A former Chicago meatpacking plant becomes a self-sustaining vertical farm

23 April 2012
By Julie Ma

Had Willy Wonka had been fascinated by industrial ecology instead of cocoa beans, his factory may have looked something like The Plant, Chicago’s first entirely self-sustaining "vertical farm."

The Plant occupies a former meatpacking plant and slaughterhouse in the Union Stock Yards, transforming a huge brick building that once specialized in bringing red meat to the masses into a green space all about urban farming without waste. The interior looks like something straight out of a scientific-environmental fantasy.

Tenants include aquaponic farms (think vegetables on water beds flourishing under colored UV lights), a tilapia fish farm, beer and Kombucha tea breweries, a mushroom garden, and a host of independent bakers and caterers that will work together in a communal kitchen space. Future plans include living walls and rooftop gardens.

But the most ambitious part of the building is its focus on producing "net-zero waste" in its 93,500-square-foot space. Spent grains from the beer brewery will feed the tilapia. The waste produced by the fish will feed the mushroom garden or be converted nitrates to feed the hydroponic plants. Those plants will clean the water through natural processes and be cycled back into the fish tanks. Taken together, the system will make the building completely self-sustainable. With the help of a few machines, including an anaerobic digester (similar to a waste-eating mechanical "stomach" that produces biogas) and a combined heat and power system, the building hopes to go off the grid within the next four years.

“Industrial ecology—the concept of using other people’s waste as input—is fascinating. In nature, there’s no waste, but there is so much waste in human consumption and development,” says Melanie Hoekstra, The Plant's director of operations. “This is an obvious problem that we can resolve with a building that can do so many things. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s really close.” […]

A Former Chicago Meatpacking Plant Becomes a Self-Sustaining Vertical Farm

Technorati Tags: North America,agriculture,green agriculture,green architecture,permaculture,recycling,urban agriculture

We can feed 9 billion people in 2050

By Debora Mackenzie
17:16 11 January 2011

The 9 billion people projected to inhabit the Earth by 2050 need not starve in order to preserve the environment, says a major report on sustainability out this week.

Agrimonde describes the findings of a huge five-year modelling exercise by the French national agricultural and development research agencies, INRA and CIRAD. It is the second report on sustainability launched this week to provide a healthy dose of good news.

The French team began with a goal – 3000 calories per day for everyone, including 500 from animal sources – then ran a global food model repeatedly, with and without environmental limits on farming. The aim was to see how the calorie goal could be achieved.

"We found three main conditions," says Hervé Guyomard of INRA. "The biggest surprise was that some regions will depend even more on imports", even as their production rises. This, he says, means that we will need to find ways to counter excessive fluctuations in world prices so that imports are not hindered.

In addition, says Guyomard, "the rich must stop consuming so much". He points out that food amounting to 800 calories is lost per person each day as waste in richer nations.

The model suggested that realistic yield increases could feed everyone, even as farms take measures to protect the environment, such as preserving forests or cutting down on the use of fossil fuels. The key will be to tailor detailed solutions to different regions.

These are the main challenges for research, says Guyomard. For example, high-yield farming typically means large expanses of one crop, which encourages crop diseases and requires more pesticides.

Instead, researchers could find ways for farmers to raise yields while maintaining biodiversity. Guyomard says food scientists will need to organise globally, as climate scientists have done.

We can feed 9 billion people in 2050

Technorati Tags: agriculture

After oil spill, Alabama, Mississippi landowners paid to create artificial marshes

By George Altman, Press-Register
Monday, October 11, 2010

WASHINGTON — Alabama and Mississippi are paying landowners $6.75 million in total to create artificial marshes, typically by flooding farm fields, for birds deprived of natural marshland by the oil spill, according to government information.

Top conservation officials in both states said that the decision to launch the federal program, dubbed the Migratory Bird Habitat Initiative, was made in the early stages of the spill, when no one knew how much oil would gush or for how long.

Although the surface of Gulf waters and shores appears to have escaped a worst-case scenario, they say the program is still doing good.

“Had we done nothing and then the worst would have happened, where would we be?” said Alabama State Conservationist William Puckett. …

Homer Wilkes, state conservationist for Mississippi, said that the “ounce of prevention” represented by the program is far better than the “pound of cure” that would have been required had birds been limited to oiled marshes. …

Puckett said that regardless of the program’s initial spill-related mission, new places for migratory birds to rest are beneficial. “The positive is, we did create thousands and thousands of acres of additional bird habitat,” he said. …

After oil spill, Alabama, Mississippi landowners paid to create artificial marshes

Technorati Tags: wetland,oil spill,oil production,environmental restoration,bird decline,agriculture

Seawater greenhouses to bring life to the desert

The planned project would use solar power to evaporate salt water, generating cool air and pure water thereby allowing food to be grown

By Alok Jha, green technology correspondent guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 September 2008 15.50 BST

Vast greenhouses that use seawater to grow crops could be combined with solar power plants to provide food, fresh water and clean energy in deserts, under an ambitious proposal from a team of architects and engineers.

The Sahara Forest project would marry huge greenhouses with concentrated solar power (CSP), which uses mirrors to focus the sun's rays and generate heat and electricity. The installations would turn deserts into lush patches of vegetation, according to its designers, and without the need to dig wells for fresh water, which has depleted acquifers in many parts of the world.

The team includes one of the lead architects behind Cornwall's Eden project and demonstration plants are already running in Tenerife, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

Plants cannot grow in deserts because of the extreme temperatures and lack of nutrients and water. Charlie Paton, one of the Sahara Forest team and the inventor of the seawater greenhouse concept, said his technology was a proven way to transform arid environments.

"Plants need light for growth but they don't like heat beyond a certain point," said Paton. Above a particular temperature, the amount of water lost through the holes in its leaves, called stomata, gets so large that a plant will shut down photosynthesis and cannot grow.

The greenhouses work by using the solar farm to power seawater evaporators and then pump the damp, cool air through the greenhouse. This reduces the temperature by about 15C compared to that outside. At the other end of the greenhouse from the evaporators, the water vapour is condensed. Some of this fresh water is used to water the crops, while the rest can be used for the essential task of cleaning the solar mirrors.

"So we've got conditions in the greenhouse of high humidity and lower temperature," said Paton. "The crops sitting in this slightly steamy, humid condition can grow fantastically well." …

Seawater greenhouses to bring life to the desert

Technorati Tags: solar power,agriculture

Proposal for London Bridge has solar power, vertical farm

 

London Bridge isn't falling down, it is just really boring. It used to be an exciting place, an inhabited bridge full of shops and taverns, but they got rid of all that centuries ago and then shipped the thing off to Lake Havasu in Arizona. But the idea of London Bridge is 800 years old this week, and the Royal Institute of British Architects and the wonderfully named Worshipful Company of Chartered Architects ran an architectural competition to design a new inhabited bridge. Laurie Chetwood was the winner. …

Proposal For London Bridge Has Solar Power, Vertical Farm

Technorati Tags: green architecture,agriculture,solar power

Phosphorus famine: the threat to our food supply

This underappreciated resource--a key component of fertilizers--is still decades from running out. But we must act now to conserve it, or future agriculture could collapse

By David A. Vaccari   

As complex as the chemistry of life may be, the conditions for the vigorous growth of plants often boil down to three numbers, say, 19-12-5. Those are the percentages of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, prominently displayed on every package of fertilizer. In the 20th century the three nutrients enabled agriculture to increase its productivity and the world’s population to grow more than sixfold. But what is their source? We obtain nitrogen from the air, but we must mine phosphorus and potassium. The world has enough potassium to last several centuries. But phosphorus is a different story. Readily available global supplies may start running out by the end of this century. By then our population may have reached a peak that some say is beyond what the planet can sustainably feed.

Moreover, trouble may surface much sooner. As last year’s oil price swings have shown, markets can tighten long before a given resource is anywhere near its end. And reserves of phosphorus are even less evenly distributed than oil’s, raising additional supply concerns. The U.S. is the world’s second-largest producer of phosphorus (after China), at 19 percent of the total, but 65 percent of that amount comes from a single source: pit mines near Tampa, Fla., which may not last more than a few decades. Meanwhile nearly 40 percent of global reserves are controlled by a single country, Morocco, sometimes referred to as the “Saudi Arabia of phosphorus.” Although Morocco is a stable, friendly nation, the imbalance makes phosphorus a geostrategic ticking time bomb.

In addition, fertilizers take an environmental toll. Modern agricultural practices have tripled the natural rate of phosphorus depletion from the land, and excessive runoff into waterways is feeding uncontrolled algal blooms and throwing aquatic ecosystems off-kilter. While little attention has been paid to it as compared with other elements such as carbon or nitrogen, phosphorus has become one of the most significant sustainability issues of our time. ...

Phosphorus Famine: The Threat to Our Food Supply

Technorati Tags: resource depletion,agriculture,algae bloom,dead zone

Big impact of climate change on India's farm yields: World Bank

New Delhi, May 25 (IANS) Dryland farmers in Andhra Pradesh may see their incomes decline by 20 percent, the sugarcane yield in Maharashtra may go down 30 percent, and there may be much more flooding in the Orissa coast, says a new World Bank report.

Pointing out that this will have a serious impact in a country where 57 percent of the people are directly dependent on agriculture, the report, Climate Change Impacts in Drought-and Flood-Affected Areas: Case Studies in India, says the country can improve its resilience to climate change through a combination of measures and right incentives aimed at multiple levels of government.

The report, the first of its kind in South Asia, was released here Monday. It looks at options of adaptation to climate change in two drought-prone regions of Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra and a flood-prone region in Orissa.

“Although climate change impacts may take decades to manifest, there is a need for action now to avoid higher future costs and missed opportunities associated with a development path that compromises on climate risk management,” said Richard Damania, environmental economist in the World Bank and leader of the study.

“For example, the report says incomes on the small rain-fed farms in Andhra Pradesh could decline by five percent under modest climate change and by over 20 percent under harsher conditions, bringing farmers closer to, and in many cases, under the poverty line.

“Many of the actions and policies that would build future climate resilience produce development benefits here and now. Focussing on these measures would thus yield a double dividend for development and climate sustainability.”

At the release of the report, acknowledging the need for action, J. Mauskar, additional secretary in the Ministry of Environment and Forests, said: “This report endorses our approach and shows the way forward in addressing future problems.” …

Big impact of climate change on India's farm yields: World Bank.

Technorati Tags: climate change,agriculture

Food and water production will be next for green tech innovations

Photo via iLoveButter

Forget clean energy for a moment. If climate change alters the earth's ecosystems and rainfall levels to the point that we can't rely on usual methods or locations for water and food supplies, then that means food and water production will need to be the focus of clean tech. Nicholas Parker of the Cleantech Group argues this point in a presentation given yesterday at the Entrepreneurial Energy Expo at Babson College. ...

Food and Water Production Will Be Next for Green Tech Innovations

Technorati Tags: freshwater depletion,climate change,agriculture

Organic weed control: Scientists serve up mustard meal to tame weeds

ScienceDaily (Jan. 4, 2009) — Sinalbin, the same compound that gives white mustard its pungent flavor, could also prove useful in fighting weeds. Agricultural Research Service (ARS) studies suggest sinalbin and other compounds released into soil by applications of white mustard seed meals can kill or suppress certain weedy grasses and annual broadleaf weeds.

Agronomist Rick Boydston, with the ARS Vegetable and Forage Crops Research Unit in Prosser, Wash., is conducting the studies with plant physiologist Steven Vaughn, at the ARS National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research in Peoria, Ill. They evaluated the effects of three mustard seed application rates: half a ton, one ton and two tons per acre. Of the three, the one-ton and two-ton rates worked best in peppermint, reducing barnyard grass, green foxtail, common lambsquarters, henbit and redroot pigweed populations by 90 percent several weeks after application.

...

The research aim is three-fold: provide organic farmers with an alternative to hand-pulling, burning and other laborious methods of weed control in specialty crops including peppermint and potted ornamentals; develop value-added uses for seed meal, should mustards prove useful in making biodiesel; and diminish environmental risks possibly resulting from conventional herbicide use.

Organic Weed Control: Scientists Serve Up Mustard Meal To Tame Weeds
Sun, 04 Jan 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Technorati Tags: herbicide,organic farming,permaculture

Oregon farmers reap stability from wind

WASCO, Ore. (AP) _ Hilderbrand Lane slices through acres of wheat fields as it heads east out of Wasco, a tiny town burrowed into Oregon's poorest county. Stubble from summer's harvest bristles in every direction. Nothing interrupts the tawny expanse until the road rises to expose hundreds of wind turbines. Tall and shimmery in the midday haze, they overpower the landscape, striking, unsettling.

"I like em," says John Hilderbrand, 81, a straight-talking but jocular wheat farmer who lives along his namesake road in the two-story house his grandfather built in 1900. "They're grinding out dollars."

Hilderbrand, the first in Sherman County to allow turbines on his land, reaps about $30,000 a year in lease payments. And the checks come without fail, he says, unlike the income from his wheat operation, which is squirrelly as the weather.

"Fact is, I don't see any disadvantages," says Hilderbrand, who likes talking about the wind almost as much as spinning yarns about rogue bears, stuffed rats and clueless urban slickers who insist on calling the county's rich glacial silt "dirt" not "soil."

Oregan farmers reaps stability from wind

Technorati Tags: wind power,agriculture,renewable energy