Discovery-News.com: Discovery’s Matt Danzico investigates vertical farming, an agricultural concept aimed at growing food and raising animals in skyscrapers in city centers.

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Urban Farming Grows Up

| Vertical farming | 20 Comments
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  • Kristina Thomas

    Intriguing idea! I don't know enough to be able to see the strengths and weaknesses of actually applying it, but I do like the idea of cities being able to be more sustainable – to be able to supply the basic needs of residents in a more environmentally friendly way.

  • Jim Bronaugh

    Under the Master/Slave paradigm, you would search for one building 30 stories tall and put all growth under the control of a small group of people. If you had 100 buildings 7 stories tall(7 stories was the limit on old buildings before elevators) you could take 100 of the 1000's of old and unused buildings in most large cities and convert them to grow, not only the food of the city, but a large portion of food for a state. You don't need everything in one place controlled by a small group.

  • Jim Bronaugh

    The whole point of marking a comment as a reply is to bring attention to a comment that generated a reaction. By putting the reply at the top, visitors get to see an important comment and by clicking on the 'see comment' link, they are able to read the original comment rather than search for the important comments in a sea of boredom and trollism. It's a good system and it works.

  • Connected-A51

    Yes nice propaganda cheap food from verticle farming system but i have heard allot of cheaper this and cheaper that all i see is expensieve after to much demand just like electricity.

  • Ernest Tang

    @map543211 What about renovating old abandoned buildings? wouldn't that perhaps drive down the cost?
    In another interview related to vertical farming they did speak a lot about renovating abandoned buildings.

  • BigBadBeef

    @overusedoxymoron2003 Im not talking about fear, im talking about opinionated dickweeds who say something from the top of their heads its as if they worked for years on it.

  • Gordy Flashman

    @lycanzer Awesome math. Now bring that to the United Nations with a budget requirment and see how long it takes. ^_- Remember, despite how awesome the idea sounds, the bottom line is how much will something like that costs

  • Gordy Flashman

    @Beef1188 Change is scary for alot of people. But this is the wave of the future. Perhaps a great palce to start would be….New Orleans. in 2005, the city was struck by a hurricane, and thousands of homes were destroyed. But those resdiential zones were retaken. The people left, or moved to other parts of the city. Thats thousands of acres of land available. Now what would happen if a company got some investors and built several multi-story farms, just outside of the city?

  • AndurilWielder

    This is really great. Gas wont be used to fuel tractors and cars maintaining fields and driving produce to and from farms and cities.

    It seems some people are nervous about eating food that's not grown from soil. Well the benefit is NOTHING compared to the payoff. It will still taste the same I'm sure. Also, apparently they can naturally grow these products three times as fast, because it wont be subject to the earth's seasons, but the temperature and atmosphere specific to the plant 24/7

  • Wanda Martin

    I agree with Beef1188. I am not a green/global warming believer or propronent, but this vertical farming idea has a place in our world today. Who cares how the vegetables, etc. are grown so long as they end up fresh, organic and easily accessible in the end? 

  • BigBadBeef

    Growing things in skyscrapers unnatural?

    Growing food in water instead of soil not appealing?

    What the fuck is wrong with these people? Are they retards or something? What does it matter if it grows in a building or on a field? Growing in water or growing in soil is the same fucking thing!

    If anything, vertical farms wouldn't need pesticides, wouldn't need fertilizer and wouldn't need 10cal. of oil for every calorrie they produce!

  • Lycanzer

    ok so i did some math and by what he said in the video. if we get a 30 story building covering 5 acres to feed 50,000 people, that means for the current 6.9 billion people we would need about 138,000 30-story buildings and if you put them all together side by side that's 1,078.125 sq mi. you can put the entire thing in Rhode island and still have 135 sq mi left

  • GeorgiaBoi70

    WOW!!! And they say all the idiots are down south. These farmers are feeding the plants the same nutrients they they would receive from soil. This would be perfect for any large city. Very inspiring. 

  • beaelliott

    Eliminating the animals would be the ideal situation… We don't "need" the "pork" or other flesh "foods". Great idea —- Just leave the animals out of the equation!

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