Skyfarming

[Nashville_maestro]

Skyfarming Article

Here's a pretty amazing idea that could work wonders on world hunger and green up our planet in the process.

Consider this:

-One 30 story building could feed roughly 50 THOUSAND people.

-150 of these buildings could feed the entire city of New York.

-If we made an entire city of these (roughly the size of New York), we could feed almost the entire United States.

...all the while producing green electricity and preserving our land..

[Neo]

I will be that we'll see entire districts of these within our lifetime (or at least those of us that are of a younger generation). As our planet warms (even moderately of a degree or so) our farmland will become more scarce. Containing our farms in a climate controlled facility would resolve that issue in addition to having the source of your food grown within blocks of the destination. I'm all for this type of structure, but we need to find a way to build these structures environmentally friendly. Of course, one could say that even building these with our current technology would be much more environmentally friendly than shipping oranges from CA to NY or tomatoes from FL to WA.

[dpbaker]

It does seem a good idea in theory. If the energy needed to maintain proper environmental conditions could be generated on-site via composting, wind, solar - with minimal input from "the grid" - entire regions/localities could become far less dependent on say California that can be impacted by drought conditions. I don't know that one of these towers would be able to develop sufficient power on it's own, but it could generate some. Despommier's estimates are overly optimistic IMHO. Gray water also does not lend itself to certain plants and in fact kills them depending on how it is treated, though I'm sure enough crop plants could be watered with this system. Still not convinced the net energy needs would be overall neutral, my guess is that there would be some consumption.