Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

An interesting idea called "verticle farming":
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6752795.stm

cool, i think someone needs to tell them about ap too..

"All they need now, they say, is the money to make this a reality"
a apple would cost $50.00

The nerds on slashdot.org shooting holes in the idea:

http://science.slashdot.org/science/07/ ... 7232.shtml

Green roofs and growing plants on otherwise unused concrete facades and balconies would be a more doable plan.

has anyone seen bill mollison's global gardner? Green roofs in a sustainable village. Lots of benefits.

I Think i might have seen something about bill mollison's global gardner on sbs......

But come to think of it i think i have seen something like the vertical farming in a cartoon, or read about it in a book (Jueles vern comes to mind)

A mob local to me believe that they can do something similar, but instead of it being a building solely dedicated to growing crops (& requiring a controlled environment), that the crops are intergrated as a part of the building (home or workplace) to replace mechanical thermoregulatory controls/processes, air quality controls/processes etc.

I have very little doubt that there'll need to be something along these lines in the future, where we'll need to make use of every available space to grow crops more local to their end destination. & that we're going to have to go back to more labour intensive farming methods anyway..

ps. a lot of the arguments on that slashdot website/forum are really quite flawed, a lot of those people don't really seem to have an understanding of "possibilities outside what they already know". Oh yeh, crazy concept, that!!! :p

Your apple price is wrong, nothing gets built in NYC without union workers. when all is said and done, that apple would cost $500.00 and who knows when it would actually be ready



-Stevo

I like the idea of green roofs and sustainable village solutions. I know it is probably a long way off, but a skyscraper should include terraces along the way up to put in gardens or grow beds.

Thats the problem with slashdot. 80% of people on there are mad hackers and script kiddes and 20% actually know something. I've read that site every day for the last 8 years, but never made a post due to the sheer frustration with the people on there.

Yeh, I was thinking it'd never fly because per square meter of new york real estate the paper pusher is going to bring in more cash than a farmer. An altruistic idea though. It's kind of like we're attempting to make "fake trees" as big as buildings to counter the CO2 from them.

I agree that we should just use roof top gardens. Or even a garden on each floor with a massive waterfall from the floor above =)

You a closet nerd Gemmel?

Check this place out http://greenroofs.wordpress.com/ Can't remember if I've posted it before , but well worth a look, especially in the photo gallery..

Every once in a while I read some architectural stuff for work. I find the sustainable architecture movement fascinating. Whenever there is some contest involving energy or sunlight or whatnot I wish they would incorporate an AP system into it too.

G, it's so easy to criticize something and the slashdotters jump all over almost any new tech they haven't heard of or may find a reason that it is risky or unproven. The flying car threads are always fun (depressing). It's kind of a herd mentality going on with some of those people.

I know that something has to be done for the food chain. More and more people are selling off their farm land and pouring into cities. The contamination of food from China, the floods and raising costs of gas are impacting our nations. Most people forget what happens to areas that are hit by disasters, and do not know that we only have days, not weeks worth of food supply, and all we need is a war or something to cripple our transportation to cause major food problems. We all need to be very serious about AP. OK I'll get off my box now.

I agree Joyce - except would extent what you are saying, in that we need to get serious about all sorts of localised food production. For mine, provided you have the area and means, AP should be one part of your system. For starters I see no dig gardens growing the food that is not well suited to AP as being another essential part of my backyard efforts. This is one area of my backyard that I have neglected in recent times due a pretty much total ban on watering in my home town and my love affair with AP.