agricultural structures and environmental control notes

#AGRICULTURAL STRUCTURES AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL NOTES PATCH#

'I still think the business models will require a path to profitability before it can start to attract more mainstream financing.' 'It has certainly attracted a tonne of investment, media attention, consumer interest, there's no doubt about it,' he says. Viraj Puri sees the Silicon Valley-inspired approach adopted by companies like Bowery as unnecessarily high-tech. 'It's a question of which kind of design we have to make and what the economics are behind it.'ĭr Gauthier, who now works for the New Jersey-based company Bowery Farming, admits both the capital and energy costs involved in vertical farming are 'definitely huge'.īut that needs to be put in context, he argues, because significant government subsidies have long been provided to traditional farming operations. 'I was growing coffee trees inside a vertical farm. I don't think there is anything in the vertical farm that we can't grow,' he says. The major players, to date, have concentrated on producing perishable goods such as salad vegetables - crops that traditionally require large amounts of water.īut vertical farming expert Paul Gauthier believes even staples like potato and wheat could eventually be grown indoors. In practical terms, that means more crop yields. 'Whereas your fruiting and flowering crops, they will want something more along the red spectrum of lighting.'Įach variety of plant has its own tailored lighting recipe, allowing them to photosynthesise for much longer periods of the day - up to 18 hours at a time. So, your leafy greens, your vegetative crops prefer light towards the blue side of the spectrum. 'Different types of crops prefer different types of lighting. 'All the vertical farms operating today are using a type of lighting called LEDs, which stands for light emitting diode,' says Jeffrey Landau, the director of business development at Agritecture, an urban agriculture consultancy.

Plants are grown indoors on trays, often stacked up to 30 tiers high.Įverything about the indoor environment is governed by sensors and automation, but the crucial ingredient is the artificial lighting. Vertical farms look like a cross between a factory and a laboratory. It's attracting huge investment, particularly in the United States where venture capitalists see gains to be made in a high-tech process known as vertical farming.

#AGRICULTURAL STRUCTURES AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL NOTES PATCH#

The veggie patch goes high-techĬEA represents a small but growing dimension of agriculture. So, a small chunk of the Amazon is still standing because the trees in that area weren't cut down to make way for yet another enormous soya plantation.Įating pancakes made from bacterial flour and animals raised on unicellular photosynthetic micro-organisms might seem a little out there, but these ideas are currently being explored by scientists as part of a new approach to farming called controlled environmental agriculture (CEA).Īnd CEA, some agricultural researchers argue, could be the best way of reducing the environmental destruction associated with modern farming, which is both land and resource intensive.

But at least the pig she's eating was raised on micro-algae, not soybean. She often feels guilty about the amount of meat she consumes. Your friend orders the pork and fennel sausages with a side salad - from the rooftop farm above the cafe. It's expensive, but it's worth paying a little more to make sure the produce you eat and drink is grown right here in the city. The coffee is good too - from a boutique plantation in an old converted office block just down the road. Like many people, you're worried about the size of your carbon footprint, so it's good to know that none of the main ingredients had to be shipped or flown in. The bioreactor that produces the flour is only a block away. Hardly a health food, but at least they're easy on the environment - they're made with organic eggs and 100 per cent locally-sourced bacteria. You know they're delicious because you order them all the time: fluffy and light with a slightly carroty taste.

Agricultural structures and environmental control notes