DailyDirt: Farming In The Future
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
So far, we’ve mostly avoided a Malthusian catastrophe, but the human population is likely to grow to about 9 billion by 2050 (or somewhere between 7.5 and 10.5 billion, depending on your estimates). By that time, huge cities could house enormous populations, but the resources to feed all those people might need to be shipped in from vast farmlands. Who knows, maybe there will be some suburban middle ground where billions of people live near locally-produced agriculture. Vertical farming technologies could make it possible to grow food without acres and acres of land. Here are just a few links on some futuristic farming techniques.
- Organic farming is great, but it often produces lower yields of crops compared to conventional farming techniques. Organic farming yields are actually comparable for some fruits, but for vegetables and cereals, conventional farming has the upper hand. The score isn’t settled yet; organic farmers might be able to increase their productivity if they can find better sources of organic nitrogen. [url]
- Singapore has a commercial vertical farm in operation that could bring back more agriculture to the tiny nation-city. Sky Green Farms is selling its crops in Singapore supermarkets, and it’s looking to license its technology to other countries that might also need small-footprint farming. [url]
- VertiCrop is another vertical farming technology company based in Canada which grows vegetables hydroponically with a fraction of the water and land usages of a standard farm. The mechanized farming can be managed by as little as 3 people and still process 10,000 plants every 3 days. [url]
- Some architects are creating “farmscrapers” — super tall buildings that contain agricultural features. Growing trees on the sides of a skyscraper probably has a few problems, but the designs look cool. [url]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.