Vertical farming in the Big Apple New York Jeremy Cooke
Downtown Manhattan is far from a place you would associate with agriculture.
Rather, with its countless restaurants, cafes, shops and supermarkets this is a place of consumption.
So even the smallest morsel to chew every day New Yorkers must come to this city trucked, shipped or flown in, from all parts of the country or world.
Now a team of scientists from Columbia University has proposed an alternative.
In his vision of the future, the skyline of New York and other cities include a new kind of skyscraper, the "vertical farm". Campos Roofing
The idea is simple: imagine a 30-story building with glass walls and a huge solar panel. Each floor would
giant nurseries, a kind of indoor fields.
The building would have a sophisticated irrigation system.
Thus, in the most urban of environments could grow vegetables of all kinds and small livestock, in a controlled environment.
As a result, it would eliminate transportation costs and pollution caused by moving produce around the country. Advantages
The project was devised by Professor Dickson Despommier, of Columbia University New York.
He and his students took as a departure the existing greenhouse technology and are now convinced that vertical farms are a practical solution.
Despommier argues that this revolutionary farming system has many advantages, including:
vegetable production throughout the year in a controlled environment
All produce would be organic, since it would not be exposed to attacks by parasites and insects
harmful agricultural waste disposal environmental
food production for local consumption
addition, says the professor, vertical farms would allow the transformation of many farmland into forests, which would welcomed in times of global warming.
"Even if it seems very natural ... like a factory, in terms of production ... here's what we're going to win: we will recover the rest of the planet. That alone would be worth it," said Despommier . Sustainable
The plan is that the whole complex sustainable.
energy would be received through the solar panel on the roof, but would also waste incinerators that would use as a fuel farm.
Here's what we're going to win: we will recover the rest of the planet. For that reason alone worth Dickson Despommier, Columbia University
All the water of the building is recycled.
In upstate New York, several hours walk from the city, Ed Miller's 18,000 apple trees are in full bloom.
Like farmers everywhere, he has lived through decades of constant change and innovation but in the end, he remains a man of the earth.
What do you think of the concept of vertical farms? Perhaps surprisingly, their response is very positive: "It looks like a fancy greenhouse. It's great, very interesting. It will be phenomenal."
For now, vertical farms are a virtual concept, but scientists insist that the theory is sound.
All they need now, they say, is money for To realize this project.
Images courtesy of Chris Jacobs, Rolf Mohr, and Dean Fowler of machinefilms.com and unitedfuture.com, com VOTE
'd rather eat the vegetables that came from: a vertical farm in the city. A crop in the field. I eat them without knowing where they come from. Query without statistical significance. BBCMundo.com
Note: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/hi/spanish/science/newsid_6221000/6221454.stmPublicada: 2007/06/20 10:33:42 GMT © BBC MMIX
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