Based on its energy requirements for lighting alone, vertical farming would be incapable of substituting for a substantial share of our soil-based agricultural production. But the lighting problem is only the first among many obstacles facing high-rise agriculture. Climate control to achieve suitable growing conditions would add huge energy requirements. And light fixtures would release more energy as heat than as light, which in summer would put huge loads on air-conditioning systems. To maintain the good health of plants grown indoors, humidity and air circulation must be very precisely controlled, often at a high energy cost. And before any of those needs would come the gargantuan resource requirements for construction of the towers themselves.

Termőföldet bérel az újpesti önkormányzat vállalkozókedvű kerületi családok számára, hogy maguknak termelhessék meg a betevő zöldséget, gyümölcsöt. Az ingyenes, de munkaigényes programban való részvételnek egyetlen fontos feltétele van, a megtermelt javak tizedét le kell adni az önkormányzatnak, hogy szétoszthassa a kispénzű nyugdíjasok, vagy más rászorulók között.

The area I think most of us aspire to eat in, is expensive, natural food. This is organic food, local food and the like.

The area I’m interested in exploring is up here in extremely cultivated food. Food made in a laboratory maybe.

One of the only known truths about laboratory-grown meat—the only real thing we know about it at the moment—is that the meat has to be very thin for the oxygen to get to it. If it weren’t thin, you’d need to grow blood vessels and that would make it a much more complicated exercise.

It’s wet and very flat.

Now in the way new technologies emerge and change markets, often it’s companies that have something quite strange and simple in common with the technology that do well. It’s a bit like the way wire manufacturers started making fibre optic cables, just because they were good at extruding miles of stuff—even though there doesn’t seem to be any other relationship between the two technologies apart from their physical similarity.

In this case I’ve started to look at photo processing labs as systems that deal with wet, flat material. They include wet paper, and highly engineered processes.

My contention is that AGFA or some photo processing company would start producing lab-grown meat machines.

This work talks about how the lab-grown meat transition will affect the public-facing processes of food and its consumption, and also how it will affect craft and expertise in the world of food.

Krízis, városi gazdálkodás, közösségi kertek… könyv, blog, meggyőződés.

Közösségi Kert Kezdeményezés: Biokertészkezés Budapesten, a Villányi úti Arborétumban (Budapesti Corvinus Egyetem Kertészettudományi Kar, Ökológiai és Fenntartható Gazdálkodási Rendszerek Tanszék)

Window Farms are vertical, hydroponic, modular, low-energy, high-yield edible window gardens built using low-impact or recycled local materials.

New York City Vegetable Gardening in Self Watering Containers

The Manhattan School for Children - PS333 is building a rooftop environmental education center and food production facility on the Upper West Side of New York City. The center will use hydroponics’ greenhouse technology, powered by renewable energy, to grow food in the heart of the city. The rooftop learning laboratory will provide a unique facility for the hands-on learning of science concepts including environmental sustainability, food production and nutrition.

Foodprint NYC is the first in a series of international conversations about food and the city. From a cluster analysis of bodega inventories to the cultural impact of theice-box, and from food deserts to peak phosphorus, panelists will examine the hidden corsetry that gives shape to urban foodscapes, and collaboratively speculate on how to feed New York in the future. The free afternoon program will include designers, policy-makers, flavor scientists, culinary historians, food retailers, and others, for a wide-ranging discussion of New York’s food systems, past and present, as well as opportunities to transform our edible landscape through technology, architecture, legislation, and education.

Decades from now 2009 may be seen as the year that vertical farming started to take hold. Time magazine named vertical farming one of last year’s 50 best inventions. Proposals seemed to arrive almost weekly. Andwhole blogs — or parts thereof — are devoting themselves to the subject.

The push for more sustainable and less land-devouring, transportation-heavy, soil-depleting, ground-water-polluting practices of agriculture ranges from systems that fit inside buildings to skyscrapers devoted in their entirety to food production. The former is more immediate and realistic, while the latter’s proposals are still in the realm of ideas and fantasy, at least on the large scale many envision them. Spurred by a recent Scientific American article — penned by a Dickson Despommier, a vocal proponent of vertical farming and the president of the Vertical Farm Project — I explored to see what forms these hypothetical vertical farms may take, and how they integrate with other functions to create a true urban agriculture, not just monocultural functionalism akin to agribusiness supplanted to the city.