Journal Entry
Why vertical farms carry still too steep a price
I see Boing Boing has vertical farms back in the conversation spotlight. Much like any SF/F geek, I have to say, the idea intrigues me. Now that we know cities provide efficiencies, thus making them more green than non-urban areas, the idea of making cities even more self sufficient is powerful and intriguing.
The little scientist type in me also wonders whether there might not be efficiencies further found by large scale hydroponics in managed areas (as well as less runoff, more recycling, and so on). As David Pescovitz at Boing Boing points out, this is similar to the idea of creating a self sustaining area.
While I’ve seen a lot of blog posts batting the idea of skyscraper farms around, I’ve seen very little number crunching.
I’m no economist or urban planner, but let’s crunch some quick numbers.
One of the more famous advocates of the Vertical Farm concept, Dickson Despommier, estimates a 30 story farm would feed about 10,000-50,000 people (depending on which article he’s speaking in). Let’s be charitable and assume 30,000 per 30 story skyscraper.
A 30 story skyscraper can cost as much as half a billion dollars. So we’re looking at a unit cost of at least that to build these, and that’s not considering the hydroponic and recycling technology costs!
New York has 10 million people. To feed New York, you’d need roughly 334 of these buildings, with the building cost being at least $150 billion.
That’s affordable on a country scale (10 years of NASA-like budget).
But the fact is, the existing land sprawling out around New York and the US and gasoline to transport the goods from the heartland to NYC is still far cheaper when an accountant crunches the figures.
As much as I love the concept, I don’t see it happening on the scale imagined or the cities imagined. If it does happen, it will be via the reclamation of unused city spaces that are converted on medium sized projects slowly, maybe at the heart of a decaying city like Detroit (in fact I’ve posited a scenario in my piece for Metatropolis about this, as I do believe failed cities provide an avenue for possible urban farming).
Dickson Despommier and a number of others has a more detailed look at the land use/acres per person scenario in EcoEng that acknowledges some of these challenges and puts out answers to them, but most articles taking on the concept seem to be much more of the ‘wow big idea’ sort.
Until the movement cost of fuel to get cucumbers from Ohio to NYC or bananas from the Caribbean to NYC is too high and more economic pressures are brought to bear on the displacement of where food is grown to where food is consumed, I doubt vertical farms will happen.
Far more likely farming continues where it has, but slower alternate delivery methods happen. Like large blimps or sail powered refrigerated trains or sail powered cargo ships moving produce at a slower speed from the point they’re grown to a city.
Filed under the topic Tech on October 14th 2009 at 11:00 am. You can subscribe to the RSS feed for this entry to keep track of comments. You can also use to trackback.
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1. C.A. Sizemore on Oct 14th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Urban farming make sense to me, sky scraper farming has always seemed like a pipe dream. may be on the moon, mars or an orbital colony but not on a planet that has an atmosphere and land.
2. Chad Collier on Oct 14th, 2009 at 11:20 am
The first place you’ll probably see them is the first place I ever heard were considering the idea seriously: Las Vegas. Supporting a local hotel industry seems like a much more realistic goal, and there is no even semi-local option for the middle of the desert.
I read this, of course, before last November.
3. Catherine Shaffer on Oct 14th, 2009 at 11:24 am
Rooftop gardening is more efficient and economical use of space, and has been done successfully on smaller scales in many places. Rooftop gardens done correctly can minimize storm water runoff, which causes erosion and disrupts downstream ecosystems.
4. Fred Kiesche on Oct 14th, 2009 at 11:33 am
I’d like to see more acceptance (where the building can take it!) of rooftop farming and the like. Wasn’t Wal-Mart going to be trying to do that for some of their newer stores? Or…how about putting more gardens in the “dead spaces” that exist in many cities (vacant lots).
Me, for the SF geek, I want to see one of Paolo Soleri’s arcologies rising!
5. Josh Smith on Oct 14th, 2009 at 11:56 am
Something tells me the first person or group to reclaim an old building to do this in Detroit will be a swift visit from Drug Enforcement when their urban farming lights up a sweep for marijuana growing.
It would be cool to see, but you’d definitely want to announce it to the locals when you start!
BTW, This image from Despommier’s page is what I envisioned when reading Paolo Bacigalupi’s Pump Six.
http://www.iees.ch/EcoEng041/images/EcoEng041_VertFarm_fig6.gif
6. Diatryma on Oct 14th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
A friend of mine is looking at jobs in this field– not multi-story farms but using roofs as growing space. Green roofs to insulate and mitigate runoff are relatively simple, but growing food makes it tougher, if only because they are heavier and require more maintenance.
I’d say to start with one level, basic green roof/garden, then stack stories as they become useful.
7. Philip Brewer on Oct 14th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
High fuel prices seem like a wash–savings from local growing offset by increased cost of building. Maybe if you have cheap energy, but know it’s going to be more expensive in the future, you could consider investing some of the cheap energy in the tangible form of a high-rise farm.
Where I see this actually happening is in areas of very high population density where access to cheap land is blocked by politics. (For example, I can totally see a Singapore or a Hong Kong doing this.)
It wouldn’t have to be an actual, total blockage, either. Whenever political tensions ramp up and the side with the cheap land hints that access might be blocked, the side that lacks land might decide to invest in a vertical farm as proof-of-concept, and as a way to show their own people that they’re on top of the problem.
So, I can see a few being built. But I don’t see them as a solution to any real-world problems, except political problems.
8. Steve Burnap on Oct 14th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
I do wonder if “local produce” can be taken too far. It is obviously silly to import something from half way around the world when it could be grown next door, but by the same token, I suspect that the energy costs to grow bananas in NYC would likely outweigh the costs to get them there from the Caribbean. It reminds me very much of the decidedly non-ecological way rice is grown in my own neck of the woods, which is California. You save the transport costs from Asia, but you pay the price for the irrigation required to grow a marsh plant in a desert.
A big part of this that is not mentioned is that people need to be trained to make food choices based on what is seasonally local. Buying local doesn’t mean just not buying grapes from Chili, it means not buying grapes in the Winter.
9. Stephen on Oct 27th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Interesting comments less the extreme visionary…..on the other hand take a look at Green Living Technologies, I first hand have experienced their work with the homeless in LA. They really have taken growing produce to the vertical plane, unlike most of the concepts I have seen that still incorporate a horizontal element. I had a chance to listen to the CEO speak last week at the World Green Roof Conference about the next generations of vertical farmings, these guys are on to something that is beyond concept. From what I got out of the discussion the next generation does include recycling, vermiculture and the removal of methane gas from landfills….I am excited to see what they bring to the table….unlike toxic hydroponic water they are growing 100% organic is a soil base.
10. Alex S. on Oct 29th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
There are costs associated with food that go way beyond fuel and processing, and I think that forgetting about these is unwise. First, let us pay attention to the fact that almost all of our farming is highly subsidized. Congress passed a $380 billion farm bill (with no debate) this year. Let us add that into the cost of food and see how much of that $380 billion could be cut with vertical farming. Also, while we may have a lot of land and enough rain, what about countries in the Middle East that have no water and do not have a sustainable agricultural industry. What is the value for them of becoming completely independent of the U.S.? I bet they can’t put a number on that value.