Sanctuaries For Our Food And Our Friends - Part One

I thought my last post about the AFF here in Florida would be my last story on this "disordered" organization... But finding this short Hoosier Ag Today podcast, interviewing a AFF teen changed that. Note that the first few sentences indicate that it is "consumers" and economics that are of the most interest to agriculture. No surprise there...  The clip also says that vegan and animal rights advocates are "aniti-agriculture", as if we didn't consume food too.  But surely they've got that all wrong!

Young Morgan Dawson states that the population will nearly double in the next 40 years and that agriculture has to devise "new ways" to meet food demands. With this I couldn't agree more!

My thought however is to do things in complete reverse of what's being done now.  Currently, we have billions of animals crammed inside warehouses... And countless thousands of acres of crops grown outdoors.

Now, indoor animals must be regulated with electronic "climate controlled" facilities and many drugs.

Indoors their waste accumulates to a point where air quality around factory farms is inferior to major cities.  Raising animals indoors is wasteful in water and energy use.  And of course it's downright torture for these beings!  Talk about "intensive confinement":

On the other hand, plants that are raised outdoors take up vast swaths of land. These are vulnerable to weather conditions.  Crops must be sprayed to guard against instects and "pests".  And there is also collateral damage done to wildlife that find these foods suitable for their meals too.

Now --- What if we revolutionized the system, removing animals from their indoor prisons and put plants there instead?  What if all the grants, fundings, "pork" and favors that go to producing "livestock" were to go to inovative new forms of high-tech food production instead?
Many such systems are on the drafting boards and blueprint stages but of course without sufficient economic backing they're having a challenge in being realized.  But here's a few that are built and already producing food with closed loop energy systems:
The Science Barge in New York uses state of the art computer technology and an agricultural technique called hydroponics to grow fruits and veggies using much less water and space than field farming.
The Eden Project that is what it's name implies.
The Sahara Forest Project, that is also a restorative technology.
And look what a green marvel is being built in Newark, New Jersey:

Imagine what kind of future we could have if we planned communities that were sustainable within their own environment and location.  Housing units where people could literally obtain their food in the same building that they lived in.  No trucking food for hundreds/thousands of miles... Food that also supplied energy to your building would only be steps away.  Now that is projecting into the future!

There are a lot of ways that we can make the next decades be bountiful, clean, safe and wholesome environments for both humans and animals... One of my favorites is the brainchild of these young group of "future farmers of America" who created a hydroponic plant by converting (of all things!) an old meat packing plant.  Indeed this concept Conscious Vertical Farming 312 AQUAPONICS is Phoenix rising from the ashes:

Granted... I know some of these systems still depend on sea creatures to produce fertilizer.  But we humans also generate an abundant amount of waste too, that could be used instead, as the technology advances... Thus eliminating our need for "water treatment" plants... Or nearly so.  Genius - Isn't it?

So, you live in a rural area... In a home not a high rise --- Nourishing food could be grown in these systems by building them on top of grocery stores!  What a site to see our foods living on the roofs of the supermarkets we shop in!  The possibilities with this future are endless, sustainable, and most of all allow all living beings their unharmed and *unviolated* place on this earth!

If there was ever a way to provide a secure, peaceful co-existence with the planet and each other surely this is it!  We don't need "glass walls" in slaughterhouses!  We don't "need" slaughterhouses at all!  Glass walls that could protect our real food and our survival is the way to go for "future farming" in the world. 

Part one of two

Further reading and exploration:

Dickson Despommier Professor, Columbia University

VertiCrop™

Vertical Farms/Green Living - Leave the Cow Behind