Vibing on Vertical Farms

 

I am smitten with the idea of vertical farms. Its still early so I won’t be surprised if it turns out to be infatuation. But at this point they look quite intriguing.

Often the peak oil luminaries lament about the fate of cities after oil production goes into significant decline. Often it is noted that it takes six to ten units of energy to grow, process, and distribute each unit of food energy. What will people in urban centers do for food when the industrial food systems begins to unravel due to soaring oil prices? A number of my colleagues have expressed the belief that to some extent major population centers will eventually be depopulated and especially those in the Southwest that do not have arable land or significant water resources - think Vegas and Phoenix. These cities are thought to be a lost cause to some, even many of those in the ecocity movement which strives to transform the built environment in urban areas.

The other day I saw the article Vertical farm rises in Las Vegas. Don’t get me wrong - I am not advocating for a sustainable Vegas. But the notion of vertical farms is fascinating as a possibility for urban areas especially those that may not have access to much arable soil despite the first model (that I know of) being in the ground zero for unsustainability.

Posted Jan 16th 2008 10:07AM by Shayna Glick

Las Vegas is a town known for doing things in a big way. Well now they’re giving sustainability the royal treatment. There’s a proposal on the table to build the world’s first vertical farm. Not just any vertical farm either, but 30 storys of it.

This $200 million project would be able to feed 72,000 people for a year and would grow everything from apples to winter squash. Of course, all of the products would be distributed directly to the casinos and hotels, who will be funding the project in the first place. The farm could potentially make up to $25 million a year, plus $15 million in potential tourist revenue. That means that it would eventually recoup the enormous start-up costs, especially with it’s projected $6 million per year operating costs.

With our world population growing exponentially, and 60% of that population living in or near urban centers, vertical farms could be the wave of the future. If this experiment proves successful, every city in the world could one day be able to feed its citizens fresh, locally grown produce. Here’s hoping that this Vegas happening won’t stay there.

They say the $200 million project will feed 72,000 people for a year. That comes out to about $2800 per person in capital costs. But are they are speaking of a person’s entire diet (i.e., a full vegetarian diet) or just the minimalist vegetable portion of the SAD (standard American diet)?

The Organic Consumer Union had a fascinating article in their recent newsletter about our transformation from a nation of farmers and gardeners to a processed food nation, and the ensuing climate costs. The article says we now spend only 11% of our income on food, down from 22% in the 1950s.

For 10,000 years, local indigenous farmers managed to grow and distribute healthy food, and ample feed and fiber, largely without the use of petroleum-based chemical fertilizers, toxic pesticides, and energy-intensive irrigation, processing, and long-distance transportation. In 1945 most of America’s six million family farmers were still rotating their crops and cultivating a wide variety of fruits, grains, beans, and vegetables organically, fertilizing with natural compost, and, in general practicing sustainable farming methods they had learned from their parents and grandparents. In 1945, frugal and health-minded Americans were growing a full 42% of their vegetables and fruits in backyards, schoolyards, and community Liberty Gardens. The nutritious, generally non-processed foods that they cooked for their family’s meals were purchased from locally-owned grocers, who stocked their shelves with a wide variety of items typically raised within a 100 mile radius of their communities.

In the 1950s the average American household spent 22% of their household income for fresh, locally produced food. By today’s standards this post-war generation was relatively healthy in terms of low rates of diet-related diseases such as cancer (now striking 48% of US men and 38% of women), heart disease, obesity, diabetes, food allergies, birth defects, and learning disabilities.

Sixty years later we have a Fast Food Nation spending a mere 11% of our household income for food, over consuming meat and animal products, gorging ourselves on the industrialized world’s cheapest, most contaminated, and environmentally polluting fare, destroying our health with highly processed, high-sugar, high-cholesterol foods. This evermore-deadly diet is subsidized by billions of taxpayers’ dollars going to corporate agribusiness in the US, or else imported from overseas by the food giants and Big Box chains from low-wage, environmentally destructive farms and processors. Industrial scale, energy-intensive agriculture, factory farm livestock production, and long distance food transportation and processing currently generate 20-25% of all climate destabilizing greenhouse gases (CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide).

If we spend 11% of our income on food and the median annual household income according to the US Census Bureau was determined to be $48,201.00 (2006), then the typical household spends somewhere around $5000 on food annually.

The amount of food yielded by this vertical farm in Vegas must be a very small portion indeed. The farm’s annual food revenues would only be about $350 per person ($25M/72,000) or about 7% of the median household food expenditures. Interestingly, they are expecting an additional $15M in tourist revenue. The $40M total revenues dwarf the annual operating of $6M per year, giving them a very high projected gross profit margin of 85%:

Gross profit margins can vary drastically from business to business and from industry to industry. For instance, the airline industry has a gross margin of about 5%, while the software industry has a gross margin of about 90%.

I can see how this vertical farm is interesting from a business perspective and I imagine that capital costs are likely to go down as the technology evolves towards prefabricated modules.

For energy nuts like myself, another key consideration for a vertical farm is energy intensity. How many units of energy must be put into growing, processing, and distributing the food to get one unit of food energy out? The article didn’t say anything about sustainable farming or even organic. Leads me to wonder if the Vegas vertical might be a factory farm in a skyscraper. In this case, the vertical farm would be a false hope for sustainability likely to be abandoned (or reconfigured) when energy becomes much more scarce. I am much more interested in the possibility of sustainable vertical farms in zero net energy buildings as we need to moving towards living on our average daily solar input.

As it turns out, the Vertical Farm Project has conducted a study of the “energy in, energy out” question and concluded that vertical farms could be designed to maintain themselves without energy from the grid with the potential to make money by selling energy back. And that does not even account for the food energy produced. So if they are correct in their conclusions, it takes less than one unit of energy to produce one unit of food energy.

Can it be done? Do the inner workings present a viable framework that translates into self-sustainability? Yes, the Vertical Farm’s seems to be able to maintain itself without energy from the grid with the potential to make money by selling energy back. Waste products from edible plants and animal wastes have the low-end potential of generating 51.6 million kWh per year alone. In comparison the energy requirements for maintaining the plants and animals only totals 26.5 million kWh per year. on a weekly basis, an extra 482,415 kWh is available for other processes such as building maintenance. Even more energy will be generated once the potential energy that is to be generated from plants integrating into the living machine is included. The only other large energy expenditures not included are refrigeration and pumping requirements. In all, the Vertical Farm appears to be capable of self-sustainability. The advent of a new era in food production, efficiency, and community relations is no longer a far-fetched product of futuristic movies but a realistic idea resting on the cusp of the horizon. It is only a matter of time rather than innovation until nature and technology are integrated as a breathing building.

I imagine that the energy results will certainly be site specific. Presumably this study was for a vertical farm in New York as it was done by Columbia University students and the text refers to the grid in the North East corridor.

Interestingly, this work is coming out of the Medical Ecology department of Columbia University, which was an unfamiliar discipline to me:

Rene Dubos

Medical Ecology is an emerging science that defines those aspects of the environment that have a direct bearing on human health. The concept of ecosystem functions and services helps to describe global processes that contribute to our well-being, helping to cleanse the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. Environmental degradation often leads to alterations in these aspects, leading to various states of ill health. The term Medical Ecology was first coined by the eminent microbiologist, Rene Dubos, who intended it to embrace the concept that natural systems, if explored fully, would provide for many of our needs, as for example, quinine did regarding the treatment of malaria. Dubos discovered gramicidin in 1939, a powerful topical anti-microbial agent. Together with Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin in 1928, these findings led the way into the modern era of anti-microbial therapy, in which soil organisms played a dominant role.

Medical Ecology as described here is re-defined to a much broader level. We believe that ecological principles, when applied to the human condition will offer a resolution to the dichotomy of the “man versus nature” paradigm. In fact, humans are an integral part of nature, but most of the time we are unaware of our connectedness to the rest of the world. Medical Ecology links natural processes with living on earth, from the point of view of being human. The environment in which we live is characterized by countless physical, chemical, and biological systems, and it is in this complex setting that we carry out our lives, whether we are aware of them or not. The more aware of them we are, the more likely it is that we can avoid those situations that take away from our sense of well-being.

A finalist in the recent “City of the Future” competition that imagined San Francisco a century from now, posited a Bay Area that raises enough food to feed a population twice today’s 7.2 million:

Fougeron took plenty of liberties, such as assuming that by 2108 cars will be banned from the city - allowing hydroponic farms to sprout in thousands of unneeded garages. But the core of her vision takes current-day reality and extends it beyond make-believe to “why not?”

Starting with the goal of an agriculturally self-sufficient Bay Area, Fougeron’s team drew on schemes by Columbia University microbiology Professor Dickson Despommier to grow food in specialized towers he calls “vertical farms.” Another given: Prefabricated modular structures can be snapped together like so many Legos.

With those facts in hand, architectural imagination took flight - and ended up above a San Francisco Bay dotted by 200 towers, 40 stories each, layered with loam and bountiful enough to feed 10 million people. They’d use solar energy and recirculated water. The stacked modules would include residential nooks for farm crews as well.

If all this sounds far-fetched, it’s a kitchen remodel compared with the winner of “City of the Future’s” $10,000 prize: “HydroNet,” by the San Francisco firm IwamotoScott.

Now that’s more like it. What becomes possible? Food justice folks working with green building people. LEED for vertical farms. Vertical CSAs in zero net energy buildings. Meaningful green collar jobs building and operating vertical CSAs. Just picked produce available at the farmers market on the ground floor. Take the streetcar down to pick your own fresh produce if you have the time. And almost certainly, less meat intensive diets.

Should we co-create the possibility of a prototype vertical farm here in Oakland?