Vertical farms have appeared in the news as concepts over the last couple years. Now, one is to be built:
AeroFarms, an urban agricultural company, has big plans to turn a defunct steel mill into a 70,000 square foot vertical farm in Newark, New Jersey. The facility is projected to cost $39 million USD and will provide greens and other produce to local New York and New Jersey communities. According to the builders, it will be the largest indoor vertical farm in the world.
Vertical farms, like other types of urban farming, aim to provide fresh produce to city dwellers. They cut down on the energy demands of shipping food from the countryside to city markets, while at the same time offering an alternative to clearing ever more wilderness in the name of growing food. Vertical farms also have the potential to produce food year-round and can be more efficient in their use of water and fertilizer.
It will be interesting to see how they manage electricity costs. Can any Soylentils who've worked with hydroponics share their experiences?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2015, @02:02AM
I thought a lot of the details for closed-cycle fish/plant culture was worked out by New Alchemy Institute in the 1970s and 80s? Overview here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Alchemy_Institute [wikipedia.org]
Since they were serious scientists (despite the hippie name), I believe their work was documented in a variety of papers.
When I visited they had translucent tanks of plants and tilapia sitting outside in the sun...producing fish year round on Cape Cod.