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Page added on September 17, 2014
Peak Farmland, Let’s Get Vertical
Agriculture has one hell of a footprint, occupying 37.6 percent of earth’s land area, or about 0.7 hectares (1.7 acres) per person to feed our world’s current population. “There is no activity that humankind engages in that has a bigger impact on the planet than agriculture,” Jack Bobo, Chief of Biotechnology and Textile Trade in the Department of State’s Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs wrote. “This is true in terms of impacts on land and water resources [agriculture accounts for some 70% of our freshwater use (PDF)] as well as in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.” Dr. Pamela Ronald agrees, “The worst thing for the environment is farming. It doesn’t matter if it is organic [or conventional]…You have to go in and destroy everything.”
We humans have reduced our agricultural footprint; while both the world population and productivity have increased the area devoted to agriculture has decreased. Today’s agriculture’s land use of 0.7 ha./person is a monumental improvement on the land needs of hunter-gatherer societies of about 1000 ha./person.
The increasing agricultural productivity continues. According to Jesse Ausubel, the director of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University, “From one hectare, an American farmer in 1900 could provide calories or protein for a year for 3 people.” By the turn of the 21st century, the top farmers could feed 80 people for a year from the same area. This has freed up agricultural land. In fact, Ausubel announced last year that the world may have reached (or nearly reached) “peak farmland.”
“Humanity now stands at Peak Farmland, and the 21st century will see release of vast areas of land [PDF], hundreds of millions of hectares,” Ausubel writes, “more than twice the area of France for nature.” The trend in the percentage of land in agriculture has been downward over the past five years. How redundant land will be used lies beyond the scope of this post. If it is not needed to grow food or fiber what will the land be converted into? (If in fact we can continue the trend)
Obviously, not needing animals to plow and produce manure, better targeted pesticides, irrigation, bioengineering, and synthetic fertilization of crops have had much to do with increased yields. The tradeoff is more impact on a yet smaller area to keep wild land from conversion to agriculture. But, yes, this system has meant problems, including runoff from the fields polluting waterways. It is a smaller footprint than it otherwise would have been. “If we were to try to feed the present population of 6.8 billion people using the methods of 1960,”Matt Ridley writes, “we would have to cultivate 82% of the land area of the planet instead of 34%…That would mean ploughing an extra area the size of South America minus Chile.”
Additionally, growing food and fiber where it grows best and trading for other food, fiber, and goods has also lowered the overall footprint. Certain areas have a comparative advantage for growing a specific crop; so the best practice is to grow food and fiber where it grows the best, usually a rural area, and then transport it to an urban area. Why grow bananas in Reykjavik when you can buy them for less from South America? This system of using an area’s comparative advantage for growing and then shipping has been around a long time. The Romans grew much of their food in North Africa and shipped it across the Mediterranean.Today huge container ships which lower the cost per mile of shipping goods have contributed much to the lowering of the carbon footprint.
Could our agricultural footprint be reduced even further?
Columbia University professor Dickson Despommier thinks so. He made his case in 2009 at ScientificAmerican.com, “Because each of us requires a minimum of 1,500 calories a day, civilization will have to cultivate another Brazil’s worth of land—2.1 billion acres—if farming continues to be practiced as it is today. That much new, arable earth simply does not exist.” He quotes Mark Twain: “Buy land. They’re not making it any more.” Additionally, he says, farming pollutes places with “fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and silt.” He envisions vertical farms in skyscrapers. The Economist magazine wrote about his ideas, “A wide variety of designs for vertical farms have been created by architectural firms. (The idea can arguably be traced back as far as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, built around 600BC.) So far, however, the idea remains firmly on the drawing board. Would it really work?”
The idea so far works only on a limited basis (without high rises) for niche markets. For example, in Japan, “a plant physiologist,” writes Allison Floyd, “has turned a former Sony semiconductor factory into a farm illuminated by special LED fixtures made by GE. At 25,000 square feet, the farm is nearly half the size of a football field and, since the fixtures emit light at wavelengths that spur plant growth, already is producing 10,000 heads of lettuce per day.” According to “Shigeharu Shimamura, the expert behind the farm…the farm is 100 times more productive for its size than an outdoor growing operation.”
Moving the growing areas of where food and fiber are produced from rural to urban could make redundant some or all arable land currently used for agriculture. The first to move indoors would be the fast-growing, high-value plants. “Obviously, it won’t be apple trees, but arugula, sprouts, basil, cilantro,” Dr. Kevin Folta told Floyd.
The appeal of moving growing food closer to where people live is obvious. As already noted, agriculture occupies nearly 40 percent of the earth’s land area, whereas cities occupy only 0.5 percent [PDF], and now hold more than half of the world’s human population. Demographers expect by the year 2050 that 80% of us will live in cities.
There is a feeling of déjà vu to all of this. “Perhaps the most celebrated past local ‘urban farmers’ were the Parisian maraîchers,” says Pierre Desrochers, co-author of The Locavore’s Dilemma: In Praise of the 10,000-mile Diet. “Through the use of about one-sixth of the city’s area, supporting technologies (from greenhouses to cloches and cold frames) and very long hours, they grew more than 100,000 tons of produce annually in the late 19th century.” They exported some of their produce to London. By the turn of the 20th century however, better transportation able to deliver food and fiber from places better suited to growing coupled with better paying job opportunities for the workers killed their market and made the Parisian truck farm system unsustainable.
Whether we build farms within old factories or stack them vertically, we still need to make the enterprise profitable. Economic sustainability, more than any technological problem, remains the highest hurdle for farming factories.
37 Comments on "Peak Farmland, Let’s Get Vertical"
Plantagenet on Wed, 17th Sep 2014 11:26 pm
No doubt we could create high rise indoor air-conditioned farms illuminated by LED lights, and irrigated with computer controlled drip systems. But the reason we don’t do it is that farming is far cheaper on flat, level ground with natural light and natural irrigation.
Feemer on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 12:18 am
This would require huge amounts of energy that only fusion could supply, and we won’t be getting fusion any time soon.
Name on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 12:31 am
You can go vertical all the way you want, you’ll still be limited by the amount of light you receive on the surface… why do you think this idea never took off? 🙂
Makati1 on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 12:43 am
That carrot costs $5. How many do you want? Lettuce? $25 per head. Etc.
LMAO
GregT on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 12:51 am
“Whether we build farms within old factories or stack them vertically, we still need to make the enterprise profitable.”
At some point in the near future, profitability will be replaced by survivability. Food is a necessity for life, and should not be a capitalist enterprise. We really need to rethink our priorities.
Perk Earl on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 1:19 am
“This would require huge amounts of energy that only fusion could supply, and we won’t be getting fusion any time soon.”
That’s it, Feemer. The idea of vertical ag immediately sounds enticing, particularly from the standpoint of growing organic produce and more per acre, however it would require copious amounts of cheap energy from some new energy source, presumably fusion, which we don’t have.
andya on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 2:03 am
The evidence of how dumb people are, keeps on piling up. This article, case in point.
, “From one hectare, an American farmer in 1900 could provide calories or protein for a year for 3 people.” By the turn of the 21st century, the top farmers could feed 80 people for a year from the same area.
“Because each of us requires a minimum of 1,500 calories a day, civilization will have to cultivate another Brazil’s worth of land—2.1 billion acres—if farming continues to be practiced as it is today.
Shouldn’t 2.1 billion hectares be enough to feed 168 billion people? Every day that goes by, the quality of information published declines. So many websites I used to visit have phased out balanced informative articles, in favour of horseshit. Peak farmland, and peak IQ.
Norm on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 3:47 am
i like how andya said it. ‘evidence of how dumb the people are’. Yes cause the thing is, ifyou put dirt onto the roof of a skyscraper, you don’t get any more dirt than if you put it on the ground.
And if you put the dirt onto the side of a skyscraper, it will fall off.
So its just another bunch of dumb ideas from the retards. Probably some billionaire pretending to save the world in his spare time.
J-Gav on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 4:14 am
The idea works – and can indeed be very productive for certain plants. But the issue of costs isn’t developed here, just given a brief mention at the end: economic sustainability is a “hurdle.” No kidding!
Davy on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 7:31 am
No money no time. Put that to the lyrics of Bob Marley “No women no cry”
G-man posted a TOD link that referred to this topic yesterday. It is not handy but here is the info if interested:
Peak Oil And World Food Supplies
Posted by Gail the Actuary on July 27, 2009 – 9:14am Topic: Environment/Sustainability Tags: food supply, peak oil, peter goodchild
Davy on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 7:49 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi4I-Jh09WY
Stercus Feri on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 8:21 am
A cubic meter of water weighs 1000 kilograms. How much diesel you want to burn pumping water up vertical gardens? We burn enough diesel already pumping it out of fossil aquifers to the surface of the earth.
ghung on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 9:15 am
I’m sort of on the fence with this one. Having been both a field gardener and explored more intensive, concentrated ways of growing vegetables (grains are another issue) I can report first-hand that there are advantages, and disadvantages, to both.
Stercus points out the problem of water; pumping it requires energy. All of our current watering that isn’t provided by rain is pumped with simple solar pumps; has been reliable and effective for years; virtually no maintenance. Having a source for that water is another issue.
This year I’ve been testing the ‘Mittleider method’; growing things in sawdust and sand. A mix of 75% sawdust and 25% sand in raised beds is infused with fertilizer and watered regularly. In my case I initially used a mix of NPK and an organic fetilizer. A bit of rock dust and periodic additions of compost tea are the only ongoing inputs besides sunlight. I’ve managed to grow more/better tomatoes this way than in previous years, and with more control over inputs, in about 1/3 of the space, with less labor, growing indeterminate (vine) tomatoes up ropes. Some folks call this method the ‘poor man’s hydroponics’. All I can say is that it seems to be working and will remain part of my growing tool kit.
Note that the conventional garden and other methods aren’t mutually exclusive. As for growing under artificial light, it’s an expensive and technically problematic choice when sunlight is available, but can give more control. Growing vertically under natural sunlight seems more viable, IMO. I’ve been growing things in containers and up south-facing walls for years; it’s part of our passive cooling scheme in the summer. Recycling the container soil (growing medium) is a simple case of running it through the composting process while adding whatever will compost. As for the sawdust/sand mix, the worms love it, and, with the addition of living organic compost, these beds became thriving, living soil in short order. Experimentation has forced me to not dismiss alternative methods of growing out of hand. Current conventional factory farming methods are fairly high loss when it comes to top soil, fertilizer runoff, weed/pest control and watering methods. Somewhere I heard a large scale farmer state that his method (or any method) of farming is essentially an input/output system. Any method of producing food these days that offers better control of inputs/outputs deserves consideration, IMO.
Jim on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 10:54 am
Aside from corn,soybeans and wheat more and more food will be grown indoors.When you figure in the 2-3 times faster growing plants,none of the poison they put on plants like in the fields and at least 90 percent water reduction,it makes perfect sense.Instead of soil indoor growers use nutrient packets.I’m sure a few of you have seen the newish Japanese grower turning out 10,000 heads of lettuce a day.Using GE LED grow lights.Also remember theres no seasons and a big one,indoor growers locations can be local,no need for transporting food across the country.Finally it will only get cheaper growing indoors since it is still considered an infancy industry.
One example at link
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/japanese-plant-experts-produce-10000-lettuces-a-day-in-ledlit-indoor-farm-9601844.html
JuanP on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 11:15 am
I recommend this Vertical Gardening book to raised bed gardeners:
http://www.amazon.com/Vertical-Gardening-Vegetables-Flowers-Space/dp/1605290831/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411056006&sr=1-1&keywords=vertical+gardening
I practice vertical gardening using nylon gardening nets with 7″ square holes that are five feet high on the Northern edge of my raised beds. I use electrical conduit stuck on a two feet piece of rebar half burried in the ground to support them. Very cheap, easy to build, effective, and long lasting. They work great for cucumbers, tomatoes, beans, small watermelons, and other vining and crawling crops. It saves a lot of space and provides for healthier plants because of increased air circulation around the plants.
The system I use is called Square Foot Gardening based on this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Square-Foot-Gardening-Second-Revolutionary/dp/1591865484/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411056410&sr=1-1&keywords=square+foot+gardening+by+mel+bartholomew
As Ghung pointed out above of his system, this system also complements rather than replace other food growing systems. Some things belong in rows, others are easier to grow using more intensive methods that require less backbreaking labor and also less resources, and can be managed more effectively.
In a small scale Vertical Gardening works extremely well, and is the way to go for some crops.
Kenz300 on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 11:33 am
The real problem is too many people……
Endless population growth is not sustainable.
Around the world we can find a food crisis, a water crisis, a declining fish stocks crisis, a Climate Change crisis, an unemployment crisis and an OVER POPULATION crisis.
Overpopulation facts – the problem no one will discuss: Alexandra Paul at TEDxTopanga – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNxctzyNxC0
ghung on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 12:03 pm
Gosh, Kenz, I’ve seen the population predicament discussed a lot, usually reaching the conclusion that it won’t/can’t be addressed. Top-down solutions aren’t particularly viable; even the Chinese have seen it necessary to modify their approach. So what’s the solution? Over-population is a self-correcting condition. Always has been. Industrialism has just managed to cheat the system to an extreme degree. This, too, will pass.
J-Gav on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 12:19 pm
Ghung and JuanP – Thanks for your hands-on input. I’ll try to put some of that into practice once I get the chance.
That small-scale, raised bed vertical sounds cool. I’ve got nowhere to implement it now (possessing no land)but I’ve taken note.
PrestonSturges on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 2:30 pm
We’re still trying to sell 200+ acres of prime farm land, and we keep cutting the price. We hope to get $100 an acre, but might get no offers and just let it go to auction for one dollar.
J-Gav on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 2:31 pm
Preston – Where? That f-ing incredible!
PrestonSturges on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 4:20 pm
Google these coordinates
35.183639, -77.067861
This land will never be residential or commercial and there is no valuable timber, but the black sandy loam is 20′ deep and fresh water is 6′ down.
J-Gav on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 5:06 pm
Looks like it’s in Thailand, is that correct? If I were you I might wait it out for a while, maybe plant a few trees … but of course I don’t know because I’m not you.
ghung on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 5:23 pm
Looks like North Carolina to me, not far from the Outer Banks, New Bern. That’s a nice area of the coastal plain, old plantation country. Lots of deer and other wildlife. Best Bar-B-Que in the world (low country). Great fishing and shrimping.
What’s the elevation?
PrestonSturges on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 5:44 pm
>What’s the elevation?
Mostly 5′ to 15′ above sea level, which puts it above storm surge. The reason it’s not developed is that this was once wet land, and when there’s a good hurricane you can get a foot of water in the low spots for a day or so, but that also applies to the local roads and people’s yards. But in the last couple years you can’t get it zoned for commercial or residential use. Nobody has their house on stilts like inland Florida where your house might be surrounded by water every spring. It’s not like that.
The bulk of the land is within the triangle formed by those power line right-of-ways and towards Antioch Road. This is a classic case of the value of the land being ruined by selling off the county road frontage.
ghung on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 5:51 pm
Have you tried to lease it as farm land? Keeps the taxes down. As for value, disregarding the monetary book value, it’s just as valuable as the day you bought it unless someone dumped nuke waste there or something.
Maybe you could find a Chinese buyer, or build a fish farm. Tilapia love that area, IIRC. Shrimp farm (prawns)? Crawfish?
PrestonSturges on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 5:55 pm
Tons of deer, bear, and bobcats back there. If I were retired and had money, I’d bulldoze the brush, plant fruit trees, and hunt it. If someone had a Kubota with a digger, they could have a good time. To have a pond, all you need to do is dig down 6 feet ant it fills with fresh water. There was a Biblical mega-drought in 2008, but the soybeans were still 5′ tall on this land. Even in a drought, this area gets weekly rain off the Atlantic. And it’s coastal Zone 8 with snow maybe every third year.
Nony on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 6:04 pm
Zone 8 is very intriguing. Do you have palm trees at all? Alligators? How far to drive to the beach.
PrestonSturges on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 6:06 pm
>Have you tried to lease it as farm land? Keeps the taxes down.
Parts of it used to be leased at less than $100 an acre per year, but that’s leasing part of a FARM. This is not a farm, this is LAND with stumps and snakes.
I think that when people talk about how valuable “land” is, they are talking about a FARM, either a real farm or their imaginary hobby farm, like it’s a movie set or a dude ranch. But LAND, as in “here’s land with tree stumps and rattlesnakes” is still basically worthless.
I think the reason that these realtors keep hyping “land” is that they are appealing to people fantasies about they potential value of their imaginary farm rather than the actual LAND that they might buy at an inflated price.
PrestonSturges on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 6:13 pm
….. and lot of people buy rural land for its speculative value, which has traditionally been a losing game. In recent decades, some people have hit home runs selling the old family farm to Wal-Mart. But for this specific piece of land, the good real estate with road frontage was sold off before 2008.
Makati1 on Thu, 18th Sep 2014 8:23 pm
No mention of the fine details in the article. Healthy soil is more than just dirt. It is billions of microbes and small animals by the thousands per cubic yard. It’s potassium, selenium, nitrogen, prosperous, and a hundred other trace chemicals. It’s decomposing vegetation. And on and on. It’s not just “dirt”. Even water needs to be treated or at least free of contaminants. Most water sources today are contaminated.
And then there is he need for proper light waves in strengths to rival the sun for half of every 24 hours minimum. A normal incandescent or fluorescent bulb will NOT work. Wrong light waves.
Mother Nature provides all of these things for free in her world, but they are all energy intensive in ours. Price veggies grown in a greenhouse vs grown in the proper growing season you live in and see how practical vertical farming is. If it was profitable, it would have been prolific in the age of cheap energy. Or so it seems to me.
Robert on Fri, 19th Sep 2014 6:00 am
Well, it looks like a good idea for the future of agriculture. In my opinion, we must search new technologies and solutions in farming. It’s important to react to new appeared factors, isn’t it?Also i’ve read about revitalization of urban areas (http://blog.pulawy.com/en/vertical-farming/) by vertical farming. I keep an eye on urban farming and think that it’s appropriate solution.
Kenz300 on Fri, 19th Sep 2014 2:13 pm
Look at maps of what coastal areas will look like from the effects of Climate Change and rising waters.
Land under 4 foot of water looses its value…….
Climate Change will impact everyone around the world in different ways.
It is time to speed the transition to alternative energy sources. Wind, solar, wave energy, geothermal and second generation biofuels made from algae, cellulose and waste are the future.
Global Renewable Energy Status Uncovered
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2014/08/global-renewable-energy-status-uncovered?page=all
rollin on Fri, 19th Sep 2014 6:38 pm
When are these mutated apes going to realize there are limits. Every time we come up some new tech solution (mining phosphorus, synthesizing nitrates) we just screw the world that actually works even further. Where do all the inputs come for this vertical gardening? Where do all the structures, pumps, etc. come from?
We don’t 0.7 ha per acre, we need a fully industrialized civilization to support that concentration. It is not a real improvement over the natural way of living, it only appears that way for a while and then slam dunks the billions of people that are alive because of it.
Natural ways of living can go on forever, or at least huge amounts of time. Industrial methods are all extremely short lived and depend upon destruction of the eco-system to operate.
PrestonSturges on Sat, 20th Sep 2014 2:30 pm
>Zone 8 is very intriguing. Do you have palm trees at all? Alligators? How far to drive to the beach.
You could probably find a palm and rarely a gator, but both would be much more plentiful 100 miles to the south. It’s 2 miles to the nearest brackish water boat ramp and about 25 miles upstream from the Intercoastal Waterway (so it’s really not near the ocean).
It would take 40 minutes to get to a really excellent beach on the seaward side of the barrier islands – not that it’s far but you have to drive through the scenic national forest and marshes and cross a couple drawbridges to reach the barrier islands.
Nony on Sat, 20th Sep 2014 4:29 pm
How much do you want for it. How many acres. How is it accessed?
Nony on Sat, 20th Sep 2014 4:32 pm
will your neighbors give me a hard time for voting for the elephants? Oh…and it’s still Redskins country as far as I’m concerned. I live in the past.
PrestonSturges on Sun, 21st Sep 2014 1:35 pm
>How much do you want for it. How many acres. How is it accessed?
Send me a private message for more details. This is what’s left of the Jones Estate.
There are a couple access points on the south west side.
It reaches a small road on both sides of this property.
6014 Linson Rd New Bern, NC 28560
The property extends almost all the way to Antioch Rd, but that road frontage was stupidly sold off years ago, destroying the commercial value of the land.
If you want to restore access to Antioch Road, there are at least a half dozen small pieces of undeveloped property on that stretch that one of the owners would be happy to sell for $10 K or less