The article “No Green Acres? Try Skyscrapers,” takes a look at the future of agriculture. It also solves the problem of taking empty storage containers that are stacked in towers in New Jersey and turns them into miniature organic farms. The crops would be grown with artificial lighting, servers, sensors and robots. The produce is grown without soil, free of pesticides, are kept in a positive air pressure and fertilizers and water requirements are one-third to one-fifth the needs of soil grown lettuce. (Lettuce was the produce used as an example in the article). I am in favor of some parts of this plan. The one part I am not if favor of, is the part when you actually buy the product. The price is expensive. Organic food is normally expensive but this is going to be higher. The reason is because of the way the product has been so delicately taken care of. Because of all the treatments and there are no hazards to the product the price needs to go up. The company doing this is also in favor of saving energy. They have a plan to use artificial sunlight but when able, they plan to use real sunlight as well. It is free. Plus they are trying to save money by placing these mini farms where the produce will be eaten. Cost will be reduced by keeping it local and not having to be relocated. What I can figure is if you are using a green house no matter where you live, you are still producing and making money. No matter what time of year it is. When it is winter you can use artificial and during summer you can resort back to natural light, while using technology and progressing in science. Other countries have tried this program and it seems to be working just fine. They are progressing in technology (robots) and agriculture. I think we should follow and try the new idea. Think of all the produce that can be grown and distributed through out the United States. This is a whole new wave of agriculture. There is only complaint that I would have. If this idea was to take off, would it eventually put out all of America’s farmers? Agriculture and farming is all that some families have to rely on as income. It is all that they know how to do. Besides that, I think that this is a great idea; it is cost effective, especially in the long run. If you were to compare the money that we would have spent on distributing the goods, labor, fertilizer and everything else that goes into working and developing a farm and its produce, it probably has spent a lot more money than the new idea. Placing these mini farms in many locations and feeding in central areas in a lot cheaper. A comment made at the end of the article was, “Agriculture is a very wasteful industry right now,” “"It might turn out that the only way to make agriculture truly sustainable is to stop farming the crops and start manufacturing them." I don’t agree that agriculture is a wasteful industry, but I do think manufacturing will not hurt the industry. What do you think?
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68888,00.html?tw=rss.PLANET