8 Future Farms To Change How We Grow Food
Gotham Greens is a 15,000-square-foot rooftop farm that is situated on the top of a former bowling alley a few blocks southeast of Eagle Street. Using hydroponics, the farms grows its plants in water, as opposed to soil. The farmers are able to circulate nutrient-rich water through the gutters that the plants sit in and control the temperature to ensure theyâll have a winning harvest of lettuce, arugula, basil, and other crops. The farm,which yielded about 100 tons of produce in 2011, gets half of its power from a solar array.
There are more than a few urban farms in Brooklyn. Hereâs one on a rooftop on the east side of Midtown Manhattan that has one advantage over its counterparts from that other borough: The 15,000-square-footRiverpark Farm is totally modular. The key is more than 7,000 recycled milk crates. So, instead of one garden, itâs essentially several small ones with crops that can be moved if they need more sunlight. Currently, the self-proclaimed âmost urban farmâ is growing 180 different types of plants and supplies vegetables to the adjacent Riverpark restaurant.
Some people donât have access to a rooftop or a yard thatâs conducive to urban farming. You can still have an urban farm, provided you have space (about the size of a parking space) and money ($70,000) for an Agri-Cube by the Japanese outfit Daiwa House Industry. The pod has room for 10,000 fruits and veggies to be grown hydroponically at a cost of about 45 cents per piece of produce. Thereâs adjustable lighting for each plant, controllable temperature, and a drainage system for the water.
Here on Earth, the worldâs population pushing full steam ahead toward well over 9 billion by 2050, food is at a premium. One idea thatâs been dreamt up to combat the potential food shortage is vertical farms, essentially taking concepts from land, streamlining them and making them more efficient, and moving them inside, where they can be meticulously controlled. A good example is The Plant, a former meatpacking plant on Chicagoâs South Side, which was started in 2010. Its goal is to be off-the-grid and a zero-waste facility and it will have hydroponic crops, a fish farm, and several aquaponic farms.
The worldâs most popular seafood item is white shrimp, and a company called Blue Oasis Pure Shrimp is proving that it can grow the critters anywhereâeven in the desert outside of Las Vegas. The company has developed a closed-loop indoor farm full of artificial ponds kept at 80 degrees Fahrenheit to grow half a million pounds of shrimp per year. The company says its process, which takes 120 days to grow restaurant quality shrimp and recycles 100% of its water, is a more sustainable alternative to wild-caught shrimp and traditional shrimp farms, which when constructed can endanger local ecosystems.
One of the concerns with fish farms is that seafood is being raised out of its natural environment. TheAquapod, developed as part of Kampachi Farmâs Velella Project, allows baby fish to mature in the cozy confines of a 22-foot diameter soccer ball-shaped bubble surrounded by brass mesh that keeps barnacles from, well, barnacling onto the pod. A pilot project (watch video here) off the coast of Hawaiiâs big island involves 2,000 Kampachi fish that are eating soybean-enriched diets that are more sustainable.
Remember that moon base that GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich promised would be built by 2020 if he won the presidency? Well, if that were to happen (even without a President Gingrich), the people living at the base would need food. Enter scientists at University of Arizonaâs Controlled Environment Agriculture Center who have been experimenting with growing crops hydroponically for a lunar or Martian greenhouse. The greenhouses would be housed in tubes buried under the moonâs surface to protect from radiation in that environment. Water for plant growth could be recycled from base residentsâ urine and carbon dioxide could come from the astronautsâ breathing.
In places like Portland and the Bay Area, backyards are regularly transformed into crop-yielding mini-farms. In the concrete jungle of New York, hobbyists and actual urban farmers often take to rooftops. That was the case with the 6,000-square-foot Eagle Street Rooftop Farm in the north Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint. The soil-based vegetable farm first began plantings in 2009 and to date itâs offered up spinach, kale, tomatoes, peas, peppers, and even squash. The garden currently serves about 10 local restaurants and other businesses in north Brooklyn and is also a community-supported agriculture hub.
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