The Rise of Vertical Farming
There are 7.4 billion people on the planet, and all of them need to be fed. What's the most efficient and sustainable method for accomplishing this? Traditional farming strategies have monopolized our natural resources, and often prove wasteful and too heavily reliant on pesticides and other toxic pollutants. Many regions don't have the means to produce their own organic food supply, and must have it shipped to them from great distances. In future years, as the global population continues to rise and viable farming lands dwindle, our planet could face a food crisis like we've never experienced before. The new vpro documentary The Rise of Vertical Farming explores one possible solution.
Vertical farming literally turns the commonplace farming model on its head. Rows of crops are no longer earthbound, but stacked stories high in a tightly controlled indoor environment. Housed in abandoned warehouses, factories and office buildings, these farms can be erected in cities across the globe, mass produce organic foods for neighboring communities, and greatly reduce the destruction of our ecosystem in the process.
Industrialized farming techniques have profoundly altered the food industry, but they've also contributed to environmental depletion and widespread chronic disease. As a result, the demand for fresh, locally grown produce is at an all-time high. Vertical farming could be the key to fulfilling that demand.
The filmmakers spotlight several of these operations from the United States to Sweden, including Aerofarms, the world's largest vertical farm which is based in New Jersey. These operations make meaningful use of neglected infrastructure and have the potential to elevate the health of the consumers they serve. Often positioned just a few miles from large grocers and distribution centers, they can also slash the span of travel from farm to plate from days and weeks to mere minutes.
The Rise of Vertical Farming gives us an enthralling tour inside a modern farming system that appears to be on the verge of breaking through into the mainstream. It's a social experiment that could one day become a full-fledged industry that serves the needs of billions. The film pays tribute to the power of ingenuity, and inspires hopes for a healthier and more sustainable future.
Directed by: Geert Rozinga
The documentary is very informative and directs us to the future of innovating forming.
By the way, you can watch "Green Gold" on this website about re-greening the barren lands and deserts. Seems much more sensible than vertical farming. Well, maybe not if YOU don't stop the GeoEngineering / Chemtrails polluting everything.
Question everything. Prove that there are 7.4bln people alive on the planet instead of 6.66bln ...or less.
@Richy needs to do more independent looking rather than believing the propaganda fed to him via major corporate media. Nikola Tesla and others solved the energy problem 100 years ago. Others have come along since then. Why isn't it available? If big banks which own big oil stand to lose billions from someone's invention, what are they going to do? They shut down Nikola Tesla and they have been shutting down most since. When the banksters own govt, it is a rather simple thing to confiscate your work in the name of national security; which means bankster financial security; and told to stop or suffer prison or death. You can read what happened to some of these people, incl. Tesla, if you do a little research.
What your seemingly dumb as a fence post big pharma trained doc didn't tell you: There are 16 known stomach types, some radically different than others. Meaning we are not all designed to eat the same foods. I'm not Asian. Rice or other grains are not going to keep me well. Too much makes me sick; just like feeding cattle too much corn makes them sick because they were not designed to eat it. Ask any feedlot veterinarian.
Hence if you were designed to eat meat, you shouldn't be eating commercially produced meat. Find a small farmer that is raising them right or grow it yourself. Same for whatever you eat. Note that the "Forks Over Knives" documentary docs never mentioned elderly Eskimos nor that the meat that causes all the problems is commercially raised the wrong way.
When you figure out that govt is by and for corporations ...until YOU decide to gather together to take it back via running your own vetted candidates for all offices from all parties, so someone wise will be running the govt... Until that time you will get the privilege to pay for more corporate poison which will also fill the pockets of their corporate cousins in the incorrectly termed "health care" industry. Either that or vote with your dollars and support your small farms doing it right. If you do, more will pop up.
There are other documentaries on this website regarding urban farmers doing it right. If it isn't Organic -or- No Spray Non GMO, then it isn't worth eating. Even then you need to verify that they are feeding their plants and animals full spectrum nutrition.
You have made some excellent points and I have been of the same mind for quite some time now. Thank you for the information that there are more urban farming documentaries available here as I am new to this site.
Amazing documentary and it gives hope knowing that we might actually be able to feed the population in years to come instead of killing each other over whats left of our crops.
Keep in mind, the more compact your food source becomes, the more susceptible to terrorist attacks it becomes. A single terrorist on a mega vertical farming tower could possible cripple 10-20% of a country's food supply.
Any comment on the petroleum based growing medium?
love this, when food becomes abundant, it will all be free of charge... this is sooner than your doubts allow... peace to all .. fearless not careless. ..
The only way there will be "free food" is when people get out there and raise their own gardens or work in a coop and get a share of the crop.
This is all good and well, but humans need carbohydrates to survive. For example, on any given day about half of the world's 7.4 billion humans eat rice as their main source of carbohydrates. All of the examples here show vertical and indoor production of leafy greens and tomatoes, plants which can survive in an soil-less medium. Humankind can't survive solely on these kinds of vegetables. What about fruits which grow on trees, like stonefruits and citrus? These woody plants require soil as they have large root systems.
What about rice? What about corn? What about wheat? What about potatoes? These 4 groups of species are the bastion of keeping people fed and alive and this will never change.
What I see mostly here are the types of people who identify investment opportunities and pursue them. I don't think the world's energy problem can't be solved by 'cool new tech'. Our greatest folly is the inability to understand the exponential function. Oil is running out, so either we curtail the growth of the population NOW, or physical law will aggressively correct it for us in the future.
I guess, since we won't be getting off this planet any time soon, the increasing population will need to be fed as a way to prevent revolution or mass deaths.
So, making use of urban spaces seems to be inevitable. And the only way to do that efficiently is to use methodological data processing and automation.
Buy once industrial real estate owners realize their land situated between urban and suburban area may have value, the change of profits on vertical farming may have to enter the arena of government control and political pandering. Corruption soon to follow, funded by tax payers.
Nice idea, but humans tend to mess these things up.
I'ts all well and good to gather the ecological data and recreate it. But, they'll never grow an Idaho potato because the soil they grow in create the flavor of the potato. Just like so many foods, herbs etc.
My nan used to grow gooseberry in her garden. We, my Brothers and, never actually liked them, but the the fact our nan grow them in her yard is pretty cool, no?
600 acres of wheat ok. Fodder grown in a Monolithic Dome done Google both jim james.
Russia building 100, 90 foot tall by 240 diameter for food.
Reconstruct for Fodder. 90 less water better feed.
I am Passionate & Care about the Health & Wellness of Mother Nature The Planet & People. Especially the children. Like Whitney Houston said in her famous song. I believe the children are the future, teach them well and let them lead the way, show them all the beauty they posses inside, give them a sense of pride.
Alan you got it!
Hippocrates: Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food.
In 2012 International Union of concerned scientists completed the first global research of its kind. Global Burden Disease Study Published in 2012 Most comprehensive, systematic analysis causes of sickness, disease death to date
Involving nearly 500 researchers ,300 institutions in 50 countries, 100,000 data sources.
What did the researchers find? Our biggest killer was food, our diet.
What every man woman youth and child needs to know. The truth about food, health, nutrition, sickness, disease, medicine, beauty, anti-aging and longevity.
First vertical farming is not sustainable or profitable, at least not yet, as technology progresses perhaps. Any one interested i have link to University Professor who shows why Vertical Farming is BS. I care more about nutrition than mono cropping vertical systems.
They would have you believe we need more land the size of Brazil to feed people by 2050. I call Bullshite. We have all the land and technology we need. We just have to build and re-build soils with all that organic waste going to landfills instead of producing methane gas arguably 100 times worse that carbon dioxide.
Al Gores scam in China is nothing more than chicken houses in his BS mantra cradle to cradle Follow the Money ppl.
Agro-Ecology, Permaculture and other systems can supply all we need. We need to take shipping out of the equation, the major cost of food. 35 plus years and thousands of hours of research and study the fact is the purpose of food is to be GMO Glutten, chemical free, local, fresh, tasty, healthy = nutritious= no need for prescriptions period.! A system that treats symptoms not root causes ?! When fact is, doctors are wrong in diagnosis approximately 90% of the time. And only way Psychiatrist can make a living is by professing people to be sick.
The Doctor of the Future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause of prevention of disease”. Thomas A Edison
You can not plant grow buy sell serve and eat high quality tasty nutritious food until first you know what that is. Sad to say the majority of people have no real clue. There is only one way to know what you are eating and that is to test it. Spend 60 dollars on ebay buy a refractometer print of a brix index chart for free on line hand it on your fridge door and welcome to the world of people who are or are starting to wake up to reality of what food is and isn't.
I could say more about the fish issue water disappearing (lakes rivers etc ) at an alarming rate and more . But anyone feel free to contact me.
God Bless you all and please take care of your family and loved ones using Moringa and Hemp in my opinion the two most important plants on the planet.
When they can grow 6000 acres of wheat or barley or sweet corn on a vertical farm, let me know........
"...industrial farming is not sustainable...on the plus side, it makes our food possible. We can't knock it all together."
An unsustainable practice will fail, by definition. Defending or supporting it financially, even a little, is irrational. In addition, all produce is not equal. Conventional produce is very low in nutrition and high in poisons, e.g., pesticides, herbicides, fungicides. It does not compare to organic; it contrasts.
The permaculture movement is beyond sustainable; it increases production by improving the fertility and quantity of the soil. It increasingly creates topsoil. This prevents erosion and captures rainfall which reduces the need to irrigate, till or use fertilizer and poisons. The produce is nutrition dense and safe to eat. The land produces much more of it. Small farms are so profitable they out-compete large conventional operations.
The permaculture is easy to join because financial capital is replaced by human capital, i.e., hands-on management.
A sad look at what will become the new GMO/fish farming/tobacco.
One just has to see PPL walking around with hair nets and breathing covers over their face to realize that these plants are grown in a place where they have zero tolerance for any bacteria. Thus the PPL who eat this rubbish will also have zero tolerance for any bacteria so will eventually become the 'boy in the bubble', terrified of an insect.
Growing plants that only have certain narrow bands of light and not the full spectrum even as the Dutch ones which consume light filtered through plastics. No natural wind carrying bugs/bacteria/dust and random rain etc etc. to vary the plants, will produce rubbish not unlike the disgusting Mickey Dee hamburgers which are similarly over-engineered to the point that even mould/fungus/bacteria will not even bother to decompose it, as per the documentaries on the subject like "Supersized" etc..
The abundance of plastics and unnatural substrates and waste used as nutrition, containers, watering systems, substrates etc has never been studied, although you'll notice that the Germans have decided that certain chemical traces in the foods necessitate them refusing it.
This is a recipe for disaster for humanity where children are taught by professional teachers rather than their parents.
The Chinese model of destroying their agriculture by central (government planning) destroying insects (bees etc by over use of pesticides and herbicides) to the point where hordes of PPL are required to go around and pollinate plants. Their use of night soil (uncomposted sewage trucked out from cities to ponds during the night for spreading over the soil in the next days) which is the reason why even lettuce has to be boiled. It's full of pathogens, heavy metals, toilet paper, condoms, you name it.
This does not bode well for the future.
All of the professor's hand wringing about sustainability is just his opinion. Carbon dioxide is necessary for plants/trees, in fact in some of these operations CO2 is fed to the plants on a schedule and in specific quantities. Pretty much every one of Al Gore's predictions have not materialized. All that has materialized is his and his buddies' company that surprise surprise sell and buy "Carbon credits"
Some universities have participated in these Frankenfoods experiments and the children are being indoctrinated in our schools.
This sadly is NWO/Globalist propaganda.
Great video and glad I was able to enjoy it. This looks like the route we're going to have to go if the population continues at it's present rate.
I think every city in the world should grow fresh food for that city! Especially in cities with food availability, like Africa and other 3rd world cites. Starvation can be a thing of the past. The African government should provide for its people where they cannot afford to buy food.
I liked very much the film on vertical farming only the subtitles didn't work and I couldn't hear what people said so I missed all the conversation and explanations. Thank you.