Robots could grow your next salad inside an old steel mill on Pittsburgh's South Side.
And the four co-founders of the robotic, indoor, vertical farming startup RoBotany could next tackle growing the potatoes for the french fries to top it.
“We're techies, but we have green thumbs,” said Austin Webb, one of the startup's co-founders.
It's hard to imagine a farm inside the former Republic Steel and later Follansbee Steel Corp. building on Bingham Street. During World War II, the plant produced steel for artillery guns and other military needs. The blueprints were still locked in a safe in a closet in the building when RoBotany moved in.
Graffiti from raves and DJ parties once held in the space still decorate the walls. There's so much space, the RoBotany team can park their cars indoors.
But in this space, Webb and the rest of the RoBotany team — his brother Brac Webb; Austin Lawrence, who grew up on a blueberry farm in Southwest Michigan; and Daniel Seim, who has pictures of his family's farm stand in Minnesota, taped to the wall above his computer — see a 20,000-square-foot farm with robots scaling racks up to 25 feet high. This farm could produce 2,000 pounds of food a day and could be replicated in warehouses across the country, putting fresh produce closer to the urban populations that need it and do it while reducing the environmental strain traditional farming puts on water and soil resources.
This farm could produce 2,000 pounds of food a day
Idle dreamer
John Oden, Aspire Healthy Living, https://www.aspire123.com
Aspire is an action oriented social movement focused on turning the entire world into a huge food forest.
John Oden wrote: I would say that urban food production like this is inevitable because, as an economic matter, transporting food is expensive.
“The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.”― Albert Einstein
Tyler Ludens wrote:
This farm could produce 2,000 pounds of food a day
How much food does it actually produce per day?
In this specific case though, it sounds like they are monocropping with just kale. Making stacks and stacks of kale (28 feet high I think it said) is not a food forest; it's a factory farm that happens to use hydroponics (specifically aeroponics here). I did not even hear any mention of them using fish, which is unfortunate but typical of the predominant thinking today. I still welcome this project, though, in the sense that I think we should be trying a variety of approaches to discover new ways of feeding ourselves which are more ecologically sensitive. It sounds like the founders are well intentioned but would benefit from taking a high quality PDC to open up their thinking further.
in this controlled environment, ideas like growing in food forest layers becomes moot
aquaponics and the like are dead ends
this place is designed to be run by robots!!!
didn't anyone notice that?
ROBOTS!!!
I think a PDC would only confuse the issues
John Oden, Aspire Healthy Living, https://www.aspire123.com
Aspire is an action oriented social movement focused on turning the entire world into a huge food forest.
duane hennon wrote:
one of the criticisms of food forests is the vagueness in the production numbers
so maybe we shouldn't be so quick to judge
Idle dreamer
Ruth Stout was famous for gardening naked. Just like this tiny ad:
Learn Permaculture through a little hard work
https://wheaton-labs.com/bootcamp
|