A Barcelona design firm imagines a two-million-square-foot barge that would yield tons of vegetables, fruit and fish each year
(Forward Thinking Architecture)
No Land? No Problem. If Barcelona-based Forward Thinking
Architecture has its way, farms of the future will operate autonomously
as they float on the open sea. Stretching eco-friendly concepts to the
limit, the ambitious design firm has come up with the idea of Smart Floating Farms,
large triple-decker agriculture barges that feature fish farms down
below, hydroponic gardens up top and solar panels on the roof to keep
things running. They don’t exist yet, but they’re certainly providing
plenty of food for thought.
The concept hits all the current buzzwords: preservation of
arable land, local organic food sourcing with less “food mileage,”
environmental protection, self-sufficiency and sustainability.
Much of the power needed for the floating farm would come from rooftop solar arrays.
(Forward Thinking Architecture)
What the designers have in mind is a rectangular farm with a
default size of 656 by 1,150 feet and a total area across all its levels
of about 2.2 million square feet. Space that isn’t used for farming
would be taken up by service walkways and catwalks. Since the floating
farms would be modular, several could be clustered together to improve
their efficiency even more to serve densely populated areas.
The bottom level would contain fish farms, external perimeter
wave barriers and protection, water access points, storage, a
slaughterhouse, a desalination plant and a packaging facility. Upstairs
would be a greenhouse with automated hydroponics, and microclimate
control for crop cultivation. The rooftop level would hold a
photovoltaic power plant and feature skylights to deliver natural light
to the plants. Wind turbines and wave energy converter systems could
also play a role, as could biogas power plants and digesters that would
be used to eliminate the biological waste produced throughout the
operation.
The bottom level would be used for fish farming.
(Forward Thinking Architecture)
The most important component would be the hydroponic garden,
because hydroponics doesn’t require natural precipitation, fertile
land or pesticides to be effective and can serve as a model for people
who live in arid regions or areas with poor soil. Hydroponic gardens can
also be stacked, so they take up less space.
Hanging hydroponic gardens would be designed for maximum productivity.
(Forward Thinking Architecture)
The designers contend that all of this could—at least in
theory—operate pretty much automatically, with minimal human
intervention. The key would be to place sensors everywhere and rely on
the gadgetry of the “Internet of Things” to report data that would
ultimately help the farm run at peak efficiency, although details about
all that are fuzzy for now. Meanwhile, big data analytics would also be
used to determine what the local populace needed most from the floating
farms. Fewer fish and more lettuce perhaps?
The floating farms could potentially support these vegetables, fruits, herbs and fish.
Forward Thinking Architecture says that one regular farm would
yield 8.1 tons of vegetables and 1.7 tons of fish per year, which would
let the farm pay for itself within 10 years. We’ll see about that, but
in the meantime, kudos to the designers for floating such an interesting
idea.
This article was originally published by the editorial team at XPRIZE, which designs and operates incentivized competitions to bring about radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity.
Source: Don Willmott, XPRIZE contributor
smithsonian.com
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