Vertical farms may end food scarcity
By Arthur Max |
April 16, 2011, Saturday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
FARMING is moving indoors, where the sun never shines, where rainfall is irrelevant and where the climate is always right.
The perfect crop field could be inside a windowless building with meticulously controlled light, temperature, humidity, air quality and nutrition. It could be in a New York high-rise, a Siberian bunker, or a complex in the Saudi desert.
Advocates say this, or something like it, may be an answer to the world's food problems.
"In order to keep a planet that's worth living on, we have to change our methods," says Gertjan Meeuws, of PlantLab, a private research company.
The world already is having trouble feeding itself. Half the people on Earth live in cities, and nearly half of those - about 3 billion - are hungry or malnourished. Food prices, currently soaring, are buffeted by droughts, floods and the cost of energy required to plant, fertilize, harvest and transport it.
Climate change makes long-term crop planning uncertain. Farmers around the world already are draining available water. And the world is getting more crowded: by mid-century, the global population will grow from 6.8 billion to 9 billion, the UN predicts.
To feed so many people may require expanding farmland at the expense of forests and wilderness, or finding ways to radically increase crop yields.
Meeuws and three other Dutch bioengineers have taken the concept of a greenhouse a step further, growing vegetables, herbs and house plants in enclosed and regulated environments where even natural light is excluded.
In their research station, strawberries, yellow peppers, basil and banana plants take on an eerie pink glow under red and blue bulbs of Light-Emitting Diodes, or LEDs. Water trickles into pans when needed, excess is recycled, and temperature is constant. Lights go on and off, simulating day and night, but according to the rhythm of the plant - which may be better at shorter cycles than 24 hours - rather than Earth's rotation.
In a larger "climate chamber" a few miles away, a nursery is nurturing cuttings of fittonia, a colorful house plant, in two layers of 70 square meters each. Blasts of mist keep the room humid, and the temperature is similar to the plants' native South America. After the cuttings take root - the most sensitive stage in the growing process - they are wheeled into a greenhouse and the chamber is again used for rooting. The process cuts the time to grow a mature plant to six weeks from 12 or more.
The Dutch researchers say they plan to build a commercial-sized building of 1,300 square meters, with four levels of vegetation by the end of this year. Then they envision growing vegetables next to shopping malls, supermarkets or other food retailers.
Sunlight
Meeuws says a building of 100 square meters and 14 layers of plants could provide a daily diet of 200 grams of fresh fruit and vegetables to the entire population of Den Bosch, about 140,000 people.
The idea is not to grow foods needing much space, like corn. "We are looking at the pyramid top where we have high value and low volume," he says.
Sunlight is not only unnecessary but can be harmful, says Meeuws. Plants need only specific wavelengths of light to grow, but in nature they must adapt to the full range of light as a matter of survival. When light and other natural elements are manipulated, the plants become more efficient, using less energy to grow.
"Nature is good, but too much nature is killing," says Meeuws, standing in a steaming cubicle amid racks of his "happy plants."
For more than a decade the four researchers have been tinkering with combinations of light, soil and temperature on a variety of plants, and now say their growth rate is three times faster than under greenhouse conditions.
They use no pesticides, and about 90 percent less water than outdoors agriculture. While LED bulbs are expensive, the cost is steadily dropping.
The perfect crop field could be inside a windowless building with meticulously controlled light, temperature, humidity, air quality and nutrition. It could be in a New York high-rise, a Siberian bunker, or a complex in the Saudi desert.
Advocates say this, or something like it, may be an answer to the world's food problems.
"In order to keep a planet that's worth living on, we have to change our methods," says Gertjan Meeuws, of PlantLab, a private research company.
The world already is having trouble feeding itself. Half the people on Earth live in cities, and nearly half of those - about 3 billion - are hungry or malnourished. Food prices, currently soaring, are buffeted by droughts, floods and the cost of energy required to plant, fertilize, harvest and transport it.
Climate change makes long-term crop planning uncertain. Farmers around the world already are draining available water. And the world is getting more crowded: by mid-century, the global population will grow from 6.8 billion to 9 billion, the UN predicts.
To feed so many people may require expanding farmland at the expense of forests and wilderness, or finding ways to radically increase crop yields.
Meeuws and three other Dutch bioengineers have taken the concept of a greenhouse a step further, growing vegetables, herbs and house plants in enclosed and regulated environments where even natural light is excluded.
In their research station, strawberries, yellow peppers, basil and banana plants take on an eerie pink glow under red and blue bulbs of Light-Emitting Diodes, or LEDs. Water trickles into pans when needed, excess is recycled, and temperature is constant. Lights go on and off, simulating day and night, but according to the rhythm of the plant - which may be better at shorter cycles than 24 hours - rather than Earth's rotation.
In a larger "climate chamber" a few miles away, a nursery is nurturing cuttings of fittonia, a colorful house plant, in two layers of 70 square meters each. Blasts of mist keep the room humid, and the temperature is similar to the plants' native South America. After the cuttings take root - the most sensitive stage in the growing process - they are wheeled into a greenhouse and the chamber is again used for rooting. The process cuts the time to grow a mature plant to six weeks from 12 or more.
The Dutch researchers say they plan to build a commercial-sized building of 1,300 square meters, with four levels of vegetation by the end of this year. Then they envision growing vegetables next to shopping malls, supermarkets or other food retailers.
Sunlight
Meeuws says a building of 100 square meters and 14 layers of plants could provide a daily diet of 200 grams of fresh fruit and vegetables to the entire population of Den Bosch, about 140,000 people.
The idea is not to grow foods needing much space, like corn. "We are looking at the pyramid top where we have high value and low volume," he says.
Sunlight is not only unnecessary but can be harmful, says Meeuws. Plants need only specific wavelengths of light to grow, but in nature they must adapt to the full range of light as a matter of survival. When light and other natural elements are manipulated, the plants become more efficient, using less energy to grow.
"Nature is good, but too much nature is killing," says Meeuws, standing in a steaming cubicle amid racks of his "happy plants."
For more than a decade the four researchers have been tinkering with combinations of light, soil and temperature on a variety of plants, and now say their growth rate is three times faster than under greenhouse conditions.
They use no pesticides, and about 90 percent less water than outdoors agriculture. While LED bulbs are expensive, the cost is steadily dropping.
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