Kissmyrobot

My robot and I are imagining what the Toronto skyline will look like in 20 or so years, with a handful of tall, food-growing hydroponic skyscrapers reaching into the clouds. Covered with solar panels on the south sides to power the complex facility, especially to keep it warm enough for all the fruit and veggies to grow in the winter.

Without soil, you could grow food year-round. Nutrients would be fed through the elaborate watering system. The water used would be much less than in traditional farming, and could be collected, filtered and recycled. In this ultra-controlled environment, the food grown would not suffer the threats of pests and disease that farming today faces, requiring fewer pesticides.

Sky farming would also save on the carbon emissions that would otherwise be produced transporting food into large urban centres, and would allow large tracks of farming land to be returned to nature. Toronto, Paris, New York and Los Angele have all been considering plans to grow food in the sky.

I’m not sure if these guys just have their heads up in the clouds or if it really could work. I know that the strawberries that come from Californian or Spanish greenhouses have this in common: they look great, but taste of nothing. This tells me that there is nothing of value in them for my body.

A friend told me that life after the greenhouse means going under UV tanning lamp to make them look ripe, even though they aren’t so that they can arrive at their destination hundreds of miles away and still look great. The radiation they’re exposed to is supposed to be within “safe” ranges for humans, but do they really know in the long term how much we ingest? I eat a lot of peppers and strawberries, but I stick as much as possible to those that are locally- and naturally-grown.

The whole thing smells of money to me, but I have to admit that it also sounds interesting. Guess we have some more research to do.

I imagine my little house surrounded by trees that reflect of the shiny sides of it. The trees couldn’t be too close so as to block the sunlight lighting my rooms through large angled windows. A pond in the back lets me raise my own trout and nearby, a large garden full of ripe, tasty veggies beg to be harvested, while a fruit tree orchard buffers the sound of the road from my oasis.

Inside, my computer is powered by my exercise bike, my laundry machine and TV by my solar panel exterior walls. The rest is fed from the nearest solar power station. My robot has solar panel covered arms and legs so he can sit in front of the window when it’s cold to power up. But I think he prefers being outside in the summer, when he can sometimes get a bit too much power and start acting silly…

There’s at least one company that’s creating cheaper, more flexible ways of harnessing the sun’s power for our (often ridiculous) needs. Nanosolar plans on making energy as cheap from the sun as from coal. They want to build solar power stations to fuel communities. The new technology, which is not based on silicon, can be printed directly onto stuff. I need to do some more research, but it looks promising.