Vertical Farming

See many more pictures, complete with explanations here.

How do you feed and provide water (using evapotranspiration) for 50,000 people and help prevent climate change using a 30 story building in the middle of a city? Vertical farming is one answer. A lot of our current and coming earthly problems could be solved by not clearing more and more land for agricultural purposes. Clearing of land for agriculture can result in desertification, increased pollution, increased use of pesticides and herbicides, deforestation, even increased disease in some cases.

The lack of posting for the past few weeks has been due to not finding anything interesting to talk about. Today I was in the Saranac Lake Free Library browsing Popular Science (I read it for the pictures) and whose picture was on the first page of one of the articles? Dr. Dickson Despommier, one of the world's most interesting parasitologists/ecologist (now a medical ecologist?). But urban vertical farming is an idea worth thinking about and will almost certainly come to fruition some day.

But I need not explain it. There is an excellent article about vertical farming in the New York Times magazine here.