Skyscraper Farms Could Feed Millions by 2050

As the years have marched on and technology has progressed, one very important aspect of life has suffered: food quality.  Instead of using space wisely and growing food as locally as possible, we’ve come to rely on factory farms and produce shipped from hundreds – sometimes thousands – of miles away.  But, just because there isn’t space on the ground for traditional farms doesn’t mean urban areas can’t have fresh, local food.  Skyscraper farms have the potential to not only bring food production back to the local level – they could divert a major worldwide food shortage.

Scientist Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University, came up with the concept and hopes to see it implemented on a worldwide scale as soon as possible.

From Mail Online:

The revolutionary scientist proposes gleaming 21 storey skyscrapers that could potentially be as productive as 588 acres of land and grow up to 12 million lettuces a year.

He said the farms, projected to cost £45m to build and £2.7m a year to run, would be both environmentally friendly and economically profitable.

Dr Despommier created his concept in 1999 with graduate students during a class on medical ecology.

With the world’s population expected to increase to 3 billion by 2050 and almost 80 per cent of farming land in use, the idea has never been more relevant.

City planners and developers across the world have regarded Despommier’s idea with suspicion, but we can’t see why.  It seems so basic, so obvious, that we can’t believe people haven’t already begun doing it.  What’s the hold up?  We want to see these things built ASAP!

Link [Mail Online]

More Farmers Should Use the Lounge n Pick

Farmers, are you tired of your wives and daughters lounging around in the sun, soaking up rays while you’re out plowing the field and picking the harvest? Well, now you can put them to work with guaranteed 50% less complaining.  They won’t have to actually touch dirt at all, and the risk of coming into contact with insects is minimal.  With the Lounge n Pick, you can even employ paraplegics and the elderly.  The convenient removable cover allows your harvesters to sun themselves on nice days, and be shielded from the rain when necessary.  The convenient conveyer belt system delivers your harvest directly into containers at the end of the line.  It can be yours for only $999.99!*

*Fashionable camouflage bench pads extra.

Link [Wacky Archives]

Chocolate May Go Extinct Due to Unsustainable Farming Practices

How to get guys to care about global warming? Threaten their beer. How to get women to care? Start talking about chocolate going extinct. (That’s not sexist, is it?)

The Nature Conservation Resource Council (NCRC) recently announced that within 20 years, chocolate may be as rare as caviar. The reason seems to be unsustainable farming practices. Whereas chocolate, in its native state, grows in rainforest conditions with high biodiversity, it’s now farmed by clearing the forest and using hybrid seeds to produce higher output in a shorter amount of time. This leads to soil erosion and a shorter lifespan for the cacao trees, which will eventually lead to an overall shortage of cacao.

From Triple Pundit:

While many a chocoholic may lament this news, I wish to provide our readers with a little firsthand “reality check.” Most of the world’s cacao is grown in West Africa. While living in Ghana during my study-abroad year as an undergraduate, I was struck by the fact that, even though Ghana is a net exporter of cacao, most of the country’s inhabitants could not afford to purchase a Cadbury or Hershey’s bar. Although I shared many a fresh, delicious cacao fruit with my Ghanaian friends, actually eating a chocolate bar was considered a luxury.

For Ghanaians, “no chocolate 20 years from now” is now. Such reminders are necessary to place in perspective predictions of ecological change and impacts on human populations. While we, in wealthy, industrialized countries, may fear with trepidation the loss of resources and biodiversity associated with global warming, it is important to remember that half the world’s peoples are already living that reality.

Start breaking your dependence now, people. I know I’ll have to. But a world without chocolate sounds like a sad, sad place. What will we put in s’mores?

Link [Triple Pundit]
Photo credit: Flickr user Fimb

Giant Dead Zone in Gulf of Mexico to Grow Larger After Midwest Floods

Everything is fine, pay no attention to the GIANT DEAD ZONE in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. At least, that’s the stance the government seems to be taking. The EPA has released a ‘plan of action’ to tackle the problem, but no funds have been allocated to the inevitably very expensive project and a tangle of federal agencies involved in the plan ensures that they’ll all just be running around bumping into each other like dumbasses while nothing gets done.

The dead zone in the Gulf has been caused by chemical-laden runoff from farms in the Midwest, which flows down the Mississippi and pours millions of tons of nitrogen, phosphorous and other fertilizer into the Gulf of Mexico. What results is a ‘hypoxic event’, where the fertilizers cause algae to bloom out of control and suck all of the oxygen out of the surrounding waters, causing the water to become barren, killing sea life in the area.

The dead zone is getting ever-larger and recent flooding in the Midwest promises that it will be much worse this year. While this should be a major priority for the government, TIME Magazine reports,

A 2007 report by the National Research Council called for more aggressive leadership by the EPA to coordinate and oversee state activities along the Mississippi, but the agency doesn’t seem ready or able to seize that role. The plan itself reports that “resources are insufficient to gain the goals” of the task force. “We seem to be going in the opposite direction,” says Donald Scavia, a professor of natural resources and the environment at the University of Michigan. “We don’t seem committed to fixing the problem.”

Not that it’s an easy one to fix. Most of the nutrient pollution that ends up in the Gulf comes from the hundreds of thousands of farms in the Midwest. The only sure way to shrink the dead zone is to reduce the amount of fertilizer running off those farms. But thanks in part to the push for corn-based ethanol and the skyrocketing price of food crops, U.S. farmers are planting more acres for corn than they have since World War II — including 15 million more acres last year than in 2006. Although there are measures farmers can take to limit fertilizer runoff, those changes are expensive, and there’s little federal funding to support such conservation. The just-released action plan relies mostly on voluntary activities. “We need Congress to act as if this is going to get done,” says Doug Daigle, a member of the task force. “The state governments will contribute, but this has to be initiated by the Federal Government.”

The dead zone in the gulf is one of 150 in the world. Clearly, we as a nation need to change our agricultural policies, which have allowed this problem to occur in the first place. Hopefully, experts will find some way to alleviate the problem before it wipes out all life in the beautiful Gulf of Mexico.

Link [TIME Magazine]
Photo credit: Flickr user blmurch

Peak Oil, Peak Water… Peak Dirt?

Right now, there are proclamations of peak everything: peak oil, peak water, peak rice, peak metal, even peak guano. But would you ever have thought it possible to run out of dirt? It seems limitless, but in truth dirt is far more complicated than most people realize, and there were bound to be some consequences to the farming methods and chemicals that have been used in recent history.

From Planet Green:

Really, Peak Dirt- the world is losing soil 10 to 20 times faster than it is replenishing it. Drake Bennett in the Boston Globe tells us that dirt is complicated stuff, made from sand or silt, then years of plants adding nutrition, bugs and worms adding their excrement, dying and rotting.

“The resulting organic matter feeds a whole underground ecology that aerates the soil, fixes nutrients, and makes it more hospitable for plant life, and over time the process feeds back on itself. If the soil does not wash away or get parched by drought, it very gradually thickens. It takes tens of thousands of years to make 15 centimeters of topsoil, about 6 inches’ worth.”

Till it and plant a monoculture like corn on it and that soil gets depleted rapidly, so farmers add fertilizer, lots of it. The philosophy was “Well, if your soil’s degraded, just put some more fertilizer on, or till it another time and you can get the same crop yield,” says David Laird, a soil scientist.

So, what’s causing it? Lloyd Alter explains on Planet Green that ethanol, peak oil and meat are to blame. ‘Excessive demand for grain’, caused mainly by ethanol and meat production, has caused a huge increase in the use of fertilizer. Luckily, scientists are working on replenishing the soil with traditional farming methods, biochar and making soil from scratch. Check out the Planet Green article for the details.

Link [Planet Green]
Photo credit: Flickr user Crystl

The Banana is Heading Toward Extinction

Did you know that the variety of banana that we eat today isn’t as tasty as the one our parents and grandparents enjoyed prior to 1960? That’s right, we’re missing out on better bananas. Sad. Well, enjoy the variety we have left, because it’s next.

From The Scientist:

The banana we eat today is not the one your grandparents ate. That one - known as the Gros Michel - was, by all accounts, bigger, tastier, and hardier than the variety we know and love, which is called the Cavendish. The unavailability of the Gros Michel is easily explained: it is virtually extinct.

Introduced to our hemisphere in the late 19th century, the Gros Michel was almost immediately hit by a blight that wiped it out by 1960. The Cavendish was adopted at the last minute by the big banana companies - Chiquita and Dole - because it was resistant to that blight, a fungus known as Panama disease. For the past fifty years, all has been quiet in the banana world. Until now.

Apparently, Panama disease is back, and Cavendish bananas aren’t resistant to the new strain. There is no cure, and nearly every banana scientist says that although the disease is currently spreading through Malaysia and hasn’t yet hit Latin America, where our bananas come from, it’s only a matter of time. Dun dun dun!

Soon, the only choice we have left may very well be a genetically modifided (GMO) banana. In order to survive the Panama disease, it will have to be carefully created in a biotech lab.

What I think is most amazing about this story is that there are banana scientists. Who knew?

Link [The Scientist]
Photo credit: Flickr user Sister72

Chow Down on Insects to Help the Environment

Doesn’t the sound and texture of insect exoskeletons being crushed between your teeth make your stomach growl? Especially when their crispy outsides break open and you get that gush of mushy innards all over the inside of your mouth. Some people describe the grayish, greasy meat of the giant water bug as “perfumey, tastes like salty apples”.

Sorry if I just ruined your lunch, but, eating insects is being called a great new way to help the environment. David Gracer, a composition teacher at a Rhode Island community college, has made it his goal to persuade Americans to eat insects in an attempt to “shake up how we all think about our food supply”.

Discover Magazine has it:

Gracer wants people to move away from getting their protein from traditional livestock such as cows, pigs, and chickens because raising livestock has a huge negative impact on the environment, regardless of whether the animals belong to subsistence farmers in developing countries or a Western industrial conglomerate (see “Warning: Contains Pork By-Products,” page 40). A United Nations report released in 2006 calls the livestock sector “one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.” The report notes that, among other adverse impacts, livestock production is responsible for 18 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions. (That’s more than what is produced by transportation worldwide.) And the problem is only going to grow, with global production of meat reaching 465 million tons by 2050, double the amount produced in 2000.

Other benefits of insect eating include the fact that raising them has a low impact on the environment, and that they’re low in fat. Somehow, though, I can’t see even the poorest of the poor in America being desperate enough to bite into a cockroach patty sandwich. Considering that America has a narrow view of what is deemed acceptable to eat, broadening our horizons enough to include insects on the menu is probably no more than a pipe dream. More power to those who can stomach it!

Link [Discover Magazine]

Photo credit: Flickr user Barnaby

Pollution is a Bitch: Flowers Losing Their Scent, Bees Losing Their Way

A rose by any other name smells as sweet as umm… well… not much.

A new study suggests that flowers are actually losing their aroma due to pollution from automobiles and power plants. Some are also guessing that this finding might explain why bees are dwindling in numbers in some areas of the world.

Researchers at the University of Virginia have been studying how the scents of flowers travel in the wind, finding that the scent molecules bond with pollutants such as ozone. The result: floral aromas are destroyed. Pollution is actually chemically altering flowers.

“The scent molecules produced by flowers in a less polluted environment, such as in the 1800s, could travel for roughly 1,000 to 1,200 meters [3,300 to 4,000 feet]; but in today’s polluted environment downwind of major cities, they may travel only 200 to 300 meters [650 to 980 feet],” said study team member Jose D. Fuentes.

This means more than a lack of au naturel floral scents for us humans to enjoy. It could also have potentially disastrous fallout in the natural world. Bees depend on scent while seeking flowers out. If they can’t find the flowers, they can’t pollinate them - and guess what that means? Not just a decline in bee population. Bees are significant pollinators of many agriculture crops and native plants. The effects of flowers losing their scent could mean problems with food sources the world over. Scary indeed - do you need any more reasons to cut your carbon emissions?!

This news seems to provide a grim window into a sci-fi future that could have come from the mind of a literary great: one in which food has lost its flavor, and nature has lost its color. Sure, 1984 is my favorite novel and I’m known for gloom-and-doom paranoia, but is it not getting more and more likely?

Link [LiveScience]

Photo: Flickr user zaphodsotherhead

Developing Nations Struggle to Cope with Rising Food Prices, Once Again The Poor Get Screwed

I live on the edge of town, with real farmland about a quarter mile away. The fields in one direction have been in alfalfa for a decade. Around the corner, in a second field, they’ve been growing tomatoes for about as long. A couple of months ago, I drove past and saw machinery in both places, and thought for a dark moment that it was another suburb going in–but no. With the housing market collapse, those days are gone. Instead, wheat sprouted and grew, hundreds of acres of it. The wheat is now tall enough that, when the wind blows through the fields, it looks like it should have its own inspirational soundtrack.

Why did they switch to wheat? Because the price has gone through the roof, which is having grim repercussions all over the world. From the International Herald Tribune:

Egypt’s government is struggling to contain a political crisis sparked by rising world food prices. Violent clashes have broken out at long lines for subsidized bread, and the president, worried about unrest, has ordered the army to step in to provide more.

The crisis in the world’s most populous Arab country and a top U.S. ally in the Mideast is a stark sign of how rising food prices are roiling poorer countries worldwide….

The issue in Egypt centers on subsidized versions of the flat, round bread that is a staple of people’s diets. Acute shortages of subsidized bread, which is sold at less than one U.S. cent a loaf, have caused long lines at distributors, prompting violence at some sites in poor neighborhoods in recent weeks.

At least seven people have died, according to police.

At first, one might hold Egypt’s kludgy government responsible, but as the article explains, economists place the blame “mainly on the rising cost of wheat on the world market, where prices have tripled in the last 10 months.” World food production has been a single integrated entity for a long time now, and it does respond to prices; hence, the ketchup tomatoes down the block from me made way for wheat. The problem is that it will still take months for that food to reach mouths in, say, Egypt, and hunger won’t wait that long.

Link [International Herald Tribune]

Photo Credit: Flickr user MrBologna

How Now See Through Cow- Front Row View on a Bovine Stomach

Behold the fistula.

It’s guaranteed to creep people out, but in the world of cows and other such creatures, it’s routine. “Animals can live a surprising amount of time with a permanent hole to their stomach, especially if it is a surgically made fistula.” There is a reason:

Agricultural scientists learn about the digestive system of cattle by putting holes in cows–and the cows stay alive and well. These cows (fitted with a sealing cover called a “cannula”) each have a hole into their stomach. Through this hole one can extract food caught mid-stream through the digestive system.

Fistulated cows are used to research the digestibility of different foodstuffs for cattle. One can feed the cow, then later catch the food while it’s digesting to see how it’s doing. Without fistulated cows, one would have to look at external factors in order to garner information about the best food for cows–none of which are as accurate as food sampled right from the stomach.

The site explains that cows with fistulas live longer since it’s easier to treat them when they have illnesses in their digestive systems. I can add that a fistulated cow is liable to have a long life because she’s more valuable. Apart from giving milk, having a fistula is the nearest thing, in a cow, to having a useful talent.

I know about these things because it so happens that, in my life, fistulas are pretty routine. I work at UC Davis, where we have a big experimental dairy herd, and a number of the cows are fistulated. Although, jeez–the fistulas in these photographs are huge compared to ours. They’re like portholes. You expect to see someone inside the cow, peering out.

Link [Oddity Central]

Earl Butz, The Man Who Killed the Family Farm, Has Died

Plenty brings news that the Man Blamed for the Downfall of the Family Farm has Died. Former Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz was the man who told small farmers “Get big or get out”, who pushed policy changes that encouraged major consolidation in agriculture and who more or less killed the family farm during the Nixon Administration.

Here’s a quick snip, head over to Plenty and read the whole piece.

He encouraged large farms to buy chemicals in bulk and skim down labor costs. Tying subsidies to yields rather than acreage, loosening regulations, and beating back trade rules increased output by American farms and lowered food prices. Butz certainly accomplished his goal. But at what cost?

The president of the National Farmers Organization at the time of the Eisenhower administration told the Senate agricultural committee that Butz “is widely known among farmers for his callous lack of concern about their welfare.” More to the point, he was also a paid board member and stockholder of three agribusiness giants (International Minerals and Chemicals, Stokely-Van Camp, and Ralston Purina). A 2003 article in Believer magazine called “Children of the Corn Syrup” points out that Butz might have been fond of saying “Get the government out of the ag business,” but what he actually did was just the opposite: putting agribusiness in the government. Today, critics of big ag, from Michael Pollan to the filmmakers of King Corn, blame Butz for the demise of the American family farm.

Not to kick a man when he’s down (in the ground), but Mr. Butz sounds like he was a real Class-A Corporate Jerkass.

Link [Plenty]