A discussion about vertical farming and some of its environmental implications
(Portions of the quoted text have been edited from the raw transcript.)


Vertical farming has been brought into the forefront recently, with a spot in the film FUEL, articles in TIME, Scientific American, as well as others in the past 6 months. What this concept entails is growing food in a controlled indoor environment in vertical structures that could be built in cities, urban centers, and as annexes to new buildings being constructed. Plants can be grown hydroponically, and even some livestock can be raised. The technology is there, as is most of the ecological understanding.

The man behind this concept is Dickson Despommier, Ph.D., a professor of medical ecology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. He is the kind of guy who gives away copies of The Lorax to spread love for the environment. He even keeps extra copies of them on his shelf in his office at Columbia’s Medical Campus. I visited him at this office, which, by the way, has a great view of the Hudson River. When asked how this vertical farming idea developed, Despommier tells the story about how the idea came out of a somewhat failed class project investigating rooftop gardening in New York City.

What came immediately after was further investigation and, later, years of adding detail to the concept. He and his wife spent that first summer talking out the concept. They learned a lot about what technology out there and even revisited some old favorite stories. Despommier explains it, “She put me onto a book she got as a kid—it was called Old MacDonald Had an Apartment House. And it was about Old MacDonald, who moves to the city and grows his food, all of his crops, inside the apartment house he’s in. And of course he grosses out everybody else in the apartment building. And they all move out, and in that case, he just took the whole thing over, but they come back in the wintertime to see where their old apartment was and they look in the bottom of it, and there’s a greengrocer, selling fresh produce. Wow! You know, they actually forgave him for doing all of this. Of course, that was the story, right?”


Making the connection between vertical farming and our daily lives may seem like a stretch, but put into the perspective of the global human impact, it begins to make sense.


Despommier is personally invested in vertical farming because, as he says, “[at] no time in the history of the earth has any one organism dominated the scene like we have. And it’s created huge problems…. [F]or every indoor acre of farming that you create, you can save five to ten to fifteen outdoor acres of land.” This encourages the hope that we may decrease our dependency on the environment as well as relieve some pressure on the farmers. He continues, “Seven billion people have an agricultural footprint the size of South America. Another three billion, which will happen in another forty years, will require an additional Brazil. We already use 80% of the land to farm.” So if something doesn’t change in the way we grow our food, millions more people will not have enough to eat.

Because vertical farming requires less land, a big incentive to make it work on a large scale is that it would allow more people to live in urban centers. Social pressure, specifically as it affects livelihoods, is an important factor that influences density of settlements. “Failed farms result in a migration of farmers to the cities, every time. What happens to the land? In fact, there’s been a recent trend—which is quite amazing, actually—Landsat photographs from space will tell you that the forests have recovered over 5% in the last three years.” Vertical farming will not induce failed farming on conventional agricultural lands, but it will create alternatives to a system that has no future for expansion. If the right social pressures are created and people are given the choice, vertical farming may be one of the solutions to growing problems.


According to Despommier, “If we could supply everybody with enough water and enough food, you could have ten billion people on the planet, because most of them will choose to live in cities, just like you and I. Make the cities imitate nature in terms of ecological process, and you’ve got it made. Your agricultural footprint goes very, very small. The rest of the world recovers.”

At the heart of the issue is the disconnect between humans and the environment. The overwhelming attitude towards the environment and resources is one of utilitarian values. This worldview is not only destructive for the earth, but for our species and our existence. “If you look at nature and say what’s the difference between us and them,” Despommier suggests, “the answer comes back, there’s no difference. Because we are them. We are nature. We are an expression of nature.”

“However,” Despommier continues, “we don’t behave like a single species. We don’t behave like one termite mound, for the greater good of the termite mound.” This type of behavior makes it difficult for collaboration towards a common goal. The goal must be large enough that all humans find purpose in it. Maybe we are reaching that point in the face of the threats presented by climate change, but we have yet to make any progress.


“So here’s my question,” he says, “my question is how can humans behave like the rest of nature? The rest of nature self limits themselves by the amount of resource that they have available to them, and the availability of their niche that they live in. That’s an ecological concept that is immutable. Everyone believes this, everyone except us. Isn’t that crazy? So if we are a natural species, just like everything else, and if we are creating for ourselves a world that is non-sustainable, then it behooves us to use our intelligence to create a sustainable world.”

Just like with any invention, Despommier points out that, “The way you make a vertical farm work is you don’t assume it’ll work to begin with. The assumption is I will get it to work. How? By applying science and technology at all levels.” The mindset that things must immediately work, that they must be an immediate solution, is impossible to live up to. Nothing really ever works that way in any other sector, so we shouldn’t expect that from this one. There may be hidden factors to consider and several issues to work out, many more than to mention here, but that happens with every new human endeavor and can be overcome by investment in innovation.

The right mindset is to ask the right questions to help progress along the way. “So, how do I make this building behave like an ecosystem?” he asks. “I want this building to reflect that process. We create cities. We love ‘em. Let’s live in them. Let’s make them ecological units. Let’s encourage people to live in the city.”


However, we should remember that the social factors are just as important as the ecological ones. “Old MacDonald moved to the city!” he exclaims. “Remember, remember, he wanted the social services, for his kids. He wanted to go to the movies every now and then. He wanted to visit the library. He wanted social services to take care of…he didn’t want to have to worry about his water anymore, his heating, that’s all taken care of.” So maybe the solutions to human problems are also intertwined with solutions to environmental problems, and we cannot view or approach them as completely separate things.


Close to the end of my time with Despommier, I asked, “For vertical farming to happen, what is the next barrier to overcome?”

“Money,” he says. “Social will and political impetus. I think in another year, those 2 things will go away. They’ll go away because the virtue of this is to prescient not to want to do it.” So we can hope to imagine the future, with adequate investment in this new technology, we could have self-sufficient communities and a more sustainable lifestyle.


“Cool stuff,” Despommier comments. “It’s like a living building. It is a living building. I want it to be inside my city. I want to live near it. I want to get up at 3 o’clock in the morning and be able to make myself a Caesar salad by going to the green market that’s open 24 hours a day and buying something that was picked 10 minutes ago. And take it back to my apartment and chop it all up and put some nice stuff on it and sit down and eat it. That’s what I want.”

(This piece was written in Fall 2008.)

Climate change is important to any analysis for the future, environmentally, socially,
economically, or politically. The IPCC projects that with rising temperatures, there will be a
global increase incidence of droughts, desertification, and extreme precipitation events (IPCC
2007). The increase in temperature will also allow range expansion and better survival or
overwintering rates of disease carrying vectors such as mosquitoes. Perhaps the more terrifying
outcome for human societies could be a great reduction of food production as a result of several
factors brought on by global climate change. Any combinations of these may threaten security
within and between nations. The impacts of climate change on future food availability and public
health may increase the likelihood of resource related conflict in the most vulnerable parts of the
world.

Barnett and Adger (2007) discuss the idea that conflict can be stimulated by “changes in
social systems driven by actual or perceived climate impacts.” Their main arguments are:
1. climate change may affect human security by reducing access or quality of natural
resources,
2. human insecurity affected by climate change may increase risk of violent conflict,
3. climate change may affect the capacity of states to promote human security and
peace,
4. and that these direct effects on livelihoods and indirect effects on state functions
due to climate change may increase the risk of conflict (Barnett and Adger 2007).

Jones et al. (2008) suggest that emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) have a strong
correlation with socio-economic, environmental and ecological factors and have identified
several “hotspots” for EIDs. Vector-borne diseases made up 22.8% of the EIDs in their database
(Jones et al.). With rising temperatures due to global climate change, this percentage has the
potential to increase dramatically. Warmer temperatures and changes in rainfall and humidity
may allow for insect disease vectors to expand their range to areas where it historically did not
have the right conditions for them to survive. In some areas in Kenya, malaria has returned to the
highlands, where they were eradicated in the 1960s, and its reestablishment has been attributed to
increased temperatures that allow for mosquitoes to live to the life stage during which they are
infectious (Alsop). These climate changes may improve the survival, reproductive or
overwintering rates. These effects could lead to increased incidence of diseases such as dengue
and malaria in human populations. Other impacts may include changes in host-parasite and
disease-vector dynamics. Mapping of malaria risk in combination with socio-economic models is
an approach that has potential to predict future areas of risk (Huntingford et al.). Disease may not
be directly linked to conflict, but it may be an indicator of areas of the world that may be at risk
because of the stress that disease may add to already struggling communities. Knowing what
areas have a high chance of disease outbreak may be helpful in conflict prevention measures.

Among other predictions of the impacts of climate change is the increase in frequency
and intensity of extreme weather events such as drought, flooding, and severe storms. Any one of
these events could destroy communities, infrastructure and crops. It would probably claim many
lives or at least cause mass migration (Podesta and Ogden). Natural disasters on this scale could
be devastating enough to destabilize already weakened institutions if they are not able to respond
adequately, increasing the likelihood for conflict to break out.

On October 1st, 2008, SIPA hosted a panel on the global food crisis where Jeffrey D.
Sachs, Sir John Holmes, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, and Ajaykumar Manubhai Vashee spoke about
the crisis that has been going on for decades and what must be done to alleviate some of the
pressure and solve the food problem. At the heart of the issue seems to be uncontrollable
population growth, land degradation, and lack of resources for farmers to climb out of poverty.
Jeffrey Sachs suggests that the solution will be to provide farmers with the right seed and
fertilizer so that they may be able to grow what they need as well as a massive voluntary
reduction in fertility. These types of solutions, however, do not account for long term climate
change impacts. Having seed and fertilizer is all fine, but what do the farmers do in times of
drought? Irrigation is an option only for those who have access to enough water. Especially in
areas where there is an unequal distribution of water resources, farmers have no way to cope
with drought and other severe events (e.g. plant disease wiping out crops, which can happen
partly because, with today’s ease of travel from one side of the globe to the other, pathogens can
travel large distances in short periods of time). Conflicts over resources could develop very
quickly and be difficult to deal with.

Foreign aid is one possibility, but it cannot be the long term solution. The independence
of a nation and of its inhabitants is important for sustainability. The speakers discussed how the
World Bank has changed their stance on the food crisis. After 25+ years of inaction, they have
decided that intervention is necessary. Part of their framework for action includes capacity
building and efficiency. An interesting argument that came up during the panel was the idea that
the demand for biofuels has also affected the amount of food produced. Dr. Vashee stressed that
energy independence is an important requirement to solve the food crisis because fields
otherwise used for food crops are being used to grow biofuels. It could therefore be imagined
that social conflict may arise from this clash between need for food and need for income.

Sir John Holmes stated that with current population growth rates, it is possible that we
will need 50% more in food production by 2050. However, if other predictions that there will be
a loss in productivity by up to 6%, that combined with population growth could mean a
worldwide food catastrophe. It is likely that many people in Africa will have to deal with these
problems at the same time as disease outbreaks are peaking. Families are already working day in
and day out just to have a decent harvest. If their health is compromised, the amount of labor
available will decrease and potentially affect the success of the crops. There are many other
issues that are inherently interconnected with these, and there are probably many more that we
will not be able to anticipate. It is certain, though, that any conflict prevention strategy should
account for the impacts of climate change, especially of those on spread of disease and future
food production potential.

References

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2007). Climate change 2007: The physical science
basis. Summary for policymakers.

Alsop, Zoe. “Malaria Returns to Kenya’s Highlands as Temperatures Rise.” The Lancet 370.9591
(2007): 925-26.
Barnett, Jon, and W. Neil Adger. “Climate Change, Human Security and Violent Conflict.”
Political Geography 26 (2007): 639-55.
Huntingford, C., et al. “Impact of Climate Change on Health: What Is Required of Climate
Modellers?” Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 101
(2007): 97-103.
Jones, Kate E., et al. “Global Trends in Emerging Infectious Disease.” Nature 451.21 (2008):
990-94.
Podesta, John, and Peter Ogden. “The Security Implications of Climate Change.” The
Washington Quarterly 31.1 (2007): 115-38.

The New York Times Magazine recently put out a piece by Jon Gertner about environmental decision-making and the different social dynamics that are involved. The author discusses several different studies that involve individual and group decision-making. One group doing such research is the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions is an interdisciplinary based at Columbia University that receives funding for their research from the National Science Foundation.

Gertner brings up several interesting points such as the ethics of using “frames” and “nudges” to send signals and possibly influence decisions. The idea behind these terms is that the way that a choice is “framed” could affect the outcome by taking advantage of our cognitive biases and that nudges “structure choices so that our natural cognitive shortcomings don’t make us err.”

I find it fascinating to read about studies involving decision-making, especially the ones that compare individual versus group actions. Gertner talks a little bit about the comparisons between carbon taxes and offsets, and how there generally is an aversion to the word “tax,” when in reality taxes and offsets function in nearly exact ways. Gertner also cites a study that suggests that group decisions for which individual preparation beforehand was not allowed leads to better inclusion of long term goals. This is also interesting as part of the discussion of the general bias towards information received early on in the decision-making process.

So maybe one day we could frame questions and choices so that we nudge people into making the right decisions, or at least set up a fair situation for all choices considered. But who decides what is best in the long term interest? And who is to say those who are deciding aren’t also affected by similar cognitive bias related phenomena? Possibly even some being phenomena that we are not yet aware of?

Decision-science seems to be a very pertinent field, especially in the realm of climate change related decisions. However, very little of the funding going towards climate research is going to social science studies such as these. I think that being open to these types of questions of cognitive shortcomings will become increasingly more important as challenges brought on by climate change become more complex and intricate.

I attended a book launch today for Climate Change: Picturing the Science, hosted by the Columbia Climate Center of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

The book is focused on how to take the science and communicate it through words and pictures. Leading climate scientists contributed to the writing of the chapters while the photographs were chosen based on what would explain and support the science.

The main authors, Gavin Schmidt and Joshua Wolfe, spoke on a panel with contributing authors Peter deMenocal and Stephanie Pfirman. Jeffrey Sachs gave a brief introduction (by video) and stressed the importance of having a worldwide understanding of the challenges that we face and that the defining component of any solution will be cooperation.

The moderator started with a few questions about the origins of the idea for the book, which was a photography show about climate change. Schmidt brought up the point that many of the books on climate change currently in stores are very political. This book, however, attempts to stay away from the politics and instead explain the science behind it all.

Peter deMenocal told an interesting anecdote about how when giving a talk at an auto show, he was asked what he thought about the list of scientists that don’t believe in climate change. He had answered, “My name is on that list.” But not by choice! Apparently, the people responsible for making the list put names of scientists on the list without their knowledge. deMenocal has tried to get his name off of the list, and is currently pursuing legal action through help from Columbia University.

Schmidt discussed the current dynamic where the scientists drive awareness of the issues, but the issues are dealt with and acted upon by the governments, policy makers, etc. Pfirman agreed that the interdisciplinary nature of the challenges would require more people working in an interdisciplinary community.

Wolfe notes that the level of the conversation must be brought to the next level. It isn’t just about changing light bulbs and taking public transportation, but more about strategies on a larger scale. Schmidt adds that the scale of the problem requires governmental action and global changes, such as in energy and farming. deMenocal says that “where this rests is with the younger generation” and that the career choices being made now are going to impact how they can make a living and make a difference.

The panel was followed by a lovely reception where I had some nice tabboulle and cheese. I have my signed copy next to me on my desk right now. Flipping through the book, I am wondering what kind of impact this book is going to make on the mentality and worldviews of the general public. The panel discussion was insightful for me especially because I am hoping to enter a related interdisciplinary career in the near future. Hopefully, my choices will lead me to doing something I love while making a difference.