Multiplier Effect for Vertical Farming
[ Valcent Products inc. ]
It appears Valcent has this vertical thing worked out. A weakness, thus far, in architectural versions of vertical farming (I posted about earlier) is that they equate the floor plain with the ground plain of a field and stack that concept. Great! But the brilliance of using Valcent’s solution is that Valcent forgoes the ground plain concept altogether and thinks in terms of translucent vertical plains. Perhaps by combining both solutions one could yield an even greater multiplier per square foot.
It’s all about spatial geography.
High Density Vertical Growth (HDVG)
The system is designed to grow vegetables and other foods much more efficiently and with greater food value than in agricultural field conditions. The HDVG system demonstrates the following characteristics:
- Produces approximately 20 times the normal production volume for field crops
- Requires 5% of the normal water requirements for field crops
- Can be built on non arable lands and close to major city markets
- Can work in a variety of environments: urban, suburban, countryside, desert etc.
- Does not use herbicides or pesticides
- Will have very significant operating and capital cost savings over field agriculture
- Will drastically reduce transportation costs to market resulting in further savings, higher quality and fresher foods on delivery, and less transportation pollution
- Will be easily scalable from small to very large food production situations
High Density Vertical Bioreactor (HDVB)
The Holy Grail in the renewable energy sector has been to create a clean, green process which uses only light, water and air to create fuel. Valcent’s HDVB algae-to-biofuel technology mass produces algae, vegetable oil which is suitable for refining into a cost-effective, non-polluting biodiesel. The algae derived fuel will be an energy efficient replacement for fossil fuels and can be used in any diesel powered vehicle or machinery. In addition, 90% by weight of the algae is captured carbon dioxide, which is “sequestered” by this process and so contributes significantly to the reduction of greenhouse gases. Valcent has commissioned the world’s first commercial-scale bioreactor pilot project at its test facility in El Paso, Texas.
What abought two of the biggest probloms
1. High electric bills. There will need to be lots of artificial light.
And don’t give me more efficient light bulbs since you will need more than what is in a typical house/office. All those apartment pot farms use large quantities and they TRY to hide that information.
2.What abought property taxes?The closer you are to any major city,or town, the taxes go way up.No matter what state you are in.
You bring up two good issues - electrical costs and property value/taxes. However, it is precisely the high costs of doing business in the present agriculture sector that is driving solutions such as vertical farming.
1) Electrical Cost: The HDVG solution is not an artificial lighting situation, in fact Valcent promotes it for natural lighting situations in green houses. Still, electrical costs could be a problem for the architectural version of vertical farming, if they are not able to design solutions that employ natural lighting. Which I believe is very doable.
What your not including is the costs to run and operate the heavy equipment necessary for traditional farming methods (tractors, combines and arrogation systems). This also includes the production, purchase and application of insecticides.
If there is a benefit to speeding up growth and increasing crop yields by using artificial lighting than I suppose someone will do it. This would bare itself out in a cost / benefit analysis.
2) Property taxes: There are two potential benefits that would need to be calculated to off-set a potential increase in property taxes.
a) With tremendously higher yields per unit of land, the question becomes, what are the costs per unit and does the increased yield off-set a particular tax. As you know there is no golden formula here, as every municipality has a different tax structure for the different land uses (residential, commercial, industrial, agriculture). If high tax districts, such as Santa Monica, would like to avail themselves of the benefits of vertical farming they may need to adjust their tax code. Otherwise such an opportunity will go elsewhere.
b) Transportation and fuel costs: In the past few years we have begun to see several large West Coast agri-farms buying up properties in the midwest, south and Northeast to be closer to the large metropolitan areas. That is because they have seen transportation costs triple in the last four years and don’t expect these costs to come down anytime soon. They suddenly have new competitors in smaller regional farms.
The electric costs are a problem, but can be considered to be a necessary evil when juxtaposing the costs of biofuel production within cities and the cost of “Energy expoloration,” by big oil. The property taxes are a different story. The vacant building fabric in almost every city in the developed world is overwhelming. The building boom before the crash didn’t just happen in residential single family homes. Cities are littered with indutrial and post-industrial fabric that could be utilized at low costs. Why low costs? Because any reasonable owner or municipality will allow business development in buildings or neighborhoods described above, because some income is better than no income at all.