In an article from National Geographic, Robert Colangelo discusses how vertical farming indoors could help sustain food demands as climate change increasingly becomes an issue. Climate change has already caused excessive droughts, more severe weather, and a decrease in usable farm land. Vertical farming practices use a controlled indoor environment to grow crops in a vertical pattern. Colangelo argues that indoor vertical farming has the potential to recycle all water used and produce absolutely no waste. These farms could also grow produce in a smaller environment and faster than traditional outdoor farms.
Indoor farms can be placed strategically close to distribution centers, which make the transport of the produce easier and more efficient by having to travel less to reach the consumers. The produce grown can is also able to be pesticide-, fertilizer-, and herbicide-free. Colangelo states that the produce could also be GMO free, but this is not necessarily a benefit to farming. There are numerous myths that surround the use GMOs, including that they are unhealthy or worse for your health (GMO article). Green Sense Farms, an indoor vertical farming company, has begun to construct indoor farms throughout the world. Colangelo refers to this as “smart” farming, pressing the argument that with less water waste, food waste, and healthier products, we can avoid the changing climate and grow healthy food. He claims that indoor farming removes the middleman, which could be beneficial. But is this the solution we should be pressing? We would be avoiding the changing climate and traditional farming, for an apparent unorthodox way of farming. Should we be addressing climate change and the growing population first, looking for those solutions, rather than moving to different ways of farming? Do we even have time to find solutions first? As products like chocolate and wheat become harder to grow with climate change, indoor vertical farming could be a wise solution (Hertsgaard). I agree that the reduced food and water waste would propel the future of farming, and it ties in with Molly Winter’s TED Talk about recycling water for reuse and growing plants. Unlike Colangelo, Mark Hertsgaard argues the necessity of advancing ecological farming practices, not indoor farms. Indoor farming could potentially be considered a form of ecological farming, but could it also be seen as a form of pseudo-farming?
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