No till crop growing reducing greenhouse gases - and run-off to rivers

[Montero]

Farming without disturbing soil could cut agriculture’s climate impact by 30% – new research

Drilling instead of tilling the soil to plant seeds could help the ground store more carbon.

theconversation.com

 

[BT Jones]

Very interesting @Montero. I am a Civil Engineer by trade and my company does bore hole drilling, so i can certainly appreciate that drilling and planting seeds might have less impact with respect to ground disturbance than tilling.

I have to say I would be going one step further in the 21st century; my idea is for every city in the world to have vertical farms.

Basically, these would be skyscraper-style buildings (you could renovate existing skyscrapers, perhaps) with multiple levels and farming on each lever. These would be irrigated, have controlled sunlight, and would be able to capture all CO2 emissions. They wouldn't be susceptible to varying climates, droughts, floods, etc., and you could produce local crops for local markets, avoiding huge freight burdens with respect to cost AND fuel.

I see these as the way of the future; your local cafe will get their bread, chicken, micro-herbs, cheese, etc. from the vertical farm just down the road. Stocks could be hand-delivered daily via pedal cycle, and these farms would create huge employment opportunities for attendants, working the floors, checking light / water levels, servicing the pipework, delivering the produce, etc.

The downside is that I believe these would only work in zero-growth economies, and until such time as the concept of zero growth no longer brings a cold sweat to western leaders, it will remain a pipe dream.

 

[Montero]

There have been various discussions on here on vertical farms. Depending on whether you are looking at carbon neutral or relieving pressure on the environment there do seem to be some snags and costs, but on the whole I like the idea. And it would certainly make consumers who insist on perfect food happy. I grew up knowing to check apples for coddling moth holes, and rinse lettuce to remove slugs.

In some ways it is reinventing the wheel - before fast transport and refrigeration, in the UK every town and city was surrounded by market gardens, a lot of people kept their own dairy animal in a shed whether cow, goat or sheep and would buy in hay. So on the doorstep food production covered a lot of what was consumed. There was longer distance production - cattle and sheep were walked to market including as far as Wales to London - and slaughtered when they arrived. There was also imported food from far earlier than you'd expect, stuff that would travel, rice, dried fruit and oranges from Spain and the mediterranean. Heck, the Phenoecians were importing wine into Britain before the Romans arrived - by sailing ship of course.

Yeah, roll on zero growth economies - but we possibly want to avoid discussing that as gets onto world affairs.

 

[BT Jones]

Yes, true @Montero; a whole other can of worms.