Skyscraper Farm of the Future
Dickson Despommier, a 67-year-old microbiologist at Columbia University suggests that skyscraper farms will be the future of agriculture. With the world’s population forecast to grow from 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion by the year 2050, a massive amount of agricultural land will be required to feed us. And with 41 percent of the world already being used for agricultural purposes, not including the land we live and work on, it poses a major problem. Where will expansion come from? Given a finite amount of land available, Despommier believes it’s time to think upward. Despommier, who also sits on the board of New York Sun Works and is responsible for the urban-farm floating barge, came up with the idea eight years ago while teaching.
The skyscraper farms would be about 30 storeys and each structure would easily feed around 50,000 people under its current design. The skyscraper farm will not be cheap, however; the prototype is currently priced at approximately one billion dollars. Despommier is currently looking for investors.
Many local city governments are now offering composting bins to their residents in order to promote green behavior. An average family produces over 500 lbs. of compostable garbage every year. That is 500 lbs. of garbage that can be reused as mulch instead of going to the local land fill. This may be why my own home town of Raleigh is subsidising over half of the cost of Earth Machine composters. For $32, Raleigh residents can pick up an Earth Machine from the Solid Waste Services Department.
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The New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) is investigating how genetically modified (gm) seeds of sweet corn was knowingly cleared to enter New Zealand in October 2006.
The two consignments totaling 1,800 kilogram of gm sweetcorn originating from the United States was cleared by the quarantine service run by MAF. Each consignment had a certificate that showed that the seeds had not been gm but there was documentation available that showed that the two consignments had a presence of gm. Jeanette Fitzsimons, spokesperson for genetic engineering and the leader of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, said: “I am absolutely shocked and angered that 1.8 tonnes of sweet corn seeds crossed our border, even though the accompanying testing documentation showed that it was contaminated with GE.” Read the rest of this entry »