Why small farms can not feed the world anymore...

A tiny tomato facility.

For a bit of salad?

Your old school ideas of farming is what's on the way out as I suggested in my first posting.

For an example that is closer to what you can understand...

Row cropping today is the same as range cattle of 100 years ago. It will be replaced with factories. They will produce more food on less land spread out across the entire country. The time where local climate mattered is fading fast.

Great video. A greenhouse we visited that used to specialize in cut flowers and roses for their flower shop have had to diversify in order to stay in business.. last i saw they had 6000 garlic almost ready for a winter harvest among other vegetables that the flowershop would sell in winter months.

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It's so cheap it's world wide. The 3rd world as well.

More of that expensive plasticulture ...

Back home,

The video that thrills me is the Lettuce one. How much space would it take to set something like this up in a large store or shopping center. Better would be using artificial soil media to allow short distance shipping.... Then the plants could be grown out in a separate facility, then "finished", cut, and bagged at the store front for very fresh greens. Top shelf.

I dunno i could see it on one of them mega shopping mall roofs:P

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Post WWII the move was to mechanize and control every detail. That is what gave us the horrors of Confinement Feeding Operations, CAFOs, Factory Farms. There's a huge push back now against that sort of thing. Factories are so yesterday.

The big mythconception is that one has to feed the world. We don't. We just need to feed our selves, our neighbors, our community, our local area - along with the help of many other farmers and the help also of the people who do all the other things. Big Ag wants to control the world. That isn't necessary or desirable.

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I have my doubts if we will ever see the day when the states of Iowa and Kansas are placed under plastic for growing corn and wheat. There's already been many threads about the problems associated with growing and harvesting small plots of grain. Just can't feature how it would be any easier or more economical indoors.

Fresh salad is nice in the off-season and I've done that in a cold frame. Nice to have as a stomach-filler when on a diet but not conducive to supplying calories unless one can eat as much as a gorilla. Feeding and nourishing are two different things.

One other point is that if the transportation system broke down to where there could no longer be deliveries of fruit or food from other parts of the country, same non-existent transportation would be unable to deliver any components for erecting greenhouses.

Martin

Then contemplate this. Have you seen the vertical strawberry bucket systems. I've seen them 4 rows high in Florida. There really isn't a reason that bucket system couldn't be stacked high enough to climb the south side of a NYC skyscraper.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, all you negative nellies. There would be costs and problems to over come, but can you imagine the benefits. Water from rooftop catchment, reduced HVAC due to the summer shading, a city that turns green and does not reflect so much heat to the ground. Transport costs virtually nill because the fruit is already within the market where it will be consumed. Sure it is sci fi now, but...

I don't disagree with you for the most part. I believe like you that food production should be local.

I do differ with the level of technology that will be used tho. The return v/s investment is too great. Simple things like high tunnels can reduce water, fertilizer and pesticide use to 20%, return a higher quality product, and more of it.

You should note that I excluded grains from my discussion. Tho, one could hardly say they aren't grown in high tech fashion.

You can ship 1 ton 500 miles and produce 50 tons of food, or you can ship 50 tons of food 500 miles. Which uses less fuel?

There was an idea to grow lettuce and other greens on a large barge anchored in the Hudson River. As I recall, effluent from the city's waste would be used for fertilizer and grown hydroponically. Idea was sound until the potential production figures were presented. Despite the size of it, wouldn't be enough for all New Yorkers to enjoy a salad once a month.

Martin

Farming will continue to evolve and modernize, for sure.

Small greenhouse concepts will be a part of that.

In my climate, we get very very cold in winter, a layer of plastic does not insulate to allow growing in the 4-5 winter months.

A bigger block is the lack of sunlight in my climate, we have very very long sun hours in summer which is why corn and soybeans grow so well, but then in winter there just is not the energy available to grow anything.

Both heat and light take a lot of energy to create, so greenhouses are mostly a dead issue around here, they are used to keep early spring plants going through the spring frost season for the most part.

I'm not sure intensive greenhouse/ hydroponics / high tech stuff really counts as a back to earth, homesteading, local friendly farmer organic deal. It seems to be the veggie version of big ag to me?

No opposed to it, and I see ag constantly evolving for sure. I don't think the produce farms of California and regions south of USA will be decreasing any time soon, tho.

Paul

That is a common problem.

Perhaps they could 'feed' 1Million, but they could not 'feed' 8Million, so the idea was scraped and considered a failure.

So why even try?



There was a time when 25% of our population produced food. Today 'Ag' includes less than 4%, and that includes truck drivers, factory workers, distribution warehouses, grocery stores and restaurants.



No one ever claimed that a single 40-acre farm was going to feed the planet. New small scale farms start up every year, the market share of families they feed grows every year.

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Active solar concentration and isolation can passively heat buildings in the far north. You aren't in the far north.

A single layer of plastic can move you 1.5 grow zones south. Two can move you 3 zones. Straw insulation can add an additional zone. Or approx 40 degrees without any active heating. That means you can plant cold hearty crops around march 1st, grow them till the beginning of November. Then cover the beds with straw and harvest them in the ground all winter.

Plants only need 10 hours of light a day. Your "10 hour limit" is 5 days earlier than mine in "tropical" Pennsylvania. So I have a longer season than you. Yup 10 days.


p.s. The pepper greenhouse is in Canada.

High tunnels, and low tunnels, do not equal confinement and that is a technology that is very accessible to even the smallest of farmers. In fact, they are widely used by small farmers in our northern climate to extend the growing season.

Using appropriate† technology small farmers can feed their area and thus many small farmers can feed the world.

†Appropriate is a very personal thing for which you'll have to pick your own mean. Likewise the consumer chooses - thus why it is important to open the can of worms about GMO labeling. Informed decisions drive the market. If you do something you think is important, put it on your label, in your brochure, etc.

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Of course I don't know the economics of the deal, but that it wouldn't feed all of NYC once a month is hardly a knock on the plan. I'm sure NYC produces more than enough greywater to irrigate 1000s of acres of lettuce. If this is one small piece of the puzzle for better food, grown economically, it could be a minor move towards the good side and sustainability.