Word: farmed
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...biofuels, so it's no surprise that former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack, his choice for Agriculture Secretary, has been an even more reliable supporter of biofuels, even chairing a national coalition on ethanol (ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter). "As governor of one of our most abundant farm states, he led with vision," Obama said of Vilsack on Wednesday, "fostering an agricultural economy of the future that not only grows the food we eat but the energy...
Vilsack has never been known as a reformer on this issue. And neither has Obama. But while many conservationists and sustainable-agriculture activists are disappointed by the appointment, it could have been a lot worse than Vilsack. The American Farm Bureau hailed his nomination, but it would have done institutional cartwheels if Obama had picked a toe-the-line "aggie" like House Agriculture Committee chairman Collin Peterson or former ranking member Charlie Stenholm. Vilsack does have predictably close ties to traditional agriculture and agribusiness, and he did run the nation's leading corn and soybean state. But he has also...
Dickson Despommier became the guru of vertical farming because his students were bummed out. A professor of environmental health at Columbia University in New York City, Despommier teaches about parasitism, environmental disruption and other assorted happy topics. Eventually his students complained; they wanted to work on something optimistic. So the class began studying the idea of rooftop gardening for cities. They quickly discarded that approach--too small-scale--in favor of something more ambitious: a 30-story urban farm with a greenhouse on every floor. "I think vertical farming is an idea that can work in a big way," says...
...Paso lab, potted crops grow in rows on clear vertical panels that rotate on a conveyor belt. Moving them gives the plants the precise amount of light and nutrients needed, an optimization that Kertz says lets him grow 15 times as much lettuce per acre as on a normal farm, using 5% of the water that conventional agriculture does. The company aims to finish a commercial-scale facility by early...
Despommier's plans are even grander. He has drawn up models for a 30-story, city-block-size vertical farm that would have transparent walls to maximize sunlight and would produce enough food for 50,000 people. "With about 160 of these buildings, you could feed all of New York," he says. His idea has intrigued architects, but Despommier concedes that it would cost hundreds of millions to build a full-scale skyscraper farm. That's the main drawback: construction and energy costs would probably make vertically raised food more costly than traditional crops. At least...