Scientific American - Vertical Farms

The recent (November 2009) issue of Scientific American has many interesting articles,but the most interesting of them to me was one titled "The Rise Of Vertical Farms". This was not the first time I'd heard of this concept; in fact, I mentioned it in this blog entry from last October, when I saw the concept at the Museum of Science and Industry.

The article lays out some basic ideas, including the author's estimate that "a one-square-block farm 30 stories high could yield as much food as 2,400 outdoor acres, with less subequent spoilage." The article also suggests that this sort of farming could reduce fossil-fuel emissions and could begin to treat wastewater as a resource to provide the necessary water rather than a by-product that necessitates disposal.

Most cities have areas that such a project could be built. The use of such facilities would allow farmland to return to "its natural grassy or wooded state", and that this would be "the easiest and most direct way to slow climate change." (I'm sure the farmers will be thrilled to allow all their land to be unused except for returning to woods and prairies, but that's a separate and different issue.)

Up-front investment would be costly, but so it is in most new applications of technology. Is it the sort of thing that should be looked into? Invested in with tax dollars? Why not, if it helps our environment, and us, in the short term? The other issue is whether there is a will to do something like this. A lot of the research has been done, much of it by NASA. IIT in Chicago is apparently working up the details of a plan for the city of Chicago at this time, and other cities are interested also.

The author describes three main ways to grow the food: drip irrigation, hydroponics, and aeroponics. Hmm. Where have I seen these in action, sort of? Oh, yeah! The Land pavilion at Epcot! Even some of the pictures in the article look vaguely familiar, since I've seen those plants hanging in mid-air getting a mist blown on their roots, or being grown in tanks of water.

Could this be a very interesting theme for The Land pavilion, which could really use some upgrading? With Soarin', a renovated Livin' With The Land, and perhaps more up-to-date exhibitions of current, cutting edge land use concepts, I think people would be plenty entertained and educated in that pavilion.

Tomorrowland and Inspiration

"A lot of young people think the future is closed to them, that everything
has been done. This is not so. There are still plenty of avenues to
be explored." Walt Disney

I found this quote to be interesting, since Walt obviously said it many years ago. The book (How To Be Like Walt) that lists it does not give a date for it, but let's assume it is in the 1950's or the 1960's. But it could be said of today's youth also.

Americans are falling behind in the sciences, and the number of our children going into hard sciences and pursuing graduate level education in those fields is dwindling. Why is this? Are these fields of study inherently uninteresting? Is there a perception that there is not enough money in careers in scientific fields? Not enough security? Do we as parents not promote their interests in such fields enough?

Walt was as interested in the future as he was in the past, and it shows in his parks. Tomorrowland was, more than any other part of Disneyland, Walt's toy. Oh, he loved other parts equally - he was a nostalgist as well as being a futurist - but Tomorrowland, like the future, was a malleable thing to him, or so it seems to me. Sadly, he didn't live long enough to continue his tinkering with Tomorrowland - of course, later in his life he was consumed with a "real" Tomorrowland, his plans for EPCOT.

In 1955, the three episodes of Walt's "Man In Space" were shown, featuring on-screen appearances by rocket scientists Wernher von Braun and Heinz Haber, along with director Ward Kimball and Walt himself. The third episode, "Mars and Beyond", was shown on December 4, 1957, just a couple of months before the Soviet Union launched Sputnik and the U.S. plunged into the "space race". This series was very influential. Eisenhower even requested copies of the Disney episodes to show to his staff, and it inspired countless young people to become space scientists, and played a big part in getting the nation behind the space program.

Do our young people need inspiration at this point in history? I believe they do, and I wish that Disney was one of the vehicles for this inspiration. Do they want to do what Walt did forty years ago? I am not at all sure they do. It might not be profitable.

That's okay. 'Profitable' is a good thing. It's what all businesses aspire to. It's just that Walt realized that doing positive things could be profitable, too, and he was far- sighted enough to see that the results of doing something like "Man in Space" could be measured in more than just dollars and cents.