The Vertical Farm Feeding The World in the 21st Century by Dr, Dickson Despommer.

The Vertical Farm Feeding The World in the 21st Century by Dr, Dickson Despommer

 This book is both utopian and visionary. However, I also found it to lacked some attribution for where the science and some of the philosophy for the things which he is describing are coming from.  He does not describe some of the more interesting and radical ideas that have come out of ecology recently.

Dr. John Despommier spends quite a bit of time describing how agriculture came into being. Then he describes how modern agriculture is wasteful from an ecological standpoint. I found some of his writing to be a bit overbearing. He jumps from bad modern farming methods to giant skyscraper farms.

There is very little of a median. He goes into greenhouses and how they work, but does not do much with bioshelters, organic farming, or natural pest control.

 He  also wants the vertical farms he is designing to be hermetically sealed liked the biosphere experiment. This did not work as planned in the biosphere experiment.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/biospheresci/


He also is arguing for moving hydroponics into the city. This is already starting to happen. It is just not happening in the fashion of skyscrapers. When he describes the advantages of a vertical farm, it is the exact same advantage of having urban greenhouses. I see urban greenhouses and farms as being incredible positive for people in cities.

The advantage which a vertical farm would have over a horizontal greenhouse would be that the system he is describing would use less land and probably have a greater surface area to place solar panels and wind turbines on.

He properly praises John Todd for his work on living machines which led to many breakthroughs with ideas for things like bioshelters, water purification based on living machines, and other concepts which are used in the book, The Vertical Farm. http://toddecological.com/eco-machines/



I distinctly remember reading about a multistory bioshelter farm design for cities in the book Bioshelters, Ocean Arks, City Farming: Ecology as the Basis of Design written in 1984 published by Sierra Club Books. This was the basis for a later book, A Safe and Sustainable World: The Promise of Ecological Design, Island Press c2005.



I think Dr. Dickson Despommier synthesized a new idea from the work of many others. The scale of a vertical farm is what differentiates his idea. It is hard to imagine a skyscraper filled with greenery.



There is also a single sentence citation for the book, Cradle to Cradle Remaking The Way We Make Things by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. This is a book about how to design things so there is very little waste in a closed loop system based on ecology. I did find it listed in recommended reads.
http://www.mcdonough.com/cradle_to_cradle.htm

Dr. Despommier also uses the term "natural capitalism" without explaining where it comes from. Natural Capitalism is a term for businesses that use environmental principles. It is also a book, Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins.



I wish he had spent some more time describing the workings of how a vertical farm is put together. For example, I might have liked a little more on how Aeroponics which came from NASA works. Incidentally, Dr. Despommier also mentions Biosphere II which was a closed loop system for maintaining humans for long time periods in space. Many of the potential systems he is describing come from space research.



Dr. Despommier's description of the Eurofresh Farms is quite interesting. They are in the middle of the Arizona desert. There is another example of a closed system farm in the antarctic not mentioned in the book where they grow fresh food for researchers. It is also preparation for growing food on Mars. http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=13724



The Vertical Farm which he is describing is a future design combining space research, agronomy, and bioshelter design inside a skyscraper. It uses both wind, solar, and biomass power. It commercializes concepts like aeroponics from NASA and adds to some ideas that already came from space research. Solar panels were originally invented at NASA.



This brings the theme to power in the book. Dr. Despommier describes how they will be using wind power, biomass, and solar power. He suggest plasma arc gasification as the way to get rid of biomass. Plasma arc gasification is very expensive. He also suggests that we grow fuel crops in vertical farms. Fuel crops like algae can grow on open water in big bags for far cheaper prices. I liked his sugestion from an earlier article in the New York magazine that they use pellet burning cogeneration for heat, power, and steam. http://nymag.com/news/features/30020/



Dr. Despommier says this can only be built by governments doing research; there is no venture capital interested in this. This statement bothered me. Mr. Despommier is wrong. Bayer is doing research for this and many other companies are working on projects which involve these technologies.
http://www.bayercropscience.com/bcsweb/cropprotection.nsf/id/EN_Editorial_Service_Issue_18_Agriculture?open&l=EN&ccm=500035



Other companies are seeking venture capital to build these projects like Home Town Farms. http://www.hometownfarms.com/  Many cities are becoming more interested in investing in urban agricultural greenhouses. In New York, there is http://gothamgreens.com/  whch supplies Whole Foods markets. There are also combined systems called aquaponics which create closed loops for growing fish and vegetables together. http://www.growseed.org/growingpower.html



I thought the book was very interesting and very flawed. Most of the advantages which he is describing could be done with rooftop aquaponics, or moving advanced greenhouses into an urban setting. I am not convinced that stacking one greenhouse after another into a skyscraper is a good idea. I can see smaller buildings of three or four stories tried first.   This would reduce pollution, provide fresh organic food, create new jobs, and a cleaner environment.  It is well worth doing.


In the appendices, there is a lot of material on hydroponics and urban hydroponics with many websites. It would have been nice to see him list a few green incubators like Green Spaces http://www.greenspaceshome.com/  or NYC Acre http://www.nycacre.com/ . Also, it would have been nice to see a little bit on aquaponics as well.



The best part of ths book was the illustrations. They are incredible pictures of green cities, buildings and skyscrapers. In fact, his descriptions of green buildings were also superb. This is an excellent reason to take a look at this book.



This is a fascinating and flawed book. I found many of his ideas to be very interesting, but impractical. Maybe, I had some problems with his not going more deeply into parts of the philosophy behind building a vertical farm. I also did not like his over focus on the idea that the government will fund research into vertical farms. Vertical farms incorporate some fairly radical ideas about science and technology.



This book hopefully will stimulate people to look at the fascinating new developments in aeroponics, hydroponics, recycling, green buildings, cradle to cradle design, ecological design, and alternative energy which this book presents. I think most people will find this book fascinating.  I did have some questions about the authors approach and philosophy.

Stirring It Up How To Make Money And Save the World-- Gary Hirshberg-- Review

Stirring It Up How To Make Money and Save the World by Gary Hirshberg is about how to use environmental business practices to both save the environment and make money.

I would call many of the things he is describing as either industrial ecology or environmental technology. His main point is that environmental business in the long run ultimately makes money consistently. Business is also a better way to introduce environmental practices than government or nonprofits because it is proven to be effective in a much more convincing manner.

Gary Hirshberg describes numerous companies that use environmental practices, Wal-Mart, Patagonia, Adobe Systems, Timberland, Stonyfield Farms, and others. He even has a set of coupons in the back of the book for companies like Organic Valley, Seventh Generation, and Honest Tea.

This book is both an environmental statement and a tool to sell his company and other companies that use environmental technology. The book is printed on 100% recycled fiber, as well as the dust jacket. The energy used in the book is offset with carbon offsets purchased from Native Energy.

The book is part of a larger strategy of using a cause to sell a product. All of Stonyfield Farms yogurt lids and packages are printed with various environmental messages. The yogurt, milk,and dairy products are sold as high end products with little advertising. The organic ingredients are high quality enough that they use sampling as one of their main sources of advertising. In a similar manner, Seventh Generation sells cleaning products that are high end that are sold as being environmentally sound.

Stonyfield Farms locks in the prices of organic milk and other products by buying ingredients for several years at a time using a fixed price from family farms preferably. This guarantees that they will get the exact product they want up to their standards.

Part of this is also described as fair trade a business cause by many economists. Fair trade and family farming effectively becomes an instrument of advertising for the company.

Also because they are aiming to produce a high end organic product, government regulation work in their favor. The more they can prove they have a better more nutritious product because of regulation, the more of their product they are likely to sell. It is like Volvo with crash tests, they want the highest standards imposed by government because they can meet them.

Various ways are described to make money using environmental technologies. The first is energy efficiency. Using less energy ultimately saves money in the long run. Wal-Mart for example has set out to double the fuel efficiency of its 6900 truck fleet, ultimately bringing in $300 million dollars in annual savings. They also have introduced led and fluorescent lighting and covered their open refrigerator cases with doors to reduce energy use.

Stonyfield originally introduced the largest solar array in New Hampshire when oil was $1.60 a gallon, and they saw little chance for recovering costs within the next ten years. Now oil is at $3.00 a gallon and it looks like they will break even with solar power. Their main intention when they started using alternative energy was to reduce their carbon footprint.

The most interesting part of the book I found was the section on aiming for 100% sustainable production techniques. The first step is to reduce and redesign the product so it uses less material to produce. The proper term for this is lean manufacturing. The objective is to just the right amount of material so nothing is wasted. Toyota for example does this when they manufacture cars. Stonyfield aims to reduce the amount of packaging they use.

The second step is to reuse their resources as much as possible. This means for example, treating the water after it is used in making yogurt so it can be reused in other processes, watering plants, sewage, and other uses. A good example outside Stonyfield would be the xerox corporation which refurbishes its machines and sends them to people as part of a service contract for copiers.

It is only the last step where recycling enters the picture. Recycling only works with a small amount of the waste products. They turn over some of the things to be recycled to a company called recycline. They aim to have 100% sustainability by 2015. One of the ideas they are looking at is biodegradable packaging made from corn polymers.

Gary Hirshberg views recycling as the last step in the process. It is better to introduce reusable steel containers than recycle cardboard boxes for example in his view. More money can be generated from lean manufacturing and reusing products than recycling.

At first, when I was reading this book, I was put off because it seemed to be an attempt to sell a product, Stonyfield Farms yogurt. Businesses are putting out more and more books that are statements about how wonderful their company is. It is like buying a big coupon from their company. Buying this book would be like buying a big advertising coupon from them. It is basically advertising that pays for itself. The Google Story by David Vise is a similar style book where the whole point of the book seems to be to praise a particular company.

Also, Gary Hirshberg attacks Exxon Mobile for its profit at all costs motivations. I am not particularly fond of Exxon, they did make a huge environmental mess. He is right about how it is not possible to be both a strong polluter and an environmental company.

There is a lot of interesting material on profitable environmental business practices. However, it is often simplified for the lay reader, and does not go very deeply into the details of how things are done. This is a good primer for people who are interested in building a high quality company with high end products that uses environmental practices and technology. Stonyfield is effectively becoming the bmw of yogurt, ice cream, and dairy.

Thoughts for the Day

I have been at jury duty all day today. It has been an educational experience I will never forget. During the breaks I have been reading Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save The World by Gary Hirshberg. Gary Hirshberg is currently the CE-Yo of Stonybrook Farms. It is a very interesting book. There are some very interesting things about the book which are not immediately obvious. Gary Hirshberg was a member of the New Alchemy Institute, one of the founding people who work on industrial ecology.

The New Alchemy Institute was a radical scientific community that worked on advanced ecological research covering things like hydroponics, aquaculture, and bioshelters. They built several closed ecosystem homes. Their experiment ran from 1971 to 1991. http://www.vsb.cape.com/~nature/greencenter/newalchemy.html

He does not mention some of the other members of the New Alchemy Instite like Dr. John Todd who helped found the discipline of industrial ecology. Dr. John Todd is considered the father of Living Machines a technology which uses plants to purify polluted water. His website is Ocean Arks International http://www.oceanarks.org/. Dr. John Todd also designs artificial wetlands for sewage treatment.

Also as I am reading the book, I found out that Group Danone has a 75% interest in Stonyfield Yogurt, the company which Gary Hirshberg runs. This is quite interesting. Group Danone helped found Grameen Danone the first social business according to Muhammad Yunus in the book, Creating A World Without Poverty.

There is also mention of Paul Hawken who works for the Rocky Mountain Institute. A lot of this book is about Industrial Ecology, or redesigning business along environmental lines to increase energy efficiency, use lean manufacturing and refurbishing techniques, introduce alternative energy, improve packaging design, and reduce pollution. It is not advertised as such, but this book describes this process quite well.

I will be taking notes on it. A lot of the upbeat message is couched in laymans terms to make the agenda of industrial ecology easier to follow.

I was looking at Entrecard, I noticed that a number of websites were coming from Technorati. Although, I did not have a favorites button until yesterday, I was being mentioned there. Technorati is one of the largest social networking sites on the web.

I also added a button from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This organization helps people online with legal issues. They have a legal advice guide for bloggers. Cory Doctorow one of the editors for Boing! Boing! started his career at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They are instrumental in protecting privacy and free speech on the internet. http://w2.eff.org/bloggers/

I have been very busy today, so I haven't had a whole lot of extra time to look at the internet.