Singapore Builds First Vertical Vegetable Farm 141
kkleiner writes "Short on arable land? One solution would be to plan up. Singapore, a small country that imports most of its food, has now begun selling vegetables from its first vertical farm. And even while they're more expensive the vegetables are already selling faster than they can be grown. If the farms prove sustainable – both technologically and economically – they could provide a much desired supplement to Singapore's locally grown food and serve as a model for farming in other land-challenged areas."
suggestion (Score:5, Insightful)
Singapore Builds _Its_ First Vertical Vegetable Farm
Drinking water (Score:4, Insightful)
And if they can find a good, cheap way to desalinate sea water they could almost declare themselves functionally independant from Malaysia.
Re:suggestion (Score:2, Insightful)
If the picture in Singapore news is indicative of the farm it's wasting a huge amount of space. Stick solar cells on it, get some high quality LEDs in the right frequency spectrum. Pack those trays as close as possible and still be able to do automated inspection and if needed maintenance and I'd be surprised if they could not make one acre do the work of 300. It would take compartmentalization so disease would not travel, incoming water would be a torrent that would need processed and filtered, incoming nutrients the same. I would grow high dollar crops at first, herbs, spices, medicinals that are allowed and use that to fund the more mundane crops. I doubt you can do grains there at a good profit but most other produce will work. When they come up with square pigs it's all ham and beans at that point. ;)