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Vertical farming, the best solution to support an ever growing population or just a scam?
IMHO it has a lot of potential but not being able to grow grains really is something that should be tackled sooner rather than later. But I could see this being used by self sustaining communities to provide lots of food while using very little space. And it's technically more environmentally friendly than just using vast stretches of land to produce the same amount of food.
It sounds like a good idea for the crops in which it can be a solution for. I was thinking of ordering my own vertical garden for mushroom variety.
Look’s like something you’d build in Minecraft.
just another racket
Sorry but I don't quite understand, mind elaborating a bit more?
In the picture shown here, do the roots go out of the individual baskets and into a pool of water?
They do! The water splashes on them and they can happily absorb their food. :)
They get greedy though so the roots need to be maintained just like the rest of the plant.
With drought being more common than ever and increasingly so, I believe vertical farming is necessary. It's much more water efficient than open fields. Also, we need more forest instead of fields to keep a sustainable biodiversity.
However, currently it's only possible for certain kinds of plants to grow in vertical farms.
Another interesting developing method is agrivoltiac farming. We're going to see more of that sooner than vertical farming.
I fail to see what the pillar provides over just having a bunch of plants in a wire rack or shelves, beyond automating the act of watering -- which there are already better ways to do anyway, ones that don't involve having a bizarre, potentially-maintenance-heavy solution like what the pillar presents... or you could just water your plants by hand.
As such, this pillar feels like an entirely unnecessary thing. They've reinvented shelves, with watering. Loud shelves, because that contraption must make noise. They're not even good shelves. I'll just take regular shelves, thanks, and a watering can.
OP's example is the wrong way to do it as they water plants in soil, there are plenty of hydroponic towers that you can 3d print and what they do is allow you to have hydroponics (growing plants in water) with very little space requirement so that works great in small gardens or appartment balconies.
Sure. But still, why a tower? Even at their best, towers are just shelves that require more floorspace.
A tower design like in the OP's picture allows separating the humid root-space from the general work environment which has some practical advantages and I guess also lowers the risk of fungal infections of the roots.
it doesn't scale and it's limited in what crops it can grow.
Everything is limited in what crops it can grow, if we can maximize the productivity of space in semi urban areas then we can use the other space for crops that best suit it - grains are great for distant rural farms because they store so well, same with potato, etc where you can fill a huge truck and drive into the city once every season but stuff like greens and herbs lose so much after only a few days from being picked so you either need expensive chilling or other processing or a small lorry taking a load every few days which really isn't a great way of doing anything