Vertical Farming Is it possible?

[CityBounty]

Hello Everyone,
I am new here and really only have one question for this forum. What would it take to build a vertical farm?

What are the issues that face the actual building and what would the cost be?

I would like to see one in Portland Oregon and so I am putting together a business plan to approach investors with. I need realistic numbers and I need to know what the concerns would be.

There are lots of great buildings here but it doesn't matter much to me what the outside of the building looks like. What does matter is that the inside have some pretty unique features.

It needs to be able to support an Aquaponics system for growing food in a large commercial scale. I would like it to have a view restaurant on the top floor to take advantage of the view of Mt Hood and a produce market and herb pharmacy on the ground floor. A glass elevator up the center would allow restaurant patrons a view of where their food came from, I think it would be a nice touch but not essential.

The concerns I can think of are weight and lighting.

Lighting can be supplemented with LED but it would be nice if most of the building could have natural light.

Weight is a bigger issue (I think) because water is so heavy. It would be helpful to find out what the maximum load per floor is so that I can design a system that uses fish tanks that can be held up. I would like to have 10 10,000 gallon tanks per floor but that may be too much. We might need to put the fish tanks on the ground floor or even in the ground and pump the water up to the farm.

Anyway I am just in the dreaming stages and would appreciate any help anyone wants to give. I will keep watch here and I also have a forum going at CityBounty.org where I am hoping to pull all of this together.
Thanks,
Pam

[CityBounty]

After some thought I think the cylinder building with the spiral inside it is likely the best system for the Aquaponics. Is this a doable building? Should I be avoiding curved outside walls if I am trying to keep expenses down?
I will keep updating at citybounty.org so check in there to see what is current. This idea is evolving fast. lol
Thanks
Pam

[scalziand]

Originally Posted by CityBounty

Lighting can be supplemented with LED but it would be nice if most of the building could have natural light.

Weight is a bigger issue (I think) because water is so heavy. It would be helpful to find out what the maximum load per floor is so that I can design a system that uses fish tanks that can be held up. I would like to have 10 10,000 gallon tanks per floor but that may be too much. We might need to put the fish tanks on the ground floor or even in the ground and pump the water up to the farm.

Anyway I am just in the dreaming stages and would appreciate any help anyone wants to give. I will keep watch here and I also have a forum going at CityBounty.org where I am hoping to pull all of this together.
Thanks,
Pam

Since plants only use certain relatively narrow portions of the light spectrum for photosynthesis, it would actually be more efficient to cover the tower in solar panels and only use LEDs to light the plants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency

The solar panel/LED combination would effectively turn unusable parts of the spectrum into usable parts.

[jlousa]

It's not economically feasible. The only way to make it economically is by overcharging the end user because of the origin of the food. Once the novelty runs out people will move on and go back to buying from the organic farm just outside town.
Should the day ever come where we do run out of land to grow food and need to do this, it would probably end up looking like London's Gherkin but with a giant hollow lightwell down the middle. The idea of using fish tanks to clean the water is pretty good and allows a secondary income stream. LED lighting might work but the trade off is the lack of heat that regular lights give off so depending on climate LED lighting might not even be ideal. There's a reason Growops use engery hog lamps.

[zilfondel]

Actually... a lot of the winter produce that you get, such as tomatoes, are grown in hothouse greenhouses in Canada that use artificial light. There are a number of people experimenting with LED lights for plants and aquaponics that combine fish waste and produce.

However, you are right that adding a structure makes it much more expensive. I wouldn't be surprised if you could find it to be financially feasible if it could be marketed at a premium.

I am somewhat skeptical that it is the most sustainable option for growing plants, but a lot of greenhouse operations are actually moving to robotics now. In a few years, there won't be any human hands in food production anyway.

http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2012/12...#slideid-14209


image from http://intercongreen.com/2011/02/10/...ics-only-hope/

[BIMBAM]

This may be of interest in your research, and you could perhaps learn from their successes and mistakes. Check out this vertical farm we have in Vancouver, BC.

http://vancouverfoodster.com/2012/11...-in-vancouver/

[Mr Downtown]

People vastly overestimate the transportation cost for food. Only about 14% of the cost of food is transportation. So the amount saved by not trucking it from the Willamette or San Joaquin Valley is quickly offset by the labor involved in working with smaller quantities locally—and that's before even considering all the energy and structural costs.

[CityBounty]

Thanks a bunch for your thoughts about this. I appreciate your input both here and the PMs I received. I have learned a lot and though it might not be feasible for me to lead this now it may be coming to my city in the future. Many other cities and countries all around the world are already farming in vertical format now.
I will leave you all to your skyscraper fandoms and if anyone wants to contact me just look me up by city bounty dot org.
Happy Day All,
Pam
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