#futuristic farming

[kingme1002]

Farming in the future.

[60thstreethomestead]

In an inner-ring suburb of St. Paul, it appears some inventive people are utilizing large indoor spaces for their farming! What's more, they're utilizing aquaponics, which is just plain awesome! Here's an excerpt from the article, but you should read the whole thing and tell me what you think!

Lettuce grows on walls and basil sprouts inside large rotating cylinders at Garden Fresh Farms in Maplewood, where sun and soil are forsaken for 21st-century technology.

The aquaponics farm is housed in a 20,000-square-foot warehouse. Automated lighting and watering systems nourish plants that are plugged into panels made of polystyrene, foam boards that look like doubles for attic insulation.

"There's no pesticide, there's no weeding to do," said co-owner Dave Roeser as he examined several walls of lettuce that can be pulled along a track like sliding glass doors.

About 800 basil plants and 1,000 heads of lettuce are harvested each day at Garden Fresh Farms, recently named Ramsey County's Family Farm of the Year.

"We're proving that urban farming can happen in a warehouse," Roeser said.

Aquaponics is an ancient farming practice that has been modernized for its sustainability. It relies on raising fish, piping water rich with nutrients from fish waste to the plants, which purify it, and returning clean water to the fish. (Hydroponics is the fish-free cousin of aquaponics.) ...