The idea of vertical farming arose due to the lack of land in large cities and the influx of people returning to metropolitan areas. So, how do all these people eat fresh food without importing it because it’s not a fresh plane and a truck ride? They are not. Vertical agriculture would provide extremely fresh products with the ability to grow right in the middle of our densely populated, land-free cities. Thus, giving cities a source for fresh produce.
Fresh food is only part of the equation when it comes to the benefits of vertical farming. The amount of air pollution that we discharge daily to our atmosphere due to the transportation of these not-so-local products is ridiculous. In addition, to get these not so local, and not fresh products on our grocery shelves and in our house, they need to look beautiful so that we can find them worthy for consumption. And ... the race with time begins. We win this race against maturation and ugly food using the “HIPS” method.
Herbicides
Insecticides
Pesticides
Systemic fungicides
These are the ways that we, as humans, have found in order to preserve our food we eat.
If you need me to tell you that these are toxic chemicals that you should never eat, and are poisonous, please remove yourself in the back of your head right now. However, these are precise chemicals that are sprayed onto our food and pollute our bodies. Even if you wash your food thoroughly before eating, you can still find traces of chemicals.
How else did you think that you get these perfectly ripe bananas from Peru without any signs of aging?
So let's talk about what we now have in our broken farming system.
1. “Fresh food” is really not at all fresh after it has swept hundreds, if not thousands of miles.
2. When purchasing and consuming products that are not local, we say that air pollution from transportation in food is in order.
3. HIPS is something sexy on a beautiful woman, not something that we want to swallow like poison.
How will vertical farming help?
1. It will provide people who live and eat in cities to experience fresh food without any toxic chemicals to preserve it.
2. Air pollution from the transport of food will drastically decrease.
3. Reduce our dependence on traditional horizontal farms and, thus, reduce the impact we have on the destruction of the environment, only on cleaning the land for the farm.
Sounds like a huge feat for solving something unrealistic and unattainable?
- This is already being done in Singapore.
