June 1, 2016

Concepts for Vancouver – the Growing Machine

James Bligh (occasional Price Tags author) writes in the Architecture section of Vancouver Is Awesome about a concept for the city.

In 2013 Trevor Vilac, a local Building Science Technologist, proposed a new type of building which, through vertical hydroponics, could reintroduce farming into the city. The benefits include reducing transportation distances, increasing availability of produce, exposing younger generations to the agriculture industry, and revolutionizing the farm-to-table movement. Trevor describes the project below:

TV: The Growing Machine is an industrial and educational building focusing on urban agriculture. The Growing Machine combines industry with public amenities by integrating elements such as a vertical hydroponic garden, classrooms integrated to the garden, research labs, and a farmer’s market on the ground floor. The intentions of this project are to define urban agriculture as a new industrial typology, and to combine agriculture, sustainability, and education into a holistic experience.

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The Growing Machine by Trevor Vilac, proposed for the corner of Commercial Drive and Franklin Street

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Section of the Growing Machine by Trevor Vilac

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  1. And the price per apple, tomato or spinach leave is ?

    I bet that a basement based knitting studio could also replace Lululemon’s fashionable design at ten times the cost and three times worse the shape ?

    Economies of scale matter not ?

    1. That question can take us pretty deep when thinking about not just cost but value to paying customers. I prefer farmer’s market fruit and veg because it’s much fresher, so even when it’s the same or slightly more than the supermarket, it lasts 2-3x longer and I waste less, which makes it more valuable. Removing much of the transportation cost helps price, but the real boon is in the controlled growing: water and heat recapture, pest control, and of course climate control mean fewer crop losses. All this can significantly push price downward.

      New ways always bring new problems, too, and engineering challenges abound, but there do seem to be more factors working in favour of long term costs. As for scale, you can build pretty high up, so you likely don’t need to sacrifice large swatch of land to get equivalent growing capacity.

      I guess someone might have said the same of agriculture. Why give up the certainty of generations-proven nomadic gathering for crops that could fail and leave you hungry in winter? What is the cost of an apple you walk to and pick each year vs the cost of planting, tending, and hoping it works out?

      This is an interesting idea, one I’m hopeful about, for both indirect and direct benefits, among which lower food cost can easily be among them.

      1. This idea can also work in an industrial warehouse environment and building type or other zones where land and building costs are cheaper than the inner city.

  2. I think it is another fad, just like green energy. Works on a small scale, for those that have loads of money and like to be “green” but not for the mass market. can you feed a million Vancouverites with this ? or just the top 10,000 that also happen to be able to afford a Tesla ?

    1. The building construction costs will not be imposed on the first crop, so your comment is a bit facile. This building will last well beyond a half century and will produce tens of thousands of crops year round over its life under controlled conditions. The cost per square metre of growing area or kilogram of produce has the capability of being very competitive, especially with the likelihood of dwindling imported crops.

      However, the cart may be placed before the horse on this one, though, as the highly-rated soils in the local and regional ALR are already in place and don’t require a significant amount of new infrastructure to increase and diversify their output. This will become increasingly relevant with another decade or two of poor water and soil management (let alone climate change droughts) caves the agricultural production curves of California and Mexico.

  3. Technically ideas like this make sense for inclusion in a transition plan for Canadian energy and food security, especially considering the severe record drought where most of our fruit and veg comes from. The Central Valley of California is nearing its demise as its major sources of water and the support soils are beyond depletion. The fields are 2,500 km from Canadian cities which are the secondary and tertiary markets after exports to other US states. Those who promote the development of the ALR for cheap subdivisions really have no clue of the economic consequences once that land runs out at the same time Lake Mead reaches the 200 ft below historic levels point of no return (it’s currently at minus 100 ft) and several SW states dry up very quickly. There goes 2/3rds of our produce.

    These vertical urban farms may be seen as the next step once our ALR has reached its full potential after California and Mexico slow then inevitably stop their exports of food as successive climate change droughts have their way by mid century. That potential is orders of magnitude greater than its current production, to the point that agriculture could well outcompete LNG and a host of other low added value raw resource exploitation schemes in jobs and contribution to the GDP, mainly by employing many more people and probably through value added exports .

    The urban greenhouse idea could also generate more heat and energy than it uses and could form the nucleus to district heat and energy distribution systems. As for the price of food, Howellings Nurseries (and others) delivers lots of hothouse cukes and tomatoes grown in a pesticide free environment for a reasonable price in substantial volumes. And they taste better than the scabby Mexican fare.

    This idea needs to be added to the list of items to be considered when practicing something over the heads of those who so cavalierly dismiss them: Long range planning.

    1. If one area gets warmer and drier, then currently wet cold areas would be better for food production, such as in cold Canada. Canada is a net winner in global warming. I don’t care if my apple comes from BC, WA, CA, Mexico or SK, MB or ON ! Plenty of land in Canada that we could irrigate if it was a little warmer, say in N-BC, AB, MB or SK.

      Plenty of arable land with irrigation potential nearby, say Merritt or Okanagon. Perhaps we’d do less grapes (as BC wine is generally not that great) and more cherries, apples, pears and apricots ?

      Perhaps we should twin the XL pipeline: oil below and water above ? A true win/win ?

      I am not a food expert and leave decision to the experts. It seems to me that growing food indoors, with artificial light and expensive heating is the opposite of “green” or “natural”.

      Taiwan is the size of Vancouver Island. It has 80,000,000 people. Vancouver Island has what, 500,000 ? Plenty of land for food production right next door too. Plus WA and OR with plenty of land. No need to go indoors if outdoors has AMPLE SPACE nearby !!

      1. I agree with you on the potential to grow and become a net exporter of field crop food. This is why it’s important to see agriculture here as so much more than cattle feedlots and pig barns.

        However, the Palliser Triangle covers the southern part three Prairie provinces and will be subject to major drought conditions. My homesteading family had firsthand experience of that, and it made those who stayed with farming into conservationists.

        The best liquid export Canada may ever produce in future with millions of tonnes of permanent added value will not be oil. It will be water, and it could take the form of exported field and greenhouse crops with thousands of associated jobs and multipliers.

  4. Anyone interested in growing food should be familiar with genius lunatic farmer Joel Salatin. He has done more to increase our knowledge of sustainable food production than any ag college; and is a bulwark against the vicious food police he calls the F duh (FDA), the lapdog of corporate farming and Pharmapimps.

    What’s missing in the complicated construct above is the animal component: aquaculture, rabbits, chickens, pigs. I’d suggest building these on school properties.

    What’s more useful – kids running around on gravel playing fields kicking a soccer ball – or having them engaged in these urban farms.

    The two talks by Dan Barber on Ted about the Spanish pâté producer Eduardo; and the talk on falling in love with a fish are also paradigm-shifting. He’s a lot like Woody Allen in his prime.

    Joel Salatin and Dan Barber – much respect.

  5. The problem with the “Growing Machine” is that it’s massively mechanistic mumbo jumbo. What else would you expect from a building science technologist.

    Far more useful is what’s being done in the little town of Todmorden U.K. – no buildings, permits, or bullshit – just people growing stuff all over the place. They have ROI on virtually zero outlay in the form of Vegetable Tourism – people come to visit even when there’s little growing. It’s charming.

    The Ted Talk on Todmorden has over 1M views, so it has struck a chord.

    Two or three times a year, our family walks around Strathcona Community Garden. It’s touching to see how people want to touch nature; to see what individuals have decided to grow; to identify various plants; to smell.

    In the Walrus, Gregorius has a list of things he thinks makes Vancouver great – including food trucks that are “globally revered”. Really? … Right.

    I’d take a walk around Strath – the neighbourhood or the garden, over anything he mentioned. At least he didn’t pump up the fireworks. God they’re stupid. Rubes driving in from the burbs to watch explosions. Way more stupid than tourists taking pictures of the Steam Clock.

    We need to bring livestock back into the city, esp. animals like goats to deal with parks like Everett Crowely and Renfrew Ravine. There’s nothing green about using diesel machines to clear blackberries. And pigs to consume what’s going into the green bins. There’s nothing green about a big diesel truck transporting foodstuffs pigs would gladly eat. The big beneficiaries of the green bins are flies, maggots, and spiders – and, of course the drivers/mechanics/admins of this mechanical non solution.

    It’d be useful if the city sold chicken coop tractors and bee hives the way it sells compost and worm bins. Otherwise the cost of entry is too high. That’s green.

    1. Some useful comments, Arnie.

      I too believe at there is a huge potential for community and allotment gardens, especially as density increases . The Victory gardens of England during WWII helped to keep millions fed in hard times. There are also urban farming concepts out there, like SPIN (small plot intensive) gardening / farming where some farmers have learned to grow small crops in winter in Saskatoon, of all places, and be on their third or fourth rotation with greens by the time the Victoria Day markets are open.

      http://www.spingardening.com/

    2. However, your comments on our green waste program don’t hold worm mold. A huge volume of green waste has now been redirected from the landfill and the composted soil product (mixed with chicken manure, sand and a few other organic ingredients) is excellent. In fact, it’s weed-free and several parks departments and other public agencies purchase thousands of tonnes a year for that feature alone.

      The thousands of tonnes of leaves collected in falltime in Vancouver used to (and probably still is) trucked up to UBC where it is used in the agricultural fields, Botanical Gardens and Asian Garden. Time was that windrows of leaves were lain out in fields and mixed with manure making the best growing medium in the West.

      1. You use bad words: … “trucked up”. Using leaves close to where they fall is green. Trucking them “up to UBC” is not green. It is clever, however, for UBC to accept this valuable resource – such largesse. Joel Salatin does something similar – taking tons of material for free from various sources to build the fecundity of his farm.

        None of the leaves that fall on our property get trucked away. They get used feet from where they fall. I even hose the leaves off the street and use those. They’re fantastic. They turn into great soil. Why should UBC get my leaves – delivered by diesel truck no less. That’s not green. These leaves are not going up to, over to, or west to UBC. Let them use their own leaves. That’s green.

        Joel Salatin says that the fossil energy component of industrial farms is 50% and that his farm uses 5%. His labour cost is higher, but isn’t it better to pay people rather than heavy machinery companies and Exxon.

        Picking up food scraps with a diesel truck is similar to extracting oil from the Alberta Tar Sands – the cost of extraction is too high. You can only do that off the public teat. No way is it green.

        1. Probably going to be scolded for this and told I’m some kind of idiot but… you’re using treated drinking water to wash leaves off your street and into your yard? That strikes me as not very ‘green’ and kind of wasteful.

        2. I agree. What we do to some of the best drinking water in the world is a travesty. So, here’s my “carbon offset” – our yard has never been watered – just the garden part for food production – can’t fault that. The leaves which are harvested are thrown sopping wet onto ground where they become a humus rich soil that holds moisture through dry spells. Some water goes down the storm drain “to the sea, to sea”, but not that much. If you compare this approach to a diesel street sweeper, there’s a clear winner.

          I recently gave a friend a couple of pots of tomatoes. Because he’s often away, I dug two large holes and inserted the pots, to retain moisture. The “soil” in his yard was shocking – there was no organic matter whatsoever. It was essentially construction debris – sandy crap with chunks of concrete and a veneer of sod above. This dirt holds no moisture. Whoever built that house absconded with the good soil. Since it would have been a spec builder, he wouldn’t have trucked it down to UBC, but would have sold it.

          Let me stretch your green consciousness a little more, since you are not an idiot, and are thinking about not wasting our quality drinking water. That’s a good thing. Ever since living where we are, I’ve voided into recycled detergent jugs, not into the toilet, to be flushed with drinking water. This resource goes into the garden. I’ve saved hundreds of thousands of litres of water while benefitting the raspberries. People need to get over a puerile eww reaction to this natural process.

          I grew up on four acres surrounded by forest. Our shack had a septic that never worked – it discharged into a corner – a malodorous grey pool. I remember a rhubarb plant that had colonized part of it – rhubarb is a fertilizer pig. Some evenings my dad would scoop this night soil and spread it on our gardens – the way Chinese have been doing for millennia.

          People should read about humanure – why does chicken manure get all the glory. It has been postulated that our infantile attitude to doo doo is because we are descended from monkeys who simply let the turds fall from the sky – that if we were descended from cats, we’s be a lot more circumspect.

          And how does chicken manure wind up at UBC to be mixed with leaves that are trucked over. Is there diesel involved.

        3. You are obviously a deep conservationist, Arnie, and have my respect.

          I suppose scale matters. Diesel trucks are with us because at a metropolis level there just aren’t enough humans (or horses) today willing or able to manually push, pull and manipulate the massive volumes of waste we produce and direct it to better uses. Machines are useful things, and as long as there is no viable electric alternative to the diesel tandem dump truck and the front-end loader, we’re stuck with them. With imagination, one day in the far, far future we may have networked electric light rail freight delivery and pick up or something similar. But until then we’ll need to limit but not eliminate diesel trucks.

          Potable water wastage is a big problem. Considering the huge expense to build and maintain the public potable water supply and delivery system, you’d think they’d do a better job at conservation. In the early 90s 40% of the entire supply was directed to residential lawns in summer. We have made progress and got that down to 25%, but still, it’s a tremendous waste. Last summer at Stage Three we saved our dish washing water (we do not have a dishwasher machine) and it was enough to keep the deck plants and some backyard shrubs generously wet every day for weeks. If we had a chance to build towns and cities from scratch, it would be feasible to build in a grey water and rain water collection and distribution system parallel to the potable water system to easily allow reuse (toilets, irrigation for trees and shrubs, etc.). Rain gardens, bioswales and rain barrels are hopelessly inadequate and problematic by comparison, but I believe there is much potential for storage via underground cisterns in every new development. One day our water will be metered, so this expense will eventually pay off in billed water savings

  6. I find it funny that some people think it’s “revolutionary” to grow fruits and vegetables in their backyards (the City seems to object to doing so in your front yards).

    Look no further than east side Vancouver for blocks and blocks of Vancouver specials with productive vegetable gardens (where produce has been grown for generations) – where the sun shines down on yards because there aren’t any grandiose shade trees.

    On the west side, with its mature tree canopy, the backyards are designed for lounging in the shade. Try growing any vegetables in the shade and you’ll surely fail.

  7. Vancouver already has a growing machine which lies fallow and can be seen from the air; acres upon acres of commercial, industrial, and warehouse roof tops. Imagine what could be done with this acreage given the proper zoning incentives as buildings are reconstructed with the proper structural and access requirements.

    1. Green roofs are expensive to design and build. Wet dirt is heavy, and roofs leak. Finding a leak under hundreds of kg of dirt and plant material is not an easy task.

      However, planting can be done in panels with pallets, and as long as they are moveable and have some separation from the membrane (which needs to be protected), have automated irrigation, and the building is engineered for the additional suspended weight, then go for it.

      1. Not green roofs but rather greenhouses with rainwater hydroponic systems and serious food production. Added benefits are reduction of heat island effects and insulation benefits for the base building user.

  8. My next door neighbour mows weekly. At this very moment he’s out there with a weed whacker. He mows; he aerates; he fertilizes, he edges. He even takes his gas mower into the street to power up leaves which he bags; which are then picked up by diesel trucks to be trucked away away away. That should not be the way.

    Across the street there are three almost identical late post-war houses (the best kind, with at grade lower levels – better than the garbage basement spec houses built today – the antithesis of Universal Design). At any given moment one of them has someone working in the prolific gardens outside. There’s one out there right now. Sometimes all three of them have the owners working their plots – talking, weeding – plot plot plotting.

    Surprisingly, none of them have colonized the city setback portions, or the boulevard, as we have. None of them own a mower, though they do have weed whackers with which they painstakingly cut the city grass. City grass.

    Oddly too, they don’t have compost bins and have all bought yards of soil that was, you guessed it, trucked in from that mythical place – Away. So, they don’t do all of this for ecology or conservation, but because it’s fun – and they get great veggies. Can’t believe none of us have chickens. If the city had a deal for chicken coops, we’d all buy them.

    My next door neighbour, has finished his weed whacking. He is now mowing. The engine sounds awful. It pollutes more than a diesel truck. I’d like to send him and his mower away.

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