With the shrinking of arable land in every country on our planet, the possibility of vertical farming is taking shape in the minds of futuristic-planners, scientists and agriculturists. The horizons are being stretched by modern designers to bring out concepts that involve growing your veggies, fruits & flowers on skyscrapers! One such being Dr. Dickson Despommier’s vertical farm concept which he fondly calls his zucchini-in-the-sky vision. He created the model of this vertical farm back in 1990’s with his batch of medical ecology students.

The design displays tall sky-kissing green buildings- where people grow edible plants, fruits vegetables even legumes as per their requirements. Dr. Despommier, whose name in French means “of the apple trees,” is a professor of public health at Columbia University. Since 1999, has been spreading the seeds of his radical idea in lectures and through his Web site. Unachievable as his sky-high dreams seems to be, Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president and another big city dreamer has laid his eyes upon radical farming concepts and have quite liked Despommier’s model.

Stringer’s office is now actively busy in “sketching out what it would take to pilot a vertical farm,” and he plans to undertake a feasibility study within next few months, according to the man himself. Well, the future does seem to be bright enough for all such daring designers and ‘green’ achievers for careful planning and lot of hardwork is what it takes to achieve the impossible looking feats!

Via NYT

While scientists and governmental experts worldover are busy in figuring out ways to effectively reduce Global warming, their Argentinean counterparts have embarked on a unique study that critically examines a cow’s fart! This isn’t a bizarre-science expedition but a serious study by researchers, who are trying to understand (clearly) the link between gas produced by cows + other bovine species, global warming and climate change.

A lot of hue and cry has revolved around C02 – the greenhouse gas which is considered to be the culprit behind soaring temperatures around the globe. But now, a beginning is made to understand the role of other GHGs like methane in global warming. A cow’s sluggish digestive system results in a lot of gas (methane) being expelled from it’ behind.

Scientists in Argentina thus collected cow farts in plastic tanks attached to their backs and examined the gas composition. It was revealed in this attempt that more than 30 per cent of the country’s total greenhouse emissions consist of methane from these ruminants. It is a startling fact as Argentina tops the list of biggest beef producing countries with more than 55 million cows grazing in its famed Pampas grasslands. Even more startling is the figure found out by Guillermo Berra, a researcher at the National Institute of Agricultural Technology. According to him every cow produces 800 to 1,000 litres of emissions every day! I’m wondering if calculated for our Indian Cows what an astronomical figure it would be?

Silly thoughts apart, I’m also concerned over the scenario, as methane happens to be a more potent gas in terms of trapping heat in the atmosphere. It is 23X more effective than CO2! Attempts are already being made by scientists at National Council of Scientific and Technical Investigations (Argentina) to devise a new diet plan – one including clover and alfalfa instead of grain to reduce natural methane emissions of cows. The world community must ponder on this also. The future would be a much greener one if, every country with huge bovine population starts implementing effective measures to curb marsh gas emissions from now onwards.

Via | Telegraph