Michigan - Saginaw County | Oh man, I need one of those hail cannons... Got some people I need to annoy..
Actually, the wife has tomatoes on the counter that came from that facility - went in the house and checked the tag as soon as I saw the video...
Sometimes when I can't get to sleep I think about ways to improve crop yield and of course a section of land covered by a green house comes to mind... At the manufacturing plant (I was a plant engineer for Chevrolet when I was a young man) we had peaked glass rows across the roof for lighting that would swivel open on one side to allow heat to escape... Having been built in the 20's the windows were opened/closed by a chain loop that hung down from 70 foot above and drove the gear box - like a chain-fall...
Anyway, in my mind I have overhead crane rails (about 12 foot up) that run the length of the fields and pull the tillage and planting tools so there are no wheel tracks and no ground compression... Irrigation piping is part of the building structural frame so that it serves two purposes - holding the roof up and channeling water...
Ventilation is is combination of chimneys that draw air by convection and powered fans...
For high value crops supplemental lighting is overhead...
Cold weather heating is a combination of incident sunlight and underground air exchange tubes... Actually cooling will be the bigger issue - but the same idea of chimney draw, powered fans, and geothermal heat exchange from underground blower tubes...
An enclosed space like that can also use elevated CO2 levels to enhance growth of high value crops...
With proper planning before construction these "fields" can also be closed units that do not allow disease and insects to enter... Like an operating room employees would shower and put on containment suits so as to not contaminate the crop with viruses/etc. from the outside... Commensal bacteria/fungi/ etc. for breaking down the crop residue would be introduced into the sterile soil and controlled... Even if you did not go to that degree of isolation, just blocking the entry of root worms, slugs, wheat rust, what have you, would be of immense value.. Nothing is perfect and disease will eventually get in, but in a closed unit you can shut it down and fumigate/sterilize if disease gets out of hand...
I foresee that a few billion more people will transform farming in the developed countries from open air farming to greenhouse factories in order to feed them - my thinking is 50 years will see that transformation moving along at a rapid clip...... |
24 acres under a glass roof
