from the urban areas to surrounding agricultural land is increasing. Vertical farming may be a way of integrating urbaninsm with agriculture in an efficient way.

Sure. There may be disadvantages too. What are the real costs of such an advanced system for agriculture? What about the need for energy? How is sufficient sunlight entering the building? This is still at an early stage, but many teams around the world are looking at the technological solutions.

And what about lying in the hay wagon with your love?