Q&A: The Future of Agriculture May Well Be in Cities - IPS ipsnews.net

Q&A: The Future of Agriculture May Well Be in Cities - IPS ipsnews.net
Q: What are the places that really need this the most?

A: The concept of vertical farming will emerge in most people's perception as an elitist activity. Because only people with the most money and a high desire for local produced vegetables and fruits will support this concept. As with all other ideas that have application to the general population, the idea will be manipulated by technology, so that it becomes economic, efficient, mobile and modular.

Imagine vertical farming as a LEGO-like structure, in which all the (components) that fit together are already growing food. If you walk into this warehouse, it's enormous, and the order is for a vertical farm eight stories tall that manufactures lettuce and some really exotic crops. And you click them all together and ship them out. You can situate these on a base anywhere in the world.

It is not an elitist activity at this point. Suddenly it becomes a way of intervening in natural disaster, to prevent unnecessary deaths. To prevent high rates of infant mortality, to supply food on a continuous basis for places that have no soil, like Sub-Saharan Africa, most of South Asia, and a lot of places in Southeast Asia. Places that are people-rich and food-poor.

Vertical farming will eventually morph into a strategy to supply clean drinking water and abundant safe to eat food to whoever needs it. Not (just) whoever wants it.