AGREED!!!!

Lets also not start with the “My degree is bigger than yours” thing, because believe me, I have no problem finding legitimate PhD holders who can spew bull**** like the best of them.

Anyway, the whole vertical farming methodology is something we can talk about for the more distant future, but right now it can’t compete with the standard methods and I personally don’t think it’s going to be viablle any time soon, but who knows.

Also, thanks again to THE V for clarifying things involving preservation of fresh foods, gas packaging etc. Obviously this is a topic that is pretty broad as it applies to all manner of food products.

At least there seems to be agreement that the “organic” stamp on products is bull****.

Your naivity of how science actually works is really quite remarkable. Let me guess – undergrad degree only in something like business?

I’m still just a kid living in my parents basement. LOL

When it comes to agriculture I have just a wee bit of experience… as a commercial vegetable breeder. I specialize in melons. My job is to understand the needs of the grower, broker, retailer and consumer and then manipulate the genotype of the species to meet them. I’m sorry I work around a bunch of Ph.D’s and M.S.’s. If you wish for more technical terminology I’m sure I can satisfy your needs.

Here’s a small sample to whet your intellectual appetite:

I spent most of my day developing descriptions of the genetic controls in a population of RIL’s. If you wish I’m sure I could post excerpts on sutures, immature color, climacteric versus non-climacteric, ethylene dependent and independent controls, peduncle abscision, and other scintillating details. I could even toss out my current theory of expansins involvement in the breakdown of the plant walls hemicellulose/pectin matrix. I’m sure you would enjoy that one.

Please try to remove some of your preconceptions and try to understand a different perspective. We all have biases but we can choose to change them.

You still haven’t presented support of your initial statements. You apparently haven’t the slightest clue of how industrial farming works if you think that designers don’t deal with issues like salt buildup in the matrix right from the beginning. You have not done anything except a cursory Google search on the matter, and this is transparent to everyone here. You have nothing of substance to contribute to this discussion, and your posts are nothing more than exercises in stroking your own ego.

I intend to ignore you from this point forward, you have nothing to say.

My apologies the first link didn’t work as I had hoped. The book had a preview of some key chapters when I posted the link. It described subsistence farming (i.e. farming to provide 100% of all food needed for the family) as needing 0.2 hectares in Sub-Sahara Africa and 0.5 hectares per family in Bangladesh. It really was a surprising number for me as I would have expected a larger size. Then again in Bangladesh they can manage three cycles of rice per year.

Here another link listing only 1 hectare per family, again very surprising to me. These guys must be close to starvation most of the time. They may get 2 crops of rice a year of with yields of around 2-3 metric tons per acre per cycle.

http://geobytesgcse.blogspot.com/2008/04/case-study-of-subsistence-farming-rice.html

There have been many books written over the years on subsistence agriculture. Generally the land is cultivated using a rotation of legumes, vegetables and a starch crop.

In the U.S. the small Guernsey breed of cattle is preferred for this type of operation. They are 1/2 the mass of the Holstein’s they require much less feed. The total amount of land varies depending on the environment. In more northern regions more land is needed as the growing season is shorter. This skews most of the data published by Government sources high.

Then again I’ve worked on setting the official numbers of yields and such back when I worked for the USDA, Minnesota Ag Statistics Service. The numbers represent more of a regulation of the commodities market than actual yield. The yields based upon actual objective modeled data were 20-30% higher than the official number. I’m sorry I cannot provide documented proof of this because all papers and files were shredded after the meeting.

The second link is one that we’ve been tossing around at each other at work. You get too many professional scientist together and it can get childish. Then again anyone who thinks they are an adult all the time should be tossed in the street and beaten for being insufferable. The point remains the same, never rely on someone else’s citations. Flex your brain and fingers and look for yourself. (Is that condescending enough? I really did try)

Now that I have officially reached the verbose (and meandering) point I believe it is time to discuss the flaws of the VF concept.

We are all in agreement that energy is a major concern.

The next major flaw is the cost of labor. Currently growers pay minimum wage to anyone who is willing to work the brutal jobs outdoors. This keeps the food cost low. With this concept you would need a much more skilled labor force. In order to get employees you would have to pay 2-10 times more. This would increase the cost of food drastically.

Another issue is that this system is based upon a hydroponic fruiting or leafy vegetable model. I like my carrots, wheat, rye, potatoes, cherries, apples, pears, grapes, kiwi, oranges, limes, lemons, and corn. You really cannot grow these species very well or at all under hydroponics.

One of the big questions I have is how do they expect to recoup on the initial cost of setup? Large buildings with lots of equipment do not come cheap. Logically they would of course have to place some of the cost onto the produce. They could of course ask for government money but this really isn’t a viable solution long term. Not to mention the political suicide.

Another major concern is water. In any system when you are harvesting and removing nutrients from the system salt begins to build up. This may seam very puzzling to those who have never studied soils and plant science. Most forms of nutrients that plant use are ions. Nitrogen – NH4+, NO2-, NO3-, SO4-, PO4-2, K+, and so on. These all have complimentary charge ions to balance them. Since plants do not use all nutrients in the same quantities this leads to imbalances in the hydroponic solution. The common practice is to completely replace the solution when the EC (electrical conductivity) get’s too high. This uses up lots of water and discharges a lot of waste. Dumping this water into any existing sewage system is irresponsible as most large cities water disposal is drained into rivers and oceans after “treatment” today.

Alas that I all the time I have for today. I’ll try to write another essay for your enjoyment later if feel the need for more punishmetn.

        DV82XL said:

I have to admit that Finrod’s implied vision of having humanity concentrate into self-sustaining cities, while allowing the spaces now committed to farming return to the wild, is certainly an appealing one on several levels. For me it invokes images from the covers of the science fiction of the Sixties – a spire’d skyline covered by a transparent dome, with a spacecraft lifting off in the foreground. However, as doable as this is even now, it is probably only something that will be realized in the distant future.

Pity

The VF site has links claiming some interest from cities in the US and a project somewhere in the UAE, IIRC. If one or more of these proposals actually goes ahead, we might have some hard data by the middle of next decade.

Or more likely we won’t, but we can still hope.

        drbuzz0 said:

Because it had more than one link in it. It’s a spam ruducing measure.

Most spam contains links in it (or other things that tip off the filters) and if I didn’t send some stuff for moderation this page could get overrun.

A lot of spambots will detect that their comment was successfully posted and then start posting like crazy on the respective blog, so if it goes to moderation that cuts down on the spam load dramatically.

Having legitimate comments go there on occasion is the price we pay.

I see them all and approve the ones that aren’t obvious spam.

The reason I don’t do it right away all the time is I have a life (sort of).

I suspected as much.

I have a suspicion that the particular geometry illustrated is a measure aimed at getting as much natural light coverage as possible into each floor. Of course, if the bulk of lighting is artificial this is no longer an issue, but even with advanced nuclear power so much artificial light is still going to be expensive, so a case could possibly be made for a tall, thin geometry on economic grounds, to do everything possible to alleviate power costs. If someone feels competent to run the numbers, I’d love to see what might be done in that direction, and how well the illustration matches the projected optimal geometry.