The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century

runoff, typically laden with leftover salts, herbicides, fungicides, pesticides, and fertilizers leached from the nutrient-depleted farmed soil, is returned to countless rivers and streams.

Near pollution-free burning of solid municipal waste has all but eliminated the need for landfills, and at the same time produced much-needed energy through steam-driven power generation of electricity. Grey

farming in the United States consumes some 20 percent of the fossil fuels used annually. Because food from the vertical farm needn’t travel very far, its rate of spoilage will also be greatly reduced. No storage will mean less refrigeration and more fossil fuel saved.

Bamboo in various diameters could also serve the purpose quite well, and since it’s one of the toughest natural materials we know of,

let’s assume we could somehow convince the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa to convert all their agricultural land back into hardwood forest, which most of it was prior to 1600. If it were allowed to regrow, that much hardwood forest would consume annually around 10 percent of U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide as it reached maturity (thir

Today, modern incineration strategies, including plasma arc gasification, are widely accepted for handling most kinds of wastes throughout Europe, and Germany has become a world leader in applying incineration to the safe disposal of both solid and liquid waste streams.

industrial-quality water costs five cents a gallon (a conservative estimate),

we who live in the technosphere have consciously chosen not to integrate our lives with nature, at the expense of the biosphere. Fortunately, we have not yet learned to directly control the hydrological cycle or any of the other biogeochemical cycles that ensure that matter gets reused.

ADVANTAGES OF THE VERTICAL FARM Year-round crop production No weather-related crop failures No agricultural runoff Allowance for ecosystem restoration No use of pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers Use of 70–95 percent less water Greatly reduced food miles More control of food safety and security New employment opportunities Purification of grey