When agriculture conquers the sky – Part 1

It’s common knowledge that the population on earth is growing and growing. Even if close scrutiny indicates that the population in Germany is decreasing, our planet is continuing to develop and becoming increasingly modern. Agriculture is also not stagnant: One future-oriented project is titled “Vertical Farming”.

Vertical farming is dealing with the issue of producing more food on decreasing areas of arable land. An average-sized town now requires more than tenfold its area to feed all its citizens. By the year 2030 approximately 4.8 billion people will live in urban centers. Calculations point out that more than one billion hectares of additional farmland will be needed. This is equivalent to the size of Brazil – an amount of arable land that isn’t available on earth. Therefore, the sky has to be conquered.

Plans are that vertical green houses or even complete agricultural enterprises will emerge behind the facades of normal high-rise buildings. Tens of thousands of citizens could be fed by such skyscraper farms – at a fraction of the amount of land, water and energy required by conventional farming. The benefit: all-season harvests and long distance transport and cooling would become obsolete. And, significantly less produce will spoil or be lost by crop failure. Each hectare used in vertical farming could result in 10 to 20 hectares of re-naturalised fallow land. Such managed environment would also reduce the deployment of pesticides and fertiliser. Water consumption would decrease significantly in a closed system, and this technical marvel would be rounded off by increased employment and additional energy production.

Details will be revealed in Part 2.