Av Companionship Does Vertical Farms

From AV Club:

Tomato, ToMacco: Farmers are elevating their crops amongst vertical farming

With to a greater extent than than 5.6 i chiliad 1000 articles, Wikipedia is an invaluable resource, whether you’re throwing a term newspaper together at the concluding minute, or doing legal inquiry on whether it tin genuinely live on considered ready on if your victim habitually made the “cows outstanding inwards their field” joke. We explore some of Wikipedia’s oddities inwards our 5,690,195-week series, Wiki Wormhole.

This week’s entry: Vertical farming

What it’s about: Ah, the farmer’s life. The aroma of the soil, the light-green of the leaves, the sentiment from the 45th floor. Yes, similar bathrooms before them, farms are moving into the time to come past times moving indoors. Hydroponic farming has made vertical farms possible, inwards which flooring subsequently flooring of a edifice is devoted to growing food. One such farm inwards Buffalo, New York contains 17 i chiliad 1000 plans, too a “windowless farm” inwards Kyoto produces 6 i chiliad 1000 heads of lettuce a year.

Biggest controversy: It’s an opened upwards inquiry every bit to whether vertical farms are genuinely beneficial. While they don’t purpose pesticides or chemic fertilizers, their electricity needs are far beyond that of a traditional farm. And spell farms that don’t accept to bargain amongst pests or changes inwards weather condition tin live on to a greater extent than efficient, the terms of a large edifice inwards an urban see to a greater extent than oft than non far outpaces the terms savings of non having to carry nutrient from solid soil to city.

Strangest fact: The thought of vertical farms has been around a long time. Sir Francis Bacon start proposed growing plants without soil inwards 1627, too past times the mid-1800s, “soil-less cultivation” was beingness used routinely. Gilbert Ellis Bailey coined the phrase “vertical farming” inwards his 1915 mass of the same name, only he used the phrase to regard plants from summit to bottom (i.e., from leaves to root). However, vi years earlier, Life Magazine published a concept drawing of a tall edifice that cultivated food, too shortly Bailey’s phrase was used to depict what Rem Koolhaas called “the skyscraper every bit utopian device for [food] production.”...MORE