The story unfolds...

Sunday, July 31st, 2010

Time for an update, and a bit more details on the plan, which im sure sounds not so clear so far...

It's scorching hot outside right now and my tomato plants are just loving it. There will surely be much more than my family can eat, but that's besides the point.

See the whole idea behind this project is to put together a functional, full size prototype of a COST EFFECTIVE vertical farm. Now I emphasize the words "cost effective" because the concept of vertical farming isn't new... It's been coined a longggg time ago and was recently updated in definition by the man considered the modern father of the idea: Professor Dickson Despommiers over at Columbia University.

His theory calls for a building costing over 100 000 000$ that has the capacity to feed 50 000 people. Lots of money for no garantees of anything really working out... But the core of his concept is good and the principles are valid.

After much research, I think I've got a system that can feed the same number of people for about 2 000 000$, or 2% of his system's cost.

Now that's ambitious, I know....But so far the results I am seeing and the projections seem to indicate it's working!

His system for vertical farming is all over the internet, if you care to read about it some more....As far as mine is concerned, you'll have to wait just a bit longer....

Khaled

Getting you up to speed!

Hi y'all!

I've been into this project for about 3 months now...I promise I will eventually explain why it took me so long to start blogging about it, but for now I expect this update will make you forget my little mishap :-P

I'm posting a bunch of picture from my outdoor and indoor gardens, those are about 3 weeks old, so things have changed a bit since then, but it still gives a good idea of what's happening...

I've got many types of tomatoes and peppers, some melons, although I don't think they'll do very well, cucumbers, strawberries, raspberries, and some grape vines

The outdoor crop is there mostly for observation of phenotype; resistance to water, diseases, wind, cold, etc. I will be taking cuttings from the best plants and transplanting indoors soon....

And that's where the fun begins!

See, in my opinion, food needs to be grown locally, close to where it is consumed. For many reasons. Don't get me wrong, I'm not some extreme left anarchist, I actually used to find the views of the Greenpeace crowd ridiculous. But I've come around...

Local production allows for fresh, nutrition produce that doesn't need to be ethylene ripened, that requires very little transportation. The produce tastes better, is much safer for human consumption on many levels.

More importantly I'm the poster boy for greenhouses. No more pesticides, herbicides, full environmental control, no need for crop rotation anymore, year round local production, and if you can stick in hydroponics as well, you've just eliminated soil born diseases such as e.coli and salmonella.

Stay tuned for more on this later!

A few steps into the game already!

Good day all,

First post, but definitely not first day of work! I've been wanting to start this blog for quite some time now, but haven't come around to doing it so far for many reasons. Feeding the planet, as the title says, is my objective, and it is indeed an ambitious goal.

I've always enjoyed growing things. The thought of something delicious, tasty, pretty, and useful, being grown by me, puts me in a state of bliss that is hard to explain...Perhaps we are closer to caveman than we think we are (or at least I am...)

I'm also tired of big agri-business, growing monocultures that cause soil erosion, using massive amounts of pesticides and herbicides that leach into our soil (and water), along with GMOs and hormones. Some will say "ya, but organic and bio farming are filling in the gap"...Sorry to disappoint, they're not... Organic farmers cannot be constant in their supply, and their produce often contain the deadly e.coli and salmonella viruses... It's an intermediary step, but definitely not the end of the journey!

I've grown all kind of stuff before, and it was always just for fun, but now it's different. I want to grow food. I want to grow enough food to make it a business. I want to grow enough food to feed the planet.

Stay posted, the interesting stuff is coming up!