On January 21, Thomas L. Viola was charged with the theft of some 135 tons of road salt in Aurora, Illinois. Viola had (intentionally) sold the road salt, which did not belong to him, on October 1 at the bargain price of $9000 (US). He was caught and the salt was recovered / found in a warehouse. Now while the headline "Man Charged With Theft Of 135 Tons Of Road Salt" is certainly more eye-catching than the reality of selling goods that are not your own as thieving, we were struck more with the commodity worthy of such a heist. About 50% of industrialized salt production is used in cold-climate regions for de-icing. Along with that massive seasonally dependent harvest, is the need to store salt (or sand) in a distributed fashion and at a municipal level. Like little salt banks or mail drop-off boxes, salt facilities dot the highway landscape. These often conical containers are perfectly formed to the angle of repose of salt mounds. In a strange twist, the containers are protecting the salt from the weather, while the salt, once dispersed, protects us from the weather.

[Smithfield Salt/Sand storage facility constructed by the Rhode Island Department of Public Works.]

[Salt Lake City salt storage house.]

Toronto, for example, uses about 130,000 – 150,000 tonnes of salt annually with 200 salting trucks to address 130cm of annual snowfall. And Montreal spends about $135 million annually to address its 217cm snowfall. Industrial salt production is a massive enterprise of which less than 10% is for use in de-icing.

The US and China produce about 40% of total world salt production, which globally was about 250 million tons in 2006.

Following a heavy winter last year, many municipalities stocked up on road salt early this year. This drove prices up, and it has created the need for more innovative thinking in terms of ice-melting. One case in point is geomelt, which Chicago is considering. But other options have included garlic salt.

[Houffs 20,000-ton salt storage facility in Weyers Cave, Virginia.]

In a recent summary report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Livestock's Long Shadow), trillions of farm animals across the globe were found to generate a whopping 18% of CO2 emissions. That is more than cars, buses, and airplanes. Hard to swallow that flying could reduce your carbon footprint more than eating meat, but as the New York Times put it: "Flatus and manure from animals contain not only methane, but also nitrous oxide, an even more potent warming agent. And meat requires energy for refrigeration as it moves from farm to market to home." ("As More Eat Meat, a Bid to Cut Emissions," Dec 3, 2008.)

A pig farm in Sterksel, Netherlands has begun cooking its manure (3000 pigs worth) to capture the methane trapped within. The (bio)gas is then, in turn, used to generate electricity for the local power grid. And this is now becoming a growing trend as environmentally responsible agri-businesses try to curtail emissions. Without this activity the pig manure would be stored in open storage tanks for about 6-9 months before being used as fertilizer for farm lands. Cattle and pig manure, when kept in open-top basins, tanks or lagoons open to the atmosphere, undergo anaerobic fermentation and release greenhouse gases (methane, CO2 and N2O) to the atmosphere, not to mention the potent aroma.

[Estimated distribution of industrially produced pig populations. Source: LEAD.]

[Estimated distribution of industrially produced poultry populations. Source: LEAD.]

To make matters more complicated, the growing demand for meat, has lead to a need for more farm feed, especially soy, which is increasingly supplied by forest clearing. Therefore essential "carbon sinks" are being removed to make way for the release of harmful methane.

Several countries have already implemented mandates for methane reduction. In Denmark, farmers are required by law to inject manure under the soil instead of on top of fields, which enhances its fertilizing effect and prevents emissions from escaping. And New Zealand recently announced that it would include agriculture in its new emissions trading (scheme by 2013. To that end, the government is spending tens of millions of dollars financing research and projects like breeding cows that produce less gas and inventing feed that will make cows belch less methane.

[Source: New York Times]

Other uses for methane capture and biogas have found their into transportation, such as Biogasmax (buses) and Svensk Biogas (rail).

Three employees of Farmers Fresh Mushrooms in Lagley, British Columbia died last week as a rush of compost fumes flooded a pump house at the mushroom farm. Fungiculture is centered around no light and robust soil – robust as in manure-laden robust. Thus the composting and thus the toxicity.

[Fresh manure bags awaiting mushrooom spores in Quindao, China agri-bunker.]

[Growing beds being assembled, with roof off.]

[Where spawn meets compost...]

Picking up on the intermittent series of student projects, included is a project by University of Toronto M.Arch graduate Tomer Diamant titled Büroland(wirt)schaft. Tomer began his research on speculative development and the hyper-efficiency of (spec) office buildings. Looking closer at the siting of office parks at outlying urban areas, he recognized an opportunity to capitalize on a stop-gap program of seasonal greenhouse agriculture.

[Vacant land opportunities along Highway 407 in north Toronto. Yellow dots indicate significant office locations, and the box at center is his designated site for the Bürolandwirtschaft case study.]

He writes:

This project proposes a hybrid typology that combines office space with industrial greenhouse agriculture, revisiting the Buro Landschaft (office landscape) schemes proposed by the Quickborner Team in the 1960’s, filtered through the lens of current global concerns. Buro Landwirtschaft (office agriculture) could make use of the weakest terrains of contemporary urbanism, sites abutting utility corridors, regional infrastructure and light industry. Low land-values would allow for the financing of large footprint buildings composed of paddy-like cells that could be converted from office to agriculture and back, with the prevailing economic winds. The built-in sliding programme is intended to provide an economic damper in volatile market conditions, while affording a degree of spatial flexibility that is not available in normative spec buildings and leasing structures.

[Comparative inputs and outputs of greenhouse agro and typical office use.]

[Biomass v Datamass. The dirt on information...]

The basic scheme inverts a normative concrete slab so that its upturned beams form discrete drainage cells. The beams are designed to accommodate service chases for each respective use. When in agricultural production mode, the cell is filled with irrigated soil. When in office mode, the cell becomes a pressurized plenum built from off-the-shelf raised floor technology. The slab is elevated, so as the cells are converted between office and greenhouse use, parking below can give way for additional head house space required by agricultural production. Head house and parking requirements are inversely proportional, allowing the programmatic adaptability to play out on both levels. Since air is only delivered through the office plenum floors, it is possible to imagine that positive pressure could mitigate humidity infiltration from the greenhouse, allowing for ephemeral internal partitions.

[Where greenhouse meets desks.]

[Axonometric outlining program (with its homegrown cafe, of course) and circulation. The undulating hexagonal roof panels suggest courtyards and entries.]

In the final version, the project explores the layering of multiple structural and service geometries, with the ambition of creating internal spatial conditions that are not overburdened by the linear nature of a patent glass roof system. Parking is integrated into a diamond-shaped structural cell that is carried up to support a roof structure of vaulted hexagonal modules. Since the vaults are derived from toroidal geometry, the modules are planar and highly repetitive. Each full hexagon holds a pillow-like ETFE assembly, the opacity of which can be controlled using electro-chromatic technology. Along the vault ridges, half-panels provide computer-controlled operable ventilation. The structural dia-grid accommodates a secondary geometry of drainage cells within the elevated slab. The building is envisioned as a large-scale, elevated mat, in which the office programme is serviced through a central courtyard while the greenhouse is serviced from a perimeter ring. The office grows from the inside out and the greenhouse grows from the outside in. In this scheme, there are no corner offices and all outward views are filtered through the greenhouse spaces. Several smaller courtyards satisfy exit requirements while providing additional light below.

[Interior plan showing office plots. The plot pattern dovetails into a typical parking bay grid at grade.]

[Buroland(wirt)schaft at work.]

[View from access road.]

If you would like to contact Tomer about his research and project, you can reach him here.

Previous Student Works: Vivian Chin's Convergent Species

Resembling something out of the portfolios of Frei Otto or Cedric Price, the Kona Blue Sea Stations off the coast of Hawaii are open sea offshore 3,000-cubic-meter submersible fish pens.

Kona Blue’s premiere achievement is Kona Kampachi^®, a premium sushi-grade Hawaiian yellowtail species.

Currently, four open ocean aquaculture operations growing finfish, two operations in Hawaii, one in Puerto Rico and one in New Hampshire. All four operations grow species native to their area. All four use similar technology in their operations, including a set of submerged cages moored to the ocean bottom.

[The tent-like sea station fish pens.]

[Prepping the dewaterer.]

[Diagram of Sea Station.]

[The netting is made out of Dyneema, a material used in bulletproof vesting.]

[In Toshka farm,near Egypts border with Sudan, the Egyptian goverment hopes to grow 2 million acres of wheat, alongside fruits such as the grape fields as above.]

As recently chronicled in the NY Times, Global food shortages have placed the Middle East and North Africa in a dilemma: grow more crops to feed expanding population or preserve already limited supplies of water. For decades, nations in this region have drained aquifers, desalinated sea water and even diverted the Nile in order to transform the arid desert into lush, agricultural landscapes.

[A canal diverts Nile water for irrigation near Egypt's border with Sudan. As a piece of engineering, the canal cuts through the desert landscape.]

In the 1980s, Saudi Arabia made itself self-sufficient with regard to food, and even positioned itself as a global exporter. Egypt had its own struggling desert oasis with the Toshka farm, which represented 500,000 acres of potential farmland eked from the desert. Egypt’s president, Mubarak, puts the ambitions of cultivating this farmland on par with the ambitions of constructing the Pyramids.

However, as these agricultural oases became increasingly costly and water intensive, countries in the Middle East began importing their food, sometimes up to 90 percent or more of their staples. But with current global food shortages and rising costs, nations are turning anew to expensive schemes to maintain their food supply.

Population in this region has quadrupled since 1950, to 364 million and is predicted to reach 600 million by 2050. By then, already scare water resources will be cut in half.

[A global map shows food production needs are increasingly strained in areas where it is most difficult to farm.]

Oil-rich nations such as Saudi Arabia have begun looking for farmland in fertile but politically volatile nations such as Pakistan, with the goal of growing crops to be shipped home, in the form of agricultural surrogacy. For years there have been international discussions regarding international water sovereignty. It will be interesting to see if such discussions eventually extend to agricultural lands.

Meanwhile, economists suggest that rather than seeking food self-sufficiency, countries should grow crops for which they have a competitive advantage like produce or flowers, which do not require much water and can be exported for top dollar. Israel has been using drip irrigation for decades, for precise, engineered and water-efficient agricultural production.

[Grand Omar Mukhtar reservoir, part of the Great Man Made River project in Lybia.]

Supporting these ambitious projects to farm the desert requires an equally ambitious infrastructure of water delivery such as the Great Man-made River (GMR), a network of pipes that supplies water from the Sahara Desert in Libya from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System fossil aquifer. Some sources cite it as the largest engineering project ever undertaken. It may well be the largest underground network of pipes in the world. It consists of more than 1300 wells, the majority more than 500 m deep, and supplies 6,500,000 m³ of freshwater per day to the cities of Tripoli, Benghazi, Sirt and elsewhere.

It seems only logical, with the increased frenzy of food shortage, biofuels, and other increased agriculture interests, that there would be a significant increased interest in fertilizer. Saskatchewan's potash production has emerged as the global leader of potash exports. PotashCorp is the leading producer in the region, which has now also become Canada's largest company by market capital – more than $67-billion (Canadian).

They have recently announced plans to expand a recent expansion. The potash boom spurred a decision by Canpotex Ltd. to build a new export terminal in Prince Rupert – a place long battered by forestry and fishing declines – to boost Asian shipments of the high-demand fertilizer.

Potash production is a major Saskatchewan industry, which has played a significant role in the economy for over 40 years. The ten producing mines in the province are among the largest and most modern in the world. Underground potash deposits were laid down by evaporation in an ancient inland sea; three major layers of potash are separated by layers of salt.

[Global potash imports]

[Global potash exports.]

Canada is single-handed supplying the world's top four importers of potash (China, USA, Brazil, and India) with its 7.7 million tonnes exported.

[Sites of nutrient enrichment in Canada, 1998.]

Cod caught off Norway is shipped to China to be turned into filets, then shipped back to Norway for sale. Last year, Britain both imported 14,000 tonnes of waffles, and exported 15,000 tonnes. In the United States, FreshDirect proclaims kiwi season has expanded to “All year!” now that Italy has become the world’s leading supplier of New Zealand’s national fruit, taking over in the Southern Hemisphere’s winter.

The global movement of food has never operated at the speeds and scopes seen today. Labour costs, economics, and infrastructure have a greater influence over what is farmed and where it is distributed than climate.

[Alabama catfish farms.]

Recently Catfish farming in the Mississippi delta are about to go bellyup. With rising costs of corn and soybeans, for every dollar it costs to raise and harvest a catfish, there is only 75 cents return. Drained catfish ponds are being converted into, you guessed it, corn and soybean fields.

(via nytimes)

Vertical Farms get coverage in the New York Times science section, curiously enough. Not in the Architecture section, nor in the Food section. Apparently when architecture meets food (agriculture) it becomes science. Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University arguably claims authorship of farms in the sky, though that could be attributed to many others.

More here.

08_07_15_vert_farms02

Vancouver's Olympic Village is set to include urban agriculture; rainwater management systems; green roofs; and neighbourhood energy system. The urban agriculture prompted an in depth report outlining urban agriculture and its trajectory. Within this document is a useful definition of urban agriculture:

The term urban agriculture, as it is commonly used, refers to any agricultural production that takes place within the urban and peri-urban region. This could include the growing of food (vegetables, grains, mushrooms, even meat and dairy products), medicinal plants, herbs, and ornamental plants. It includes a diverse array of techniques and approaches ranging from backyard growing to large-scale urban market gardening, hydroponic greenhouses and aquaculture. It is not just community gardening although this is an important component in many cities. Food is of paramount importance because of its primary contribution to survival, health, culture and impact on the environment. This study primarily focuses on food rather than some of the other agricultural/horticultural products.
The study of urban agriculture is often focused on food production within a City, which predominantly means the growing of soft fruits, salad crops, herbs and vegetables. However, in a high-density community like SEFC some of the opportunities for food production are limited compared with neighbourhoods with a higher proportion of open space. The potential for addressing the issues of sustainability is likely to be greatly enhanced by examining other aspects of the food system such as how and where food is processed, and the manner in which it is distributed…

Get the Southeast False Creek Urban Agriculture (207 page!) report as a full PDF here.
Cuba's story is more complex. It developed the organoponicos, organic urban farms, in the 1990s as a response to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Cuba's intensive monoculture approach to farming was dependent upon Soviet agrochemicals. Cuba was heavily dependent on imports and this event threatened food security. To gain greater independence, the government launched a nationwide organic urban agriculture movement. Organoponicos made Cuba one of the only countries to develop state-sponsored urban farms.

[A downtown Havana organoponico.]

[Organoponico Bolivar I garden occupies 1.2 acres in the center of Caracas.]

related: Fritz Haeg's Edible Estates

[Edible Estates, Fritz Haeg.]