Does Vertical Farming Stack Up?

Since 1970 population growth has halved the amount of arable land per person to half an acre. By 2050 there will be an extra 3 billion people on the planet. Just providing their drinking water will reduce what is available for agriculture by 18%. Soil based farming will no longer be sustainable.

The future may well look something like the pilot project run by Valcent Products at Paignton Zoo. The farm  grows red chard, mizuna, mixed leaves, and a variety of herbs as well as edible flowers and fodder crops such as wheat grass and barley. Currently the farm imports a wide variety of veggies for their animal feed, so this provides a local, sustainable alternative for the zoo's residents. (click here for video)

The ‘farm’ requires just 5% of the water for field crops, produces 20 times the yield per acre, and can be built almost anywhere.

The growing operation works on a conveyor system, with automated loading of plant trays for harvesting and replanting. The whole set up has been designed for minimum maintenance, with computerized controls to regulate irrigation and water supply and the environment within the polytunnel. Valcent claim the farm will require one staff member working approximately two hours a day to keep it running, and could cut the zoo's feed bill by as much as £100,000.

Another benefit of this system is the fact that it can produce food very close to where it will be consumed. This means that food miles are minimised, that the food is fresher and loss through damage & spoilage during transport will be cut out. Better still, the use of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides can be kept to a bare minimum by growing plants indoors in a controlled environment. Soil erosion will not be a problem because the food will be grown hydroponically, recycling techniques will ensure that only a fraction of the amount of water and nutrients will be needed compared with conventional farming, and there will no problem with agricultural run-off.

Initially it is predicted that units with large catering operations like hospitals will all have their own vertical farm and supermarkets may well take up the idea if it is commercially (& politically) a success. Then, according to the UN’s Population Division, by 2050 around 70% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas. So it makes sense to move farms closer to where everyone will be living.

As technology progresses, skyscrapers with different floors of fruit and vegetables will be common place with a shop on the ground floor and crops harvested to order. Our current practice of shipping produce around the country (if not the World,) growing crop varieties for their longevity when picked rather than their taste & vitamin content, and washing & coating them in chemicals may one day seem totally bizarre.



Dig For Victory - Part 1



A bit of home gardening is an ideal way to reduce your food carbon footprint.

Any produce that you grow at home will save on transport. Then, if it goes straight from garden to plate you are cutting out packaging and storage.

If you are composting your kitchen and garden waste then you are definitely on to a winner. Even if your council provides a recycling service for this waste you are cutting down on the fuel required to transport it to the recycling facility.

If you have a large garden and plenty of spare time then it is relatively easy to grow your own vegetables and fruit. In reality, you can get started even with a window box.

The following list will fit into window boxes, pots, grow bags, containers or in the garden and require just 1.5 m². It’s amazing how much food you can harvest from such a small space.

Dwarf French Green Beans x 3, Mixed lettuces x 10, Rocket x 10, Mizuna x 10, Spinach x 10, Golden Streak mustard x 10, Spring Onions x 10, Beetroot x 10, Basil x 1 pot, Parsley x 1 pot, Chives x 1 pot



Recycling your food waste need not take too much space either. Wormeries are ideal for compact areas.

-          Worms can eat and digest up to half their own body weight each day.

-          The casts they produce contain top quality compost and a concentrated liquid feed.

-          Ideal for those with a small outdoor/garden space or for those looking for an alternative to a compost bin.

-          Can provide a useful backup for those who want small quantities of very rich compost

Worms are not too fussy and will happily munch on items that might otherwise go into landfill:

waste from vegetable juicers ,  soaked and ripped pizza boxes, paper, tissues, dirt , leaves , hair, cardboard fast food packaging, egg shells, potato peelings , apple cores & pea pods.



Food Packaging Conundrum

OK, so we are doing our best to reduce food waste, but what about the packaging it comes in?

It would be nice to think that we can do without packaging that goes into the bin & then landfill, but there is a trade off. If it takes more resources to produce food that would otherwise be wasted than the packaging required extending its life, then there is an arguable case.

According to Incpen (Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment), more resources go into producing food than into the packaging which protects it and without the protection of packaging there would be much more food wasted.
“The government’s own Waste Policy Review 2011 acknowledges that packaging fulfils an important role in avoiding spoilage in the supply system and in the home,” said Incpen director Jane Bickerstaffe. “It also says that the carbon footprint of packaging is dwarfed by that of the products it contains. Both industry and government need to help consumers understand that.”
Typical examples are:

-           plastic wrapped cucumbers (stops them rotting so they last 5 times longer)

-          Pre-packed meat & fish (contains an artificial atmosphere that prevents bacterial growth)

-          Trays or bags have reduced in-store waste of grapes by 20%.

-           In-store wastage of new potatoes reduced from 3% when sold loose to less than 1% after specially designed bags were introduced.

Without packaging no liquids, gels or powders would be available; fruit and vegetables would not be available out of season; consumers would have to grow their own food or shop daily for it.

Without packaging the environmental damage from broken goods and spoiled food would be enormous. Food waste has at least ten times the environmental impact of packaging waste and that’s before taking account of the impact of methane from decayed food.

Meanwhile, of the total energy used in the food chain, 50% is used in food production, 10% on transport to the shops and retailing, 10% to make the packaging and the remaining 30% is used by shoppers to drive to the shops and store and cook food.

Food producers and retailers are now taking the packaging issue seriously. As the cost of oil based products and transport increase dramatically it makes economic sense to look at cutting costs. They can then boast that they are getting greener, but we all know what the real driving factor is. The major Supermarkets have dedicated departments that look at food production from start to delivery in store with the aim of reducing costs at all stages. Having identified the savings, they then deduct that amount from what they pay the supplier!!

As consumers we can do the following to lessen our environmental impact. Never dispose of packaged food into your regular bin. That goes into landfill where the packaging will result in anaerobic rotting which produces greenhouse gasses. The packaging will then take decades to degrade afterwards.

Dispose of food waste separately and where possible clean and put recyclable materials out for your council collection. Not cleaning the packaging will result in the whole bag being classed as contaminated & it being sent to landfill.

Global Warming – the Nuclear Option

Apparently, all is not lost in the war against global warming. Scientists from NASA and a number of other institutions have recently been modeling the effects of a war involving a hundred Hiroshima-level bombs, or 0.03 percent of the world's current nuclear arsenal, according to National Geographic. The research suggests five million metric tons of black carbon would be swept up into the lowest portion of the atmosphere.

The result, according to NASA climate models, could actually be global cooling.

While the global cooling caused by superpower-on-superpower war could be catastrophic (hence the term "nuclear winter") a small scale, planned detonation, could have an impact on the world climate. Models suggest that though the world is currently in a warming trend, small detonations could lower global temperatures by 2.25 degrees C for two-to-three years following war.

In more tropical areas temperatures could fall 5.4 to 7.2 degrees C.

Then we would just need to decide which 1300Km2 of the planet we are happy to sacrifice to this holocaust.

The calculations would have to be finely tuned as an over ‘correction’ would tip the planet into a nuclear winter which would have devastating effects on the planet’s weather and crop production.

Let’s hope we are not forced into taking such desperate measures.



It won’t get any better than this

Thank you to John who added a link to a previous posting on Global Warming Warning.

In short, New Scientist has recently had a short article on the "Limits to Growth", revisiting the 1972 book by Meadows et al.  The book gives an account of a computer model of how the world's population, resources and economy would function over the coming 130 years.  It predicted a disaster in the twenty first century if nothing were changed.  At first the book created a stir and world leaders all agreed that action was needed.  It then attracted ferocious attacks on ideological grounds; the media carried uniform condemnation and declared the predictions to be incorrect.

Guess what, the models are now proving to be an accurate representation of what is occurring in the World today.

Unfortunately, the World’s population will not experience the full force of the depletion of resources until just before they run out (see Margaret Atwood’s Amoeba’s Tale) We have a few more years ahead of us where living in denial will still be possible.

So from here on in, as the population rises and developing nations catch up with developed society in their rate per capita that finite resources are being used up, we are racing towards crunch time. Things will not be getting better than they are today.

The full article in all it’s gory detail can be found here.



Sewer Abuse & Fatburgs

Sewer abuse is a big problem for water companies. It is also the hidden side of food waste.

Thames Valley has called on its customers to avoid 'sewer abuse' in a bid to limit the number of blockages it has to deal with. It advises people not to dispose of waste such as oil & fat into the sewage system. The disposable of fats down drains can lead to a build up of 'fatbergs', which block sewers and can in severe cases lead to sewage flooding. Sewer flooding of people's properties is a truly miserable experience.

The rise in popularity of domestic food macerators (sink waste disposals) are not helping the situation. Although macerators provide an easy and convenient means of disposing of food or sanitary waste into drains and sewers, water companies advise that this increases the risk of sewer blockages, sewer flooding, environmental pollution, odours and rodent infestations. There are also further associated risks to screening plants, the sewage treatment process, disposal of bio-solids and energy costs.

The main cause of problems are oils & fats, these can form build ups which then break off into ‘burgs’and cause a blockage further down the system.

Fat that will solidify as it cools, like pork, beef, lamb or chicken, can be reused for cooking, instead of oil. People pay good money for goose fat or dripping so put yours to good use. Alternatively, leave it to go cold and place it in your food recycling bin.

You can extend the use of vegetable oils by straining them after each use and avoiding contamination with salt which will cause them to degrade more quickly. If the oil does become rancid and unusable then you should be able to dispose of it at your local recycling centre where it can be turned into bio-diesel..

Out of site may be out of mind for a while but blocked sewers will eventually come back to haunt you. Avoid waste in the first place but if you do have to get rid of grease & fat do so responsibly.



New Year Resolutions – Healthy Eating

As 2012 comes upon us many people will be making resolutions to make themselves fitter & healthier, especially after a Christmas binge.

The good news is that a healthier diet can also help to reduce food waste. The basic principles are the same for both targets.

1.       Portion control. By measuring the size of your meals properly you can avoid over catering and the problem of what to do with the excess. Here is a useful tool for planning your portion size. Perfect portions.

2.       Plan Your Meals. Rather than fill your fridge with random items, some of which will go off before they are eaten, plan your meals for the next few days. This also gives you a chance to make sure that your diet is well balanced.

3.       Stick to your shopping list. As well as avoiding all the sweets and cakes think twice about all the other extras that you may be tempted to put in your basket, especially if it has a short shelf life. A bargain isn’t a bargain if it ends up in the bin!

4.       Eat more fruit and vegetables. By eating your five portions of fruit and vegetables a day you will be turning over your veg store, salad tray and fruit bowl regularly, before they get a chance to spoil.

5.       Don’t Skip Breakfast. A breakfast containing at least 3 food groups, sets your metabolism up for the day. This reduces the craving to binge on high calorie snacks & raid the supermarket on the way home.

6.       Drink more water. Water is a natural appetite suppressant, in fact we often feel the urge to eat when actually we are dehydrated. Tap water is virtually free, just as healthy as bottled water, and avoids all the empty calories that come along with so many other beverages.

So, if you have set a goal to eat more healthily in 2012, good luck and as a bit of a boost, remember you will also be cutting down on your food waste.