The idea of vertical farming originated from the lack of land available in major cities and the influx of people moving back into the metropolitan areas. So how do all these people eat fresh foods without it being imported after a not so fresh airplane and truck ride? They don’t. Vertical farming would provide the extremely fresh foods the ability to grow right in the middle of our densely populated, land lacking cities. Thus giving the cities a source for fresh food.
Fresh food is only one part of the equation when it comes to benefits of vertical farming. The amount of air pollution we dump into our atmosphere on a daily basis from the transportation of these not so local foods is ridiculous. Also, in order to get these not so local, not so fresh foods to our grocery store shelves and into our home, they need to look pretty in order for us to find them worthy enough for consumption. And… the race against time begins. We win this race against ripening and ugly food by employing the “HIPS” method:
Herbicides
Insecticides
Pesticides
Systemic fungicides
These are ways that we as humans have found to preserve our food that we eat.
If you need me to tell you that these are toxic chemicals which should never be ingested, and are poisonous, please smack yourself in the back of the head right now. Yet, these are the precise chemicals which are sprayed on our food, and contaminate our bodies. Even if you thoroughly wash the food prior to eating it, trace chemicals can still be found.
How else did you think that you were getting those perfectly ripened bananas from Peru without any signs of ageing on them?
So let’s recap on what we currently have going on in our broken agriculture system.
1. “Fresh food” is really not fresh at all after it has taken a car ride for hundreds, if not thousands of miles.
2. By purchasing and consuming foods that are not local we are saying that air pollution by food transport is OK.
3. HIPS are something that is sexy on a beautiful woman, not something we want to ingest as poison.
How would vertical farming help?
1. It would provide people that live and eat within cities a way to experience fresh food without any toxic chemicals to preserve it.
2. Air pollution by food transportation would fiercely decline.
3. Lessen our reliance on traditional horizontal farms, and thus reduce the impact that we make through the environmental devastation of just clearing out land to make a farm.
Sound like a huge feat to tackle, something unrealistic and unattainable?
-It is already being done in Singapore.