Vertical Farming: The Demand is Rising

The Future Farms of America or the FFA is the extracurricular activity that has affected me the most in my high school years and my life thus far. Many people may think that the FFA is only an organization of farms that go around judging cows and grow plants but we are much more than that. Through FFA, I have been able to come out of my comfort zone, take a leadership position, and learn to give back to the community. Meeting new people through all the competition the FFA does and working with members in my chapter caused me to make new friends who slowly help me out of my comfort zone. I even gave a speech in front of my whole about how FFA can cause anyone to step out of their comfort zones leaping out of the zone myself in that moment. As

Beyond a doubt we urgently need to address the devastating global issue of population growth in the United States America before we destroy our planet. We are facing many devastating economic problems, such as pollution, global warming, education, but the most critical is overconsumption. Overpopulation is a huge problem in the United States of America, which is causing us to run out of natural resources. The human race is already too large and is destroying the natural systems that support us. There are many solutions to this problem, but the common factor is controlling the human race. What can we do as a society to help contribute to controlling the population growth? “The United States is the most overpopulated country in the world” (Ehrlich).

Overpopulation can result from an increase in births, a decline in mortality rates due to medical advances, from an increase in immigration, or from an unsustainable biome and depletion of resources. It is possible for very sparsely-populated areas to be overpopulated, as the area in question may have a meager or non-existent capability to sustain human life. Urbanization is the process whereby a group of people migrating together (especially in some given time period). Whether due to natural causes (high birth rates) or through migratory movements (rural-urban exodus), the increase of population makes competing user-demands on land and other scarce natural resources. It also puts pressure on the environment and leads to social tensions among different interest groups. This is an age-old problem, common to all parts of the world. However, in the socio-economic

Similar to labor movements organized to protest unfair wages and conditions, farmers in the Midwest have formed the Granger movement. Founded in 1867 by an employee of the Department of Agriculture, the Granger Movement has been growing rapidly throughout the Midwest. The movement was started by Oliver Hudson Kelley after a visit to the south showed that agriculture practices weren’t being done correctly. His goal was to create groups or “Granges” which would educate and inform farmers throughout his home state of Minnesota on proper farming practices. This goal was more than achieved. Three years after the movement was started, nine states had Granges. Many farmers joined and wanted to do more for the movement. They wanted

One of the mot amazing things about agriculturalists to me is the constant adaptation. Today’s farmers are expected to grow more food, on less land, with less water than they ever have before. Many people concern themselves with the idea that by the year 2050 when the world population surpasses 9 billion people, our farmers will not be able to provide a reliable food source. Despite this misconception, I do not see it as an issue because I know American agriculturalists have always adapted to the needs of the nation, and done whatever it takes to provide for

Many days before the sun even rises a farmer will get up, crank up his tractor and go to work in the fields. With the big tractors we have today a single person can plow a hundred acres in a day. It only takes a few farmers to grow enough food for a whole city. With that in mind think about how the few farmers that are in the United States today can supply everyone in it with the food they need. They can do this with the help of new advances in farming like a tractor that can steer itself, and crops that can withstand diseases and extreme weather.

The statistics on population growth and hunger are disturbing. Last year the world's population reached 6 billion. And by 2050, the U.N. estimates, it will probably near 9 billion. Almost all that growth will occur in developing countries. At the same time, the world's available cultivable land per person is declining. Arable land has declined steadily since 1960 and will decrease by half over the next 50 years, according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications

There comes a point in time when the best choice isit to just grow up. After all, eEverything grows. People grow, and plants grow, and our knowledge grows. Tas well as theories grow and the population grow and the dependency we have on the world we surly embody grows. Hello, I am my name is Shylee Baertich, a proud FFA member whose homeuse is surrounded by nothing, but acres and acres of crops. Which indeed, grow. So, I’ve always been surrounded by everything-agriculture and yet, I have noticed when going to the city, skylscrapers growning out of the urban concrete fields. also growing with something new: the trendy greenhouses growing vertically skyscrapers. I’ve also heard the bickering about our limited amount and potential use of the land, and as an FFA members we have been taught that by weyou already know that by 2050 agriculturist will need to produce enough food to feed 9.7 billion people (www.fao.org). Our population is only ever growing and it seems like our land acres continues tois shrinking. However, as agriculturist yearn for innovative tactics they’ve have realized that the best choice it to just grow up.So perhaps our best choice as innovative agriculturalist is to just grow up.

“I believe in the future of Agriculture” is what I always heard in the agriculture industry. The farmers that I would talk to with dad would always ask me “Do you know what that means son?”, and I would think to myself “Come on, I am 7, do you think I know what that means?”. Being the young kid that I was, I would reply with “Kind of”. The old men would always try to explain to me what it meant, and why we do the things that we do. But remember when I was young, I would get off task too much, but before I know it, the men would say “You understand now?” Of course, nodding my head like I just learned something extremely interesting. After I got in the truck and left with my dad, he would test me on what the old man had said. I understood that I needed to start listening to what the long speech was about. I would learn quickly what agriculture is all about, and the things we need to do.

Since the human population has sky rocketed, we require more and more land for farming and urban development that we are pushing

Bees buzzing, animals prancing around the gardens eating bugs and scraps, and luscious ripe fruits hanging from the trees- this is what permaculture is all about, right? Through this project, we will question if permaculture, in its entirety, is a viable/economically justifiable method of farming. The reality is that for the past one hundred years farming has grown towards primarily annual crops and monoculture practices. With the mindset of “producing as much food as possible” us agriculturists start to deprive the land. We have come to forget, or simply ignore, the consequences poor farming practices can bring to the table. Reckless modern agriculture has burdened the land with poor crop diversity, introduction of pesticide use, and limited nutrient cycling. Permaculture might have the answers to helping us set back the clock on the damage we have thus far brought to the land.

Roughly 200 years ago Thomas Malthus proposed a hypothesis in which he believed the human population would continue to grow at such a rate that the human population would outnumber the available food supply (Nayak, Pandey, Ammayappan, Ray). The world’s population continues to grow at a high rate. For example, the world’s six billionth citizen was born in 1999 to the country of Serbia (Nayak, Pandey, Ammayappan, Ray). The hypothesis created by Malthus has led to advances in technology with agricultural sciences. These technology advances came directly in the form of biotechnology and genetic engineering. These advances

The first challenge is due to high population. A quick rise in population will cause housing and food shortages and a rise in the price of general living. According to Yujun, Z. (2011), in developing countries, the fastest population growth rate will be 7-8% annually; a burden in most developing countries is that there is no population control, for example, in Beijing, China. By the end of 2013, according to census data in China, the population of Beijing will be over 20 million. Huge population problems for the city’s infrastructure have brought tremendous pressure, housing and food shortages. Grain yield is lower than the population growth rate so many people

The global population has reached a tipping point. Currently it stands at 7.2 billion people, and that number is only expected to go up; by 2050 the global population is expected to hit 9.6 billion (United Nations). In order to feed this multitude of people, the current food production must increase by 100% (Simmons 1). Something must be done to prevent mass starvation, and two different methods of crop production have been offered to alleviate the problem – genetically modified crops (GM) and organic farming. In order to determine which farming method will maintain a stable supply for a growing global population, one must consider the cost effectiveness, environmental friendliness, health of

As advances in technology and medicine lead to longer lifespans and lowered mortality from disease, some people worry about overpopulating the earth. These people also argue that aid work will fuel the population growth and demolish one of the only forms of population control. Melinda Gates explains that as people work to provide more education and contraceptives to women in third-world countries, the birth rate will naturally decrease, especially as they worry less about having a child survive into adulthood (Rosen). Currently there is enough to sustain the population and its growth in the years to come; presently the issue is not the number of people, but rather, the distribution and effective use of resources.