I love to cook, and I really enjoy shopping for the evening meal’s ingredients and then creating it (and eating it, too). I am also a kitchen voyeur. So, the other night, while aimlessly flipping channels, I landed on a popular show on the Cooking Channel (their motto is “Stay Hungry”) called Iron Chef America. Some of you might be familiar with it. I don’t usually like contest shows, but the host was Alton Brown, a renowned chef and a damn funny and clever one, too, I might add. So I gave in and became thoroughly engrossed in the often-frenetic culinary machinations of two highly gifted food alchemists. I might also add that one of my favorite films is the adorable “Ratatouille”. I will watch it in its entirety when every I happen to see it playing on some cable station.

Two iconic iron chefs were selected, Bobby Flay, one of my favorites, and Rick Bayless, one of my other favorites. In my humble opinion, the only chefs comparable to these guys are Jacques Pepin, my current all-time favorite, and Julia Child, in my view the greatest all-round chef of modern times! Flay and Bayless were charged with using buffalo meat as the secret ingredient in as many Mexican/Southwestern style cuisine dishes as they could assemble in one hour. Of course they had lots of help from their highly competent staff of sous chefs. They both used lots of different ingredients derived from a wide variety of crop plants to augment and compliment the meats being prepared. As the show unraveled, amid Flay shout-outs and Bayless’ artful food plating schemes, I began fantasizing that one of the requirements of the contest should be that they had to use only those ingredients that were grown in their own vertical farms attached to their up-scale restaurants in New York and Chicago. In the end, cherubically charming Flay won on a single style point! I had them tied for first.

As I dozed off afterwards, with images of buffaloes jumping one at a time over the fence at the Ted Turner ranch in the Ruby River valley of western Montana, I got to thinking (dreaming) about LED lighting for indoor crops and how much we need to improve the situation before the commercial side of vertical farming becomes a no-brainer with respect to the return on investment side of things. Granted, there are lots of places where energy is never going to be a major factor in deciding whether or not to invest in a vertical farm, for example Iceland, New Zealand, and other parts of the world where geothermal energy is there for the taking. In addition, other areas in which solar energy is begging to be applied to this new agricultural initiative – The Middle East, Australia, the American Southwest - would also be able to employ LEDs as they currently exist and still reap a favorable return on their investment. But for the rest of us, help is needed at the level of improving LED lighting efficiency to encourage more people to get involved in building and operating vertical farms.

So… how would it play out if we could use the Iron Chef America format to showcase the latest in LED lighting, turning it into a lighting “throw-down”, in which anyone with an improved LED lighting system for making green plants grow faster and better using less energy than the currently commercially available LEDs could participate. Of course, the time frame would be longer than an hour; weeks to months would be more appropriate, depending upon the crops selected. In addition to the standard leafy green vegetables (kale, spinach, lettuce), root vegetables, vine crops, grains, and bush berries might be a good mix of crops to challenge any lighting scheme/growing system. All crops would be maintained under a standardized hydroponic configuration, save for the lighting. To insure fairness of growing conditions, a grand master/iron chef-like personality             with indoor farming experience would be placed in charge. Rules and such would be drawn up by a blue-ribbon committee, and the contest would be well-advertized. High-end celebrity chefs, and green foodie Hollywood stars might decide to back such a venture. The Discovery Channel might pick up the show, calling it: “Let There Be Light”. At the end of the show, large cash prizes (millions of dollars; Mr. Buffett, are you listening?) would be awarded in each crop category to the group that showed a significant improvement in the ratio of grams of biomass produced per kilowatt of electricity used. The actual crops could be donated to worthy causes as food donations under the slogan, “Up With Food”! 

The companies that could really make a difference here are Phillips, Siemens, and General Electric. They have all invested heavily in LED technologies, and great strides have been made in just over the last few yeas in terms of efficiency and specificity for what the plants need. More work is needed, however. They are all on the verge of setting the vertical farming/indoor agriculture industries free from economic burdens related to energy use. My plea is for them to keep on truckin’ and stay hungry, so that the two billion people who go to bed that way each day will eventually have something better to look forward to!

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), has just released its 2011 assessment of the state of the world‘s agriculture and it is not a pretty picture. In fact, its down right grim:

ROME (AP): December 1, 2011 — The United Nations has completed the first-ever global assessment of the state of the planet's land resources, finding in a report Monday that a quarter of all land is highly degraded and warning the trend must be reversed if the world's growing population is to be fed.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that farmers will have to produce 70 percent more food by 2050 to meet the needs of the world's expected 9 billion-strong population. That amounts to 1 billion tons more wheat, rice and other cereals and 200 million more tons of beef and other livestock.

But as it is, most available land is already being farmed, and in ways that often decrease its productivity through practices that lead to soil erosion and wasting of water.

That means that to meet the world's future food needs, a major "sustainable intensification" of agricultural productivity on existing farmland will be necessary, the FAO said in "State of the World's Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture."

Things appear to be getting worse and worse, as year after year, the climate continues to change at an accelerating rate, and adverse weather events continue to increase as the result of that acceleration, despoiling huge tracts of arable land and rendering them unusable for the foreseeable future. How much more of this environmental insult must we endure before the world’s agricultural communities stop what they are doing and adopt new methods for growing most of our soil-based crops? Of course, I am referring to vertical farming.

I have been advocating for some years now for all the richest countries to pool a small fraction of their trillions of dollars of resources (ten billion would do the job nicely) and support the establishment of a global urban-based agriculture that takes advantage of the fact that we can easily grow most of what we need inside controlled environment structures. In fact, The Republic of Korea is already ahead of the rest of the world in this regard, having established a vertical farm and nearby seed bank in March of 2011. Successful commercial ventures in Japan (Nuvege), have shown that this method of food production can be highly profitable. A few other vertical farms have been established in other places, but there needs to be a much large investment in this kind of farming if we are to stave off a world food crisis that may already be starting.

In the developed world, trying to save traditional agriculture by allowing large argo-businesses to have their way with the soil has done nothing more than to allow these companies to reap more profits, as food prices increase due to the increase in the price of oil. We need a national policy shift to give a voice to the consumers who continue to demand safe, health food choices that are available year round. This can only be achieved by production schemes that employ high tech greenhouse methods – hydroponics, aeroponics, aquaponics.  Locating large-scale indoor farms next to the largest urban centers solves many problems that now plague the current food system – harvesting before the produce is ripe, shipping and handling, food spoilage – at every step of the food chain from farm to table.

Elections are just around the corner, yet I have heard very little about the food crisis and potential solutions from either side of the aisle. What’s up with that??? Come on America. Lets face up to the situation and solve this problem. Guaranteed that if we do, then lots of other problems will disappear, as well!    

Robert Shope was a highly respected virologist who discovered, among other things, the causative agent of warts, the Shope papilloma virus. He also worked on parasitic worms, and in particular Metastrongylus, a parasitic lung worm often found in farm-raised swine. Pigs get infected by ingesting the embryonated eggs found in fecally-contaminated soil. Shope demonstrated that these long-lived, environmentally resistant ova were capable of harboring swine influenza virus, serving as its “Trojan Horse”. This finding led him to speculate that Metastrongylus might play a role in the transmission of the virus from pig to pig, and perhaps even to people, as well. Swine flu is a life-threatening respiratory infection, so knowing how it is maintained in the environment was an important step in the design of public health programs to limit its spread. The fact that Metastrongylus is found everywhere that pigs are raised is a testament to its simple strategy for transmission. As it turned out, this parasite was not responsible for transmitting swine flu, but Shope’s studies did re-enforce the fact that fecal contamination of pig farms was impossible to control.  

Shope was feisty and notorious for his tell-it-like-it-is attitude and “to hell with social protocol”. His laboratory was located at the prestigious Rockefeller University in New York City on the third floor of Theobald Smith Hall. But despite being recognized as a venerable charter member of that “ivory tower” of science, he was compelled to plainly announce to the world his findings regarding the transmission of his now favorite virus, swine flu. Shope created a rather rude saying in bold, easy-to-read lettering and posted it prominently above the entrance to his lab for all visitors to see (much to the chagrin of university officials leading tours of that famous institution, I might add). It read:

“The Earth Is Covered With A Thin Layer of Shit”

In principle, the World Health Organization agrees with Shope. They state flatly that over half of the world’s farms still use untreated animal waste as fertilizer, and most of it is of human origin. Feces are easy to get and cost nothing. It is also a very good fertilizer! But this creates a real problem, because like the pig parasite story, this unsanitary practice results in the transmission of many fecally-transmitted infectious diseases of humans, as well: a wide variety of dysentery-causing microbes, geo-helminths (intestinal worm parasites that include Ascaris lumbricoides, Trichuris trichiura, Strongyloides stercoralis, and hookworm), and several life-threatening water-borne parasites, the most serious of which is schistosomiasis. These two groups of fecally-transmitted worms infect some 2 billion individuals, and cause serious illness in millions of children, world-wide. Hookworm, alone, infects some 1 billion people. To acquire hookworms, all one has to do is walk around barefoot on ground that is contaminated with human feces that contain the eggs of these parasites. The simple act of swimming in fecally-contaminated fresh water exposes people to the schistosomes. In both of these cases, the parasite does the rest by penetrating our unbroken skin.

Farming facilitates the spread of these parasites, albeit unbeknownst to the farmer. Other microbial infections of animal origin regularly piggy-back on fresh produce, causing outbreaks of serious diseases such as listeriosis, salmonella, and E. coli strain 0157.  The prevention of all of these health risks is to isolate our crops from outside sources of fecal contamination. Indoor controlled environment agriculture is the answer. The more we become victimized by preventable outbreaks of food-borne or water-borne illnesses, the easier it is to convince the public as to the value of creating another way of raising food.

Less developed countries are the most affected by these parasites. Eliminate these parasites and the world would be quite a different place. Literacy rates would go up, infant mortality rates would plummet, and the economic picture would go from grim to self-sustainable.  Eventually, birth rates would also drop, and people would now be able to afford so-called “luxury” items like TVs, homes, and cars.

The vertical farm movement is now well underway, and with it the emergence of a new era in food safety and security, whose mantra is avoidance rather than treatment of easily preventable infectious diseases. Millions of lives and billions of health care dollars will be saved when finally everyone can enjoy fresh vegetables and fruits grown under controlled conditions designed specifically to prevent the spread of these insidious microbial infections. Talk about a good return on investment!   

Not only is farm-to-fork distance a carboon footprint issue, but also may contribute to food-borne disease. See this piece for more- 

Long road from farm to fork worsens food outbreaks

Weeds (wild plant life) are the farmer’s public enemy number one. Weeds invade farms and eat up the nutrients in fertilizers and suck up the water from irrigation schemes, compromising yields of corn, soybeans, potatoes, and our other cash crops, too. As the result, profits go down and the farmer pulls his hair out wondering what to do next.  Since the invention of agriculture, farmers had no one to turn to for help. That is, up until 1960s. Then along came the agricultural chemical industry and the picture changed, almost overnight. Herbicides galore (mostly glyphosate and related compounds) rolled out of the R&D labs and onto the tilled land. Yields went up and so did profits. All this change was just too good. Like anything that is too good to be true, it usually is, especially in the long run. Everyone forgot about (or never knew about, or ignored) the fundamental concept of evolution, and kept on spraying. As year after year rolled by, it was discovered that more and more herbicide was needed to do the same job as compared to the first time they were employed. The weeds were winning back the farm, and winning big time. It became apparent that this approach could not go on without major changes in weed management strategies.

In 1970, there were no wild plant species known to be resistant to glyphosate. By 2010, nearly 350 different species of wild plants had become resistant (Science News, July 2, 2011). Weeds were not going to sit there and take it, were they? Of course not. How did this unforeseen consequence of herbicide use happen? It’s a fundamental trait of all living things that random mutations occur at a rather predictable rate. Eventually, given the right situation, it is inevitable that there will be a mutant plant that can withstand increased levels of any given herbicide. They will then replace all the ones that were killed off, and thus the farmer finds himself back at square one. (Our pathogenic microbes have done the same thing regarding the use of antibiotics.) Using higher doses of herbicides the next year solved the weed problem, but only temporarily, and so it went until the weeds were at the same level of resistance as the cash crops. Humans are gifted in creating new problems in attempting to solve old ones. Unintended consequences is now a stock phrase aimed at the introduction of new technologies, no matter what the technology in question.

So what has been the agrochemical industry’s response to weed resistance to herbicides? Answer: genetic modification of crops to resist higher and higher levels of glyphosate. Hmm..., that sounds like the old paradigm. Eventually, the weeds will catch on to this new wrinkle too, and the rest is, well, you guessed it. And that’s not all. Do we know what will happen to all that herbicide when it rains? Sure. It ends up in our estuaries, altering their ecological characteristics beyond recognition. There are ample studies already published on this aspect, and fish tend to be the most sensitive indicator group to the negative effects glyphosate can have on wildlife (e.g., birth defects, endocrine disruption, adverse effects on gene expression). And do we know for sure whether or not it is safe for us to eat produce containing higher levels of herbicides? At the current levels of exposure, glyphosate appears to have caused no detectable increases in certain human diseases (cancers, respiratory distress syndromes, etc.). But what about significantly increased exposure levels? Those “studies” have been done yet. I for one, do not want the consumer public to be the “guinea pig” for that data. We have had enough historical experience with uncontrolled levels of agrochemicals (DDT, malathione, atrazine, etc.) to predict that nothing sustainable will come from the use of higher and higher levels of anything, be it pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers. Did I mention atrazine? This particular herbicide has caused more havoc with wildlife (particularly with amphibians) than any other endocrine disruptor. So much so, that its use is now banned throughout Europe. But we still allow its use here in the U.S.. Why? “More studies are needed. “Really? Well, no, but…

So, what can we do? I favor growing most of our plant crops indoors, eliminating completely the use of herbicides and pesticides. No more agricultural runoff. Year-round crop production. No more food miles. Healthy produce available next door to where we live, in our cities. What’s not to like?

When I was in my first year of graduate school, no more than a month or so on campus, the chairman of our biology department, Robert E. Gordon, a gentle, soft-spoken southern gentleman from Georgia who specialized in the developmental biology of salamanders, asked me to define evolution for him. He expected me to give him that answer on the spot, as the two of us busily went about the task of setting up chairs in the departmental conference room for a seminar. I looked at him in horror, thinking that it was the beginning of my ‘trial by fire’ educational experience! I shot back reflexively: “Change over time”. It was followed by a long silence, as we went on with unfolding the chairs and setting them down in neat rows. I did manage to catch a glimpse of his wry smile upon his hearing my response. When we had finished, he passed by me and patted me on the shoulder, in a fatherly sort of manner, as he left the room. He didn’t even need to look me in the eye. I never forgot how good that moment felt, and how validating that encounter was to my educational experience up to that point. Later on, I learned from some of my fellow doctoral students that he used my answer as an example of how to economically express answers to complex questions without having to beat around the bush by producing volumes of polemics on the subject. Granted, a fuller explanation of his query might have filled a small library’s worth of shelves with scholarly tomes on the subject. In fact, come to think of it, it has!

So here we are in 2011 and we still have problems with that issue of conveying scientific findings to those who need to know them in a way that does not turn them off. Climate change is such an issue and its causes are the questions at hand. Changes in our environment are inevitable, as Earth’s geological record clearly shows. But the causes for the rate of those changes are not always clear from those records. We have to dig deep to find them. Volcanic eruptions and their carbon dioxide emissions are the prime causes for many abrupt change events in the Earth’s atmosphere. Today, the industrialized world behaves like a single giant volcano, continually spewing gigatonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere and raising havoc with natural systems. My response to the question: “ Who is responsible for the current change in the rate of climate change?” is: “We are”. Dr. Gordon would probably give me an “ataboy” for that one, too. The data are in on climate change, make no mistake. Humans and our fossil fuel burning economies are solely responsible for the rate increase, period.

The “debate” rages on nonetheless. The “reasoning” goes something like this:  If we are the cause of the rate change, then something can and must be done about it, and that change must come with great financial sacrifice for those industries responsible for causing the change. If it can be proven that we are not responsible, then business as usual can proceed, and the industries creating the highest levels of emissions of green house gasses can carry on with business as usual. So, how do you think all this breaks down, politically? You guessed it.

The latest squabble involved a day’s worth of talks at the American Chemical Society’s annual meeting in Denver, Colorado. The editor of Chemical and Engineering News, Rudy M. Braun, wrote an editorial on it in the latest issue C&E News (September 5, 2011). There were two sessions on climate change, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The early session had experts from NOAA and other august bodies, presenting overwhelming evidence for our forcing the climate towards higher temperatures as the result of increases in CO₂ emissions.  None of them had ties with any industry that had a role in the emissions (power plants, oil producers, petrochemical industries, etc.). Then, in the afternoon, another set of presentations were given, this time by the skeptics of the “anthopogenic theory of climate change”, much to the dismay and horror of the senior editor of CE&N. None of those presenters gave credence to any of the morning presentations, choosing instead to ignore them and express their own opinions as to the causes of climate change. None of them had any evidence to refute the earlier session presenters. It is like hearing a modern repeat of the Richard Owen vs Thomas Huxley debate over the validity of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Owen ended up surgically altering the brain of a gorilla as “proof” that we did not descend from primates resembling the apes. Huxley got hold of another gorilla brain, this one was intact, and proved Owen to be an unscrupulous fraud, driven to cheating by his unshakable religious convictions. (Note: how ironic that Owen should be so wiling to break one of the main foundation concepts of his own religion in its defense: honesty!)

As a direct result of his dishonest, unethical behavior, Owen lost his job and his credibility as a scientist. Darwin’s ideas live on to this day as the founding principle for explaining change over time with regards to all life forms on the planet. There are more recent examples of this kind of thinking, too. The tobacco industry, for example, claims that while cigarettes may be harmful to your health, the evidence is not yet strong enough to warrant removing them from sale. They claim that more studies are needed. Hmm, more studies in the light of the evidence, so far? If cigarettes were classified as a drug, then they would have long ago been banned.

So, in the end, it’s a matter of whose oxen are being gored, so to speak.  Ultimately, as a species we will have to fess up and admit our role in the climate changes now in progress. It is useful to recall that modern soil-based farming consumes huge quantities of fossil fuels.  Yet another reason to consider converting to urban vertical farms as one measure to limit our CO₂ emissions and still have all the things we want in the way of fresh, healthy produce. This concept must be resonating well with the public, since a recent Google search for the term vertical farm conjures up nearly 27 million hits!    

The next time you are at the supermarket, take a closer look at what’s for sale. Go down a few isles of prepared foods and count the number of competing brands for each food item. It’s a staggering array of colorfully decorated boxes, cans, and plastic bags, all designed to catch your attention, like so many cute puppies in a pet store. If we didn’t know better, we’d think the whole world had the same problem: “What’s for dinner” (see: Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma). Well, although all of us ask the same question every day, many ask it for quite a different reason. That’s because last night, there was nothing for dinner. No dilemma of choices here.  Just dilemma. The World Bank has chosen to highlight this unacceptable situation with an in-depth review of the food crisis on their web site- http://www.worldbank.org/foodcrisis

According to their statistics, nearly 1 billion people go to bed hungry every night, and many have not eaten a real meal for months. Local grown food is not an option for these unfortunates, since farming where they live is either impossible, failing or has already failed. One of the most acute situations lies in the Horn of Africa. Drought and political unrest have combined once again to place millions living there in jeopardy of starving to death. It seems that every time we pick up a newspaper, that hot, dry region is in the headlines, and for the same reasons. Relief efforts are ongoing, but have so far proven ineffective. Food drops routinely fall into the hands of ruthless bands of heavily armed Somali ‘police forces’ and end up being sold on the black market. In other places, such as in Haiti, the situation may seem different, since there is no war in progress, but the result is the same. Not enough food, with millions starving and no hope in sight.  Life, regardless of what form it takes, is all about food and water. Getting both of these essentials to everyone every day is the single most important difference between a developed and a less developed country. 

But what if no one went to bed hungry or thirsty? No one. Ever again. What if all countries were able to satisfy all of the basic needs of their own people without any help? No need for foreign food aid programs. Is that an impossible dream? Not when I go to sleep. I see visions of cheap, reliable technologies coming to the fore in the form of drinking water recovery systems using liquid municipal waste, a burgeoning urban food production system, and an energy generating scheme that takes advantage of solar and wind power. I see the new internet, accessed with smart, inexpensive electronic devices, enabling billions of otherwise uninformed and often oppressed people, providing them with freedom to information as to how to access these technologies.

A world literacy has sprung up as the result of these new applications of information sharing that has already led to the overthrow of selfish, despicable leaders and their family-based empires of greed and excess throughout the Middle East, with more despots to fall in the near future, make not doubt about that. Arab Spring has been given a new breath of fresh air, as Libya falls to the freedom-seeking masses as this blog is being written. There is much to do that follows this paradigm shift, and a modern functional infrastructure is on the horizon for these fortunate infant democracies to make sure that they join the rest of the developed world as equal members. Lets hope that by the time they need them, vertical farming will have come into its own, empowering the cities throughout the Middle East to thrive in their dessert worlds, to provide a sustainable life for all who choose to live there . 

Outdoor farming is not at all efficient when it comes to the crops themselves, especially with respect to light. While solar radiation consists of the entire visible and invisible spectrum (100-3,000 nm), plants can only use a small portion of it – 3-6 percent at most. However, since the sun seems to shine every day, energy for growing crops turns out not to be the issue with traditional agriculture. Outdoor farmers do, however, use lots of energy (mostly in the form of diesel fuel) for plenty of other things (irrigating, plowing, planting, weeding, harvesting, shipping, etc.), thereby offsetting any advantage the Sun may have offered them in the way of energy input.

Moving agriculture indoors solves many energy problems associated with outdoor farming, but creates others that need to be addressed if this approach is to succeed. In all vertical farms erected so far (See: Rise of the Vertical Farm), LED lighting has played a key role in the design of the growing systems (for more, see here). Most of that application has been for green leafy vegetables. One exception is PlantLab in Holland. They are growing lots of different vegetables, including green peppers and tomatoes, as well as spinach and lettuce.  The issue at hand is ROI, or return on investment. Can a commercial vertical farmer using only LED lights as his energy source for growing crops, make a profit at the end of the day, when competing against outdoor crops of the same kind? The answer lies in the development of prototype vertical farms to allow the testing of new LED lighting fixtures specifically designed for indoor agriculture.

            Lighting an indoor farm with conventional incandescent or fluorescent bulbs has proven inefficient and hence expensive, due to the fact that these kinds of lights give off a wide spectrum of energy, most of which is useless for the plants. Light in the blue (420-460 nm wavelength) and red (640-660 nm wavelength) spectral ranges activates chlorophylls a,b,c, and d, and therefore is ideal for most plant crops. The efficiency of LEDs emitting light at the desired wavelengths for green plants saves enormous amounts of energy, and thus is much more economical in the long run compared to conventional lighting. Manufacturers of LEDs - Philips, General Electric, Lighting Science Group Corporation, and a host of Chinese manufacturers – Zhejiang G-Sun Optoelectronics Co.; Wenzhou Mvanva Photoelectric Technology Co. Ltd.; Shenzhen Baisheng Semiconductor Lighting Co. Ltd; Blue Sea Lighting (Hong Kong) – offer a wide variety of lighting fixtures in an astonishing assortment of blue and red spectra. Every year there are technical meetings held around the world (e.g., Strategies in Light; Let Life Green; LEDs Conference; Illuminating Engineering Society of North America), bringing together all those interested in making LED lights for all uses more efficient, and thus more economical to operate.

Like the increase in computing power and the growth of the hybrid car industry, every year ushers in a new generation of LEDs that costs less to run and that more accurately meets the requirements of our crop plants. It is likely that LED technologies specifically targeted for the indoor agronomist will one day advance to the point where anyone interested in getting in on vertical farming can do so without having to worry about the monthly electric bill eating up his/her profits. That day is right around the corner. Let there be light! LED light!

Floods and droughts are the farmer’s biggest worries. They seem to go hand in hand. Take this year, for example. The flood of 2011 continues to adversely affect the upper Missouri River system and all points south along its drainage basin. Minot, ND is under siege from that flood (in this case, from the Souris River). Its surrounding farmland is being devastated. But it is not just flooding, the worst in US history, that is causing problems. An oil pipeline, owned and operated by Exxon Mobil, traverses some six feet under the bottom of the Yellowstone River, supplying three large refineries in Billings, Montana. On July 2^nd, that pipe broke, due presumably to erosion of the river bottom caused by flood stage waters. Over 42,000 gallons of crude oil flowed into the river before officials noticed the leak. Oil despoiled the banks of the river for miles downstream. All nearby irrigation ditches that use the river for agriculture were closed and cleanup efforts were begun.

Quote:

LAUREL, Mont. (AP) — Teams of federal and state workers fanned out Sunday along Montana's Yellowstone River to gauge the environmental damage from a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline that spewed tens of thousands of gallons of crude into the famous waterway.

An Environmental Protection Agency representative said that only a small fraction of the spilled oil is likely to be recovered.

Agency on-scene coordinator Steve Way said fast flows along the flooding river are spreading the oil over a large area, making it harder to capture. But Way said that also could reduce damage to wildlife and cropland along the river.

A 25-mile long slick of oil had reached as far west as Hysham Saturday night. An estimated 1,000 barrels, or 42,000 gallons, spilled Saturday before the flow of oil from the damaged pipeline was stopped.

Duane Winslow with Yellowstone County disaster coordinator Duane Winslow says dozens more ExxonMobil cleanup workers began to arrive in Montana on Sunday morning.

The break near Billings in south-central Montana fouled the riverbank and forced municipalities and irrigation districts Saturday to close intakes. The river has no dams on its way to its confluence with the Missouri River just across the Montana border in North Dakota. It was unclear how far the plume might travel.

Meanwhile in the Southeast, a drought that has been around now for most of the spring and into the summer has raised havoc with livestock and crops.

Quote from USGS website:

Southern US:

The lack of rainfall has resulted in extremely low river and creek levels, with many wells going dry, and has begun to impact southwest Georgia water utilities that rely on groundwater.  The dry weather and hot temperatures have ravaged crops, with a fourth to half of several crops (corn, cotton, peanuts, sorghum, and soybeans) rated in poor to very poor condition across several southeast states (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina).  The hard soils and hot temperatures have made successful sprouting of seed difficult and, due to lack of forage, farmers are sending cattle to feedlots or selling cattle.

Texas, too, has had to contend with a drought, that in some places, has limited the amount of drinking water to just one month’s supply. If rain does not come within the next few weeks, then cattle will die and people will have to rely on water drought in from outside sources.

Unintended and certainly unwanted consequences of this year’s extreme weather patterns are not yet over. What’s next?

 For more, see:

 http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=55982

and

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/cities-self-sufficient-new-urban-energy-centres

The construction of the world’s first vertical farms have amply demonstrated to even the most outspoken critics that indoor farming in tall buildings is not only feasible but entirely doable. A fifth VF in Seattle, a modest two story facility operated by Cevsca, Inc., opened in June, 2011.  Vertical farming has now moved from the “crazy idea” stage, to conceptualization, to construction of functional prototypes in just eleven short years. In fact, Nuvege and PlantLab could be considered commercially successful from the get go, based on their own ROI projections. In the next few years, I suspect all major cities around the world will witness an explosion of new versions of VFs, all taking advantage of high tech solutions to lighting, nutrient composition and delivery, planting and harvesting, etc., as well as the maturation of hydroponics and aeroponics systems. As the vision for urban agriculture crystallizes over the next ten years or so, the kinds of crops that can be grown indoors commercially will most surly expand to satisfy a global consumer public demanding safer, more reliable food supplies. Fish, shrimp, mollusks, and poultry will round out the vertical farm ‘menu’, enabling many world cuisines to flourish regardless of geography or the time of year.

While vertical farms will eventually be able to supply much of the produce for urban centers on demand and at a reasonable cost, the concept does not address the issue of food for those who need it most and cannot afford to shop at Whole Foods, for example. In other words, how will everyone who needs to benefit from this new agricultural strategy be served, if vertical farms need to show a profit at the end of the day? Governments have been the lowest common denominator with respect to basic rights and privileges of their citizenry. The Republic of Korea sees the vertical farm as a transformative principle, whose end point is to allow all Koreans access to a healthy diet at an affordable cost, because the government is the one that initiated the research and development of vertical farming in that region of the world. Korea is ranked ninth in the world economically, and is also one of the most technologically gifted countries, creating the perfect womb for the gestation and birth of vertical farming. Many other countries see the role of government in much the same way (e.g., all of the Scandinavian countries, Holland, Denmark, Germany, Kuwait, Canada), while many others allow economics to sort out who gets and who does not.  Others cannot afford to extend social services to ensuring a constant food supply, due to low GDPs.  Finally, many countries are politically unstable and remain in a state of chaos as this blog is being written.

We all agree that, ultimately, the world would be a much better place if everyone were well-fed and enjoyed a safe and abundant drinking water supply. Vertical farming has the potential to bring that about, but it will need a lot of help from the enabling countries (G12).  The rewards for doing so will be felt almost immediately. As the nutritional status of everyone rises above the poverty level, time spent in school will double, eliminating the single most important cause of poverty: illiteracy.  So, who needs vertical farms? We all do.

-For more on Sustainable Urban Agriculture, join Mitchell Joachim (of Terreform ONE) and me for a great discussion at Proteus Gowanus this Thursday night.