Urban farming 2.0: No soil, no sun


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(CNNMoney.com) -- Forget the conventional wisdom that says veggies must be grown on vast farms in the Midwest. What if commercial-scale crops took root inside cavernous city warehouses, without sunlight or soil?

Call it urban farming 2.0. Over the past decade, city agriculture has largely been the province of non-profit organizations, school groups, renegade gardeners and restaurants sowing seeds on rooftops. But the newest breed of city farmers are businessfolk. In their hands, urban agriculture is scaling up to meet a rising demand in city centers for safe, organic and locally grown food.

One such indoor farm opened in September in Vancouver, growing lettuce and spinach inside an 8,000-square-foot warehouse using a hydroponic system that replaces dirt and weather with peat moss plugs and circulated water. High-efficiency LED lighting hits plants grown on stacked shelves.

The Eco Spirit-branded lettuce operation -- which is owned by the local Squamish Nation tribe -- now supplies eight stores for Choices Markets, a natural foods chain in greater Vancouver. The tribe licensed the technology from TerraSphere Systems in Canada and plans to grow the Eco Spirit label into a larger brand of locally grown produce.

Finding empty space won't be a problem. America is littered with thousands of abandoned big box stores, a trend fueled by the sputtering economy. About 11% of commercial and industrial real estate nationwide remains empty -- double the vacancy rate of just four years ago, according to Reis Inc., which tracks real-estate data.

On the flip side: Critics worry that today's urban farm startups will be huge -- and short-lived -- energy hogs, brought down by electrical bills they can't afford.

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On the flip side: Critics worry that today's urban farm startups will be huge -- and short-lived -- energy hogs, brought down by electrical bills they can't afford.

Yeah, that's a huge problem. I wonder how they are planning to overcome that?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yeah, that's a huge problem. I wonder how they are planning to overcome that?

Actually I think the electrical bill is a bit just trying to find something wrong with the idea, just to find something wrong. I actually know someone who does hydrophonic lettuce, basil and tomato And while not as large scale, the light bill barely went up using high efficiency water pumps, "energy saving" ( low watt) light bulbs. Heck if they are really using LED. Then the other issue is cooling/heating the water, but even that won't put that big a dent in a light bill, as heaters/coolers work on timers only for certain part of day.

Then also, there's solar powered solutions to make it completely "green" and is not that expensive to power and maintain a hydrophonic farm..

But then again, why do I sense you comment was sarcam :laugh:

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