Guess Who Leads The Future Of Food? Surprise!

reply to post by Phage

Maybe if some real numbers (watts/gallons/person/year) could be produced. I know that's asking a lot and I'm not trying to shoot down the concept but that's just the way I tend to look at things.

No no I get it Phage, you're a science guy and you need those #'s lol.

Let me see what I can find, I know there's a very similar facility that was built in Vancouver and I think one is being built in Ontario somewhere.

~Tenth

Here we go:

foodietours.ca...

There's a write up for it, I can't seem to find concrete stats though..

:/

~Tenth

reply to post by tothetenthpower

In a world where we are confronted with documentaries like Food Inc., which expose the intense corporatization of the food industry without a glimmer of optimism, this little parkade greenhouse shines like a beacon of hope.

Hope is good.

foodietours.ca...

reply to post by Phage


They claim a 21 day growing cycle, which is amazing.

They use vastly different lighting than I do however, I'm more of a Reds/Blues and purple kind of grower, but the end result is probably the same.

~Tenth

Phage
reply to post by pianopraze

 

40 tons on 3 acres

Ok.
40 tons = 0.00004 megatons
So to produce 1 megaton with that system you would need 75,000 acres. Right? Want to check my math for me?

edit on 2/1/2014 by Phage because: (no reason given)

I was going for the figurative, but if you want the literal then let's suppose we used these methods for farming by 2050.

We're supposedly going to need one billion tons of cereals and 200 million tons of meat by 2050.

Even if total demand for food and feed may indeed grow more slowly, just satisfying the expected food and feed demand will require a substantial increase of global food production of 70 percent by 2050, involving an additional quantity of nearly 1 billion tonnes of cereals and 200 million tons of meat. The background to this outlook will be discussed in the following section.

link

SO that would be:

1,200,000,000 tons of food divided by 40 tones per acre = 30,000,000 acres. There is 36,794,240,000 acres on earth. so it would take 0.000815345010523 percent of the world's space to feed the world in 2050.

Much much less than we're using now.

Not that it is likely we will convert to such efficient methods so soon, but... we could.

Heck, let's go real high tech and make them solar/hydro/wind powered and put them floating on the ocean in a high solar/wind efficient area with all the water/energy provided for free. The free energy could power the desalination for the water plus all the energy needed for growing.

Likely, no... but possible.

I farm about six acres in the state of Maine which has a pretty short growing season. The farm is only six acres on which 3 acres are used for cash crops and 3 are kept in cover crop. This rotates every two years. It is a certified organic farm. Of that land, 5928 sqft is covered by three greenhouses that are not heated. My average yield per acre is 10,000-15,000 lbs. I use lots of row covers to give my crops an edge whenever possible. It is now the middle of winter and I can still cut spinach and other greens that were planted this fall every other week which helps sell all of the storage crops which include carrots, parsnips, onions, garlic, shallots, and squash at the winter farmers markets. In addition to tillable acreage, I raise pigs in our wood lots which consist of mostly oak forest which provides a lot of extra protein in the form of acorns. I supplement the pigs with 3.5 lbs of additional grain to produce one pound of post butcher meat. So, I can not feed the world with my small farm but I can help feed my community at a rate of 5-7 tons of produce per acre per year or 15-21 tons of vegies total. in addition pork production is more like 1 ton per acre. This would be free range pork that is not confined to a 2X5 stall. I personally eat about a pound of meet a week so a years worth of pork could sustain me for 38.36 years or could sustain 38 people for a year. Not a whole lot when you look at the world but I live on a small island which really helps when you look at raising food for a small community.

www.huffingtonpost.com...

Phage
reply to post by tothetenthpower

 

It's a great concept. If all you need to survive is lettuce.

But seriously, on an individual basis, can everyone provide all of their nutritional needs by this method? The image you posted shows a greenhouse, not a "green tower" that you can set up on the balcony of your apartment. (No, I don't live in an apartment but a lot of people do).

Can a system like this provide the megatons of food required to feed millions?

edit on 2/1/2014 by Phage because: (no reason given)

Yes, but only where it is legal to grow hemp. Hemp provides a plant source of complete protein.

reply to post by tothetenthpower


Very nice and clean setup! I imagine using just sunlight through the ceiling plates most of the time. We developed a robotic horizontal bed that could produce about 1500 plants like romaine lettuce in 16 to 17 days. It had a not bad footprint of 20''x10'x10' but I reduced that to 6' high. They were stackable industrial hydroponic units. I can post pictures of the original unit if anyone needs it. Our biggest problem was the lighting. Originally I had 29kw of HP Sodium water cooled (using a kids pool on the roof as our cooling tower). Later in the project I converted to about 3kw of high power LED lights using 445nm (6%), 665nm (82%) and 710nm (12%) and got the grow time down to 11 days. We grew romaine, peppers, cherry tomatoes, basil and other easily vertically supportable crops but we were looking at a "controlled substance" for the government. We did do some zero-gravity aeroponics but it didn't go past the experimentation phase using some specialized aspirators I designed.

It's interesting work, half of it is in the technology and the other half is in what you feed them to provide further growth acceleration.

Cheers - Dave

Vertical is wonderful and have investigated this for a while. But for all your needs, aquaponics. It doesnt take much to feed a neighborhood.

www.abovetopsecret.com...
modernfarmer.com...
Another concept that seems to work

At the Farmery, shipping, packing, and handling are eliminated in favor of right here, right now, IRL cultivation. In a series of stacked shipping containers, vertical growing panels and hydroponic tech and come together to form a fully immersive shopping experience. The various climate-controlled areas are equipped to support baby greens — a “high value crop,” Greene says — as well as lettuces, strawberries, dwarf chili peppers, and herbs, which customers can select themselves, along with custom shiitake, oyster, and seasonal mushroom containers. Fostering this intimate relationship with edibles will only serve to enhance the experience, while increasing understanding of how things grow. He anticipates half of the sales will come from this “u-pick” set-up, with the rest from local, artisanal goods stocked on-site — a nice way to craft a sense of community in the middle of a bustling metropolis.

Phage
reply to post by tothetenthpower

 

It's a great concept. If all you need to survive is lettuce.

But seriously, on an individual basis, can everyone provide all of their nutritional needs by this method? The image you posted shows a greenhouse, not a "green tower" that you can set up on the balcony of your apartment. (No, I don't live in an apartment but a lot of people do).

Can a system like this provide the megatons of food required to feed millions?

edit on 2/1/2014 by Phage because: (no reason given)

The concept of greenhousing crops (climate controlled greenhouses) and hydroponics can be scaled to any size. The only difference between it and outdoor farming is that you are able to recycle water that would otherwise be lost through evaporation.

That can be extended to growing carrots, tomatos, green peas, grapes, and just about anything else.

Europe actually had to sign trade agreements to not use this technology as it was depriving developing world countries of their cash-crop revenue.

Ah, the Amish. If you're an animal lover, or more specifically a dog lover, check out their puppy mill practices. Truly a very despicable and shrewd people indeed. They are particularly brutal in Ohio. I've sworn them off after seeing first hand what these monsters are capable of. No thanks.

Phage
reply to post by tothetenthpower

 

So in my community of just under 300K, one facility would be enough, because the city is generally small and travel isn't any kind of problem for most people.

That's a relatively small community (city). Who feeds New York? Los Angeles? Tokyo? All the developing regions of the world? Or don't they figure into it?
Honest questions here, really. I would like for it to work, I'm not convinced it can.

edit on 2/1/2014 by Phage because: (no reason given)

Ummm...There is a lot of acreage in the form of rooftops in all of those cities...and those buildings already have their own infrastructure as per water/electricity/heating/cooling.

Obviously this would have to be supplemented with scalable veranda/window boxing/unused or abandoned/"city owned" properties etc. This could also alleviate a percentage of unemployment, as there would have to be tenders/city farmers (with an education curve). I think it could be do-able, especially if new construction codes were implemented to encourage "hanging gardens of Babylon" in their design concepts.

YouSir

The heirloom tomatoes are absolutely the best. They are the meatiest. Can't wait, now that the ground hog did see his shadow , 6 more weeks of winter for us in the midwest.

This is by far one of the best threads on ATS ever, well at least IMO.

I am fascinated by this and similar approaches.

Currently their are commercial aquaponics farms popping up in the Detroit area.

www.greatlakesaquaponics.com...

I can't find it right now, but a man, in Detroit, retro-fitted an old warehouse with LED technology and has bumper crops he is selling all year long to restaurants.

Solar and wind are becoming cheaper to use so LED technology is the wave of the future.

Realtruth
This is by far one of the best threads on ATS ever, well at least IMO.

I am fascinated by this and similar approaches.

Currently their are commercial aquaponics farms popping up in the Detroit area.

www.greatlakesaquaponics.com...

I can't find it right now, but a man, in Detroit, retro-fitted an old warehouse with LED technology and has bumper crops he is selling all year long to restaurants.

Solar and wind are becoming cheaper to use so LED technology is the wave of the future.

The nice things about LED technology is they are much lower current due to higher energy transfer efficiency AND they can be spectrally oriented for specific applications. HPS and MH bulbs only provide about 5 to 7% of their spectrum as light that plants can use, everything else is heat and light in frequencies that are a waste for growing purposes. Plants use some very specific frequencies; 2800 angstroms during germination and of course the 450nm, 655nm and 710nm during the growth cycle. These frequencies/colours make the plants look dull and pretty disgusting but that is because 99% of the light is absorbed in the photon transfer antenna/pumps in the leaves. So, if you provide these specific frequencies at twice the nominal power of the effective "used" frequency output of HPS and MH bulbs, you are still only using 5% of the current requirements of the HPS and MH bulbs but have twice the peak radiant flux which lowers the growing times.

If you want a bit of information that is in one place, try HERE as this is a lot of the work I did back in the early 2000's. ETA: If the menu's don't work, just go back to vortexresearch.com and start from the hydroponics tab.

Cheers - Dave

tothetenthpower
reply to post by Phage

 

...But yeah, as a means to feed millions of people? It would have to be done locally and on a huge scale, as in every second person grows their own produce.

~tenth

edit on 2/1/2014 by tothetenthpower because: (no reason given)

S+F sir, this is awesome stuff! We desperately need to make the move back to growing our own food. The more I learn about what's going on with the global farming system the less optimistic I am about the future of food. This thread just strengthened my resolve to build a backyard garden. I'm heavily leaning towards building an Aquaponic system. Tasty plants, and tasty fish...

reply to post by Farmer11


Well hello there fellow mainah!

I'm from the Sagadahoc county area. We live near an organic farm that utilizes a little over 100 acres in my small town to grow crops, mainly salad greens. Ever heard of Olivia's Organics? I'm not sure how much they produce but I'm sure it's quite a bit. We find their produce in our local groceries. My husband worked on that farm a couple summers back helping them put up some new open greenhouses.
You can certainly do a lot in a confined space that's for sure.

As for the OP, awesome awesome awesome! Thanks for the thread. The hubby and I have talked often about how we would go about growing our own crops. Everything seems to be against us, tiny space, crappy soil, etc. But this is some good info to consider.

This is just way too cool! I love how effectively they use their space. Vertical gardening is a way for even the living space horizontially challenged of us to still have our own garden. Aquaponics is another great ecosystem, that one system feeds the other, cleans its own waste and produces fish and edible plants at the same time! arthritisrelieved.com...

The Amish are actually the pioneers in how to live a good and clean life without excess manufacturing or technology. I'm not sure if I could do it, but perhaps we may all find out, if we ever get hit by an EMP or our electrical grid goes out. We might just be seeking these brilliant people out for wise advice. Hopefully we can all help each other survive whatever comes our way. That's our way out of this financial mess is to each share his or her gift with our neighbors, without the need for money someday. Organic gardening is sustainable and is what I am doing now. Maybe someday when I have the space I'll try aquaponics too. thehealingfrequency.com...

tothetenthpower
reply to post by FyreByrd

 

Yeah I know some people who do them outside, but only seasonal of course. I find tomatoes usually get the best results. Potatoes too for some weird reason.

~Tenth

I'd imagine strawberries would also do very well in such a setup, as would most trailing plants species.

Herbs and leafy greens of all sorts would be suited too.

Respect for the Amish for doing it not just talking about it.

If nothing else the 90% less water and 90% less land requirements makes the 'resources are running out arguments' look very weak indeed. Come to that, pesticides would also be drastically cut too as the growing environment can be much more controlled.

Thanks OP...these systems ought to be adopted on industrial scales IMO.