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Off The Grid Urban farming is being taken to new heights in an abandoned Chicago pork processing plant where envirnmentalists hope to "get off the grid" by using the waste from one crop to feed another.
Schools of tilapia are already swinning in water cleaned by the roots of leafy greens that feed on the nitrogen and other nutrients in the fish waste.
A bakery is moving in that will be able to use mash from the brewery upstairs to fire it's oven.
Vertical farming was once relegated to science fiction. It was too costly to try to build multi - storey greenhouses and it didn't make sense when farmland was so cheap, abundant and fertile
A growing interest in locally produced, sustainable food coupled with increased concern about climate change --has spurred scores of experiments with vertical farming.
So far, it hasn't proven to be commercially viable. But that doesn't mean it won't be.
The potential benefits are huge.
It can also drastically increase yield per acre by stacking farm on top of farm and allowing for year -round production. With fast growing but sensitive strawberries, for instance, an acre of greenhouse can produce up to 30 times more than a farmer's field.
Growing food in the cities where it is eaten cuts down on fuel used to truck it in from farms that can be thousands of miles away and also means people get to eat fresher and tasier produce.
The problem is the cost.
Sunshin is free, while grow lights and greenhouses are expensive. Farmland costs a lot less than urban skyscrapers. And large-scale harvesters can collect crops from a field a lot faster than people can pick them.
The technology exists to drastically reduce the cost of vertical farming, It's just a matter of figuring out how to efficiently integrate and automate indoor farming syatems.
by - A F P
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