Need a Completed 'A' Worthy Research Paper

As we wander further into the Millennium, many Americans have become somewhat unaware of how our food system works. We take for granted those picture perfect apples and strawberries that somehow stay in season all year long. Few people actually share a connection or experience with how they’re food is grown. Most importantly, we have forgotten what makes a fair, balanced, and free market. The system we have now works and some may say it works well, but what if we could do better? If you step back and look at the entire organization of food production there is obvious room for improvement. Creating a more sustainable option to our current system of agriculture is critical for the well being of future generations. The cultural routines and the general contentment with big government that seem to be chiseled into our DNA need to be reevaluated. The solutions to these problems are complex but to make a large sustainable impact on food production we need to focus on feeding the cities. According to studies cited in a New York Magazine article, “By 2050, demographers estimate there will be an additional 3 billion people (a global total of 9.2 billion).” Skyfarming, a fairly new concept, is the answer to feeding these people. This efficient use of resources could be implemented into cities all around the world and open up the use of all of our current farmland. This type of impact on the environment would be almost immediately visible.

So what is Sustainability? Many hip trends like “eat local” claim to be sustainable acts and they very well may be. But, faddish activities like this are not the answers to all our environmental problems with food. Let us clarify the true goals of sustainable agriculture. Sustainable food production is something that can achieve an ecological balance of inputs and outputs and that wastes the least amount of resources. Many of our conventional ways of farming supply us with what we need but they also create many negative affects while gobbling up valuable resources like water and land. There are a few methods mentioned in James E. McWilliams book “Just Food” (2009) that are very efficient. Aquaponics, where you raise fish and grow plants off the same water supply, would be one of the best solutions. It is still a fairly new process to the western world but new findings are always coming to light.

The least practical way to produce protein is to grow cattle. Most of us will never see a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO). They take up large areas of land in order to raise beef, pork, and chicken. Animals that should be raised on the green pastures they evolved on. These CAFO sites are very unsanitary due to the density of the animals on the property. Michael Pollan talks about the speed involved with producing meat in an article titled Power Steer. He says, “What gets a beef calf from 80 to 1,200 pounds in 14 months are enormous quantities of corn, protein supplements—and drugs, including growth hormones. These “efficiencies,” all of which come at a price, have transformed raising cattle into a high-volume, low-margin business.” With increasing pollution and disease outbreak the majority of people are starting to realize we need a less destructive source of protein, something like Aquaponics would be a more sensible alternative.

An idea, as explained by the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service, “In aquaponics, nutrient-rich effluent from fish tanks is used to fertigate hydroponic production beds.” That means the fish manure, algae, and old fish food can be filtered out and used by plants instead of contaminating the fish. In a study done at the University of Florida, they found that fish and plants use water at different PH levels. So, even this type of production would require chemical additives, organic or not, they would not be self-sustained. However, when aquaponics is executed well it is still less energy intensive than conventional protein production. A good aquaponic farm would keep fish, like tilapia, at a PH above 7.0. For plants, a PH above 6.5 keeps nutrients including iron, zinc, copper, boron and manganese unavailable to the plant. They found that adding these nutrients to the foliage of these fruits and vegetables solves this problem. Putting fish and plants into a closed greenhouse system may seem like a much more complicated process but being able to add less chemical nutrients to your crops and also produce protein is a much more efficient use of land and energy. This makes it one of the most sustainable ways we know of to produce protein. Anything is a better alternative to today’s cattle production. Natural water sources could be run through the system to simulate a natural ecosystem for native species of fish. It makes sense to model a sustainable system after it’s natural ecosystem, which is exactly the idea behind aquaponics.

Skyfarming, another fairly new concept, could incorporate aquaponic systems. With the amount of land in and around cities decreasing the outlook of modern grocery stores will be more like a fully functioning balanced environment where the food is grown and sold at the same location. A place where people, plants, animals, fungi, sea creatures, bees, and many other creatures all live in harmony. These skyfarms would most likely be a greenhouse structure full of symbiotic plants and creatures with an exterior shopping market in or surrounding it. The difference in this artificial environment and our natural one is every single resource is regulated to whether it’s the number of bees in the building or the amount of nutrient rich water that goes on the crops. Skyfarming, also called Vertical Farming, is the birth child of Columbia University professor of environmental health, Dickson Despommier. The idea came about when students of Despommier’s were discouraged from learning about, “parasitism and environmental disruption,” as put by Time Magazine, “...they wanted to work on something optimistic.” They knew about the growing population dilemma and focused on feeding cities. After realizing rooftop gardening wasn’t enough volume they filled a thirty-story New York building with a greenhouse on every level. The result was a way to grow food with less water, soil, and nutrients. Despommier said, "I think vertical farming is an idea that can work in a big way." The only drawback to the idea, even though water and nutrients can be more evenly distributed, are building greenhouses that massive with that much technology would much more expensive than what we already have. However, the potential benefits of vertical farms are extraordinary. Skyfarms could be placed all around the city with easy access by car or public transportation. Small systems could even be integrated into urban homes or backyards for the do-it-yourselfer. These farms could be put next to virtually any existing grocery stores or in new communities that need them. Previously abandoned warehouses could be the new home to a variety of great food. There could be mushrooms growing in the basement with fish on the first floor and veggies on the second. Turbines and solar cells would line the rooftop to power the farm with renewable energy. The food from skyfarms would be fresh and the transportation cost would be close to nothing. Startup costs are going to be undoubtedly high but the opportunity for a competitive market is still possible with the demand for sustainable food increasing. A company called Valcent has been working in Texas since 2008 to make this new process more renewable, sustainable, and most importantly economical. They already have test trials in vertical growing that “increased some crop yields by up to 20 times the normal production volume and only required 5% of the average water used in conventional growing conditions.” Valcent’s plans for skyfarming don’t stop at the city lines they plan to incorporate these buildings in suburban, countryside, and desert locations.

Conventional farming works, for now but we’ve come to rely on a small range of crops too much. Corn is the easiest to discuss because it is in everything it seems. We have a huge reliance on corn and we sincerely need to incorporate more diversity into our diet. Our dependency on corn is because of the market demand for corn-based products, mainly processed “box food” and the development of red meats. For the record, I’m not against corn, I like it just as much as most people who eat it. I only think that its role in our food chain and now energy source is more than excessive. Corn, as I’ll touch on later, is not regulated by market demand but by an artificial demand regulated by the government. This is the main reason we need to know what we are supporting when we shop. Also, when we achieve a solid way to skyfarm or other type of sustainable production we need to start off on the right foot with little or no government participation. This is crucial in the long run to keep the quality of skyfarms at there best.

What should be the role of government is a question that has confused people for decades. Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize winner of economics, believed that Adam Smith answered it perfectly. In Friedman’s book, “Freedom to Choose” (1980) he quotes Adams two hundred year old answer:

According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to; three duties of great importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to common understandings: first, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice; and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public interest, which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals.

Milton Freidman touches on many other great points in his books about how farmers became dependant on government intervention in agriculture. Before the Great Depression the only role our government played in our “free market” was currency. People picked a profession and made a living off the simple principle of supply and demand. In the 1930’s, shortly after the Great Depression, government authority increased in several areas. One of the most influential to our lives today is agriculture. The people of that time thought the depression was, as put by Friedman, “A failure of free market capitalism.” In fact it was the failure of the government’s role with our money. The government started implementing higher price supports for farmers when crops were hurt by lets say, bad weather. These artificial prices interrupt the natural flow of supply and demand. Before, if farmers had a bad year, they might blame it on a drought or go pray at a church. Now, they drive their John Deere to Washington and plead for a price ceiling. After World War II corn became the new hot product for cattle feedlots. Because of this cheaper, faster way to feed cows and pigs, the government paid farmers to grow more corn. Government subsidies in corn still go on today. During the Bush administration corn was pushed to even higher prices for the use of biofuels. The intent was to reduce emissions and have a more sustainable fuel source. In fact, it did the opposite. Farmers reacted by clearing out more land or converting crops to corn. Even with an influx in the supply of corn, beef was more expensive because more corn was being grown for making ethanol. If we hadn’t been dependant on corn for cattle feed this would not have been an issue.

We have to stop relying on the most popular fad or waiting on the next best answer to fix the wasteful habits that we all are at fault for. Some fads are fine to follow but one or two of them alone wont solve anything. Improvements will start when everyone is more conscious about what goes on in the world. The things I have discussed are only a few ideas that can help lead a sustainable future. Just running with that idea alone is not the important point, it is that there are other ways to farm then what we are use to and being able to adapt and support new sustainable processes plays the largest role in moving in a the right direction. A true balance of agriculture and preservation can only be achieved with more ideas and involvement from everyone. Unless people are aware and care enough about the subject of food nothing will change. The potential of American agriculture does look bright. With more research being done I feel confidant that people will become more concerned with what they are eating. Design companies and Universities are drawing up ideas to incorporate the growth and production of food into cities. These ideas are going to become more realistic with better ways to farm hydroponically. It would feel nice to know where your food comes from and be able to watch the whole process happen in the city “green-farm” down your street. Skyfarming will be in cities before we know it. Dr. Dickson Despommier believes that vertical farms will start showing up in major cities like New York and Las Vegas in the next twenty years or so. He also thinks they will be able to counteract carbon emissions, just another positive effect of sustainable farming. His team is already drawing up the next ideas of skyfarming, transparent skyfarms that take up an entire city block and are farmed by its inhabitants. These tall towers of fruits, vegetables, fish, and even poultry will symbolize a new way to think about food and energy use. We should not forget to push for private ownership of these businesses because the efficiencies of individuals are much better than the work of a government bureau. Creating room for free market competition would be a wise start for the upcoming urban farmer.