The World's First Floating Farm: Robotic Milking LED Lights Growing Fodder
This year, the world's first floating farm opened in (Merwehaven), the Dutch port of Rotterdam, to help the city continue to produce more of its own food, according to BBC. Dutch real estate firm Beladon is building the world's first floating farm at the port of Mervay in Rotterdam and will use it to raise 40 Meuse-Rhine-Issel cows.
The world's first floating farm in the port of (Merwehaven), Rotterdam, has robots milking 40 cows.
It's worth noting that there are robots here to help with the milking.Beladon's three-story farm, anchored to the bottom of the sea, is expected to open by the end of 2018 and produce about 800 litres of milk a day.
Artist's renderings of floating farms used to raise cattle, fish and crops.
The building floats on the sea and is connected to land by three corridors. In this way, the building can come into contact with the land. The two corridors lead to the upper and lower spaces respectively. The upper layer is used to raise cattle, which is the living space of cattle. It is decorated like a small park, which is covered with green trees. The lower layer design is multi-element, including forage area, milk production area, cattle excreta collection, desalination and energy production and other functions.
Beladon engineer Peter Van Wenger den (Peter van Wingerden) first came up with the concept of a floating farm in 2012 when he was working on a floating home project on the Hudson River (Hudson river) in New York. There, Hurricane Sandy hit the city's streets and destroyed the transportation network. The goods were difficult to deliver and it was difficult to find fresh produce in the store within two days.
"I was shocked to see the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy," said van Wenger. "people need to be as close to consumers as possible to produce food. Hence the idea of producing fresh food on the water in a way that adapts to climate change. He added that the concept could also help protect against hurricanes. "with the growing demand for healthy food, rapid urbanization and climate change, we can no longer rely on the food production systems of the past," he said. "
In late 2012, van Wenger's team began work on the design and communicated with the Rotterdam Port Authority. Earlier this summer its floating platform was transported by barge from Zaandam in the north of the Netherlands to Rotterdam.
Mr van Wenger's wife and business partner, Mink van winger (Minke van Wingerden), says the farm will start with 40 cows, enough for the business to make ends meet. But she said floating farms were "easy to scale up" and larger businesses were expected to be "significantly more efficient". The farm also aims to reuse and recycle as much material as possible.
Albert Boulson, general manager of the floating Farm, said: "at least 80 per cent of what our cows eat is waste from the Rotterdam food industry. This could include grains discarded by local breweries, leftovers from restaurants and cafes, by-products from local wheat-processing plants, or even grass scraps, which are collected and transported by electric trucks run by GroenCollect, a local "green waste" company.
"We are also going to grow duckweed as animal feed," says Mr Mink.It is high in protein and grows fast enough to be fed with cow urine.We will install four or five vertical platforms under special LED lights to grow these plants. "
The cows' feed will be collected in electric trucks from restaurants and breweries
Other herbage production is produced using a greenhouse and LED lighting. Through the greenhouse soilless culture, through the LED illumination, greatly enhances the grass the growth speed.
The project could even generate some energy use, such as hydrogen produced by electrolysis of solar panels. Once completed and operational, the floating farm will produce and sell milk and yogurt on site in Rotterdam. It also processes and sells cow dung.
Floating farms are designed as a closed loop, capable of becoming self-sufficient in energy.
Floating farms can be built not only at sea, but also in rivers, lakes and all other places where there is water. The designer said: "as long as there is two meters of water, you can build a floating farm." "
Next, the designers plan to apply the floating farm concept to more areas: the next target is a floating chicken farm, which is expected to raise 8000 chickens. In addition, he also plans to move the greenhouse vegetables to the sea, the real realization of the dream of agricultural production in the city.
They say this kind of offshore farm is in line with modern ideas and has changed the way people think of traditional farms, and is not affected by the climate. They concede, however, that such offshore farms are more costly, but that this can be compensated for by reducing the distance at which products can be transported. It should be a model, they say, in the hope that there will be more of these floating farms along the city's rivers in the future.
Other floating farms: floating farms designed by Forward Thinking Architecture, Barcelona, Spain.
If the global population grows to 9.8 billion by 2050, as expected, and 70 per cent of the population will live in cities, urban indoor farms will become indispensable. On these indoor farms, crops grow vertically on rows of shelves exposed to ultraviolet or LED light. But can such farms produce enough food to feed the world's growing urban population?
Dr. Fenton Bader (Fenton Beed), a manager at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, believes urban farms are useful because they use less water, fertilizers and pesticides than traditional production systems. But he acknowledged that limited space could hinder the production of enough food to meet the world's rapidly growing urban population.
"constraints on food production in controlled environments include initial investment, LED lighting, and the cost of sustainable energy supply," Dr. Bader said. "
Plenty plants crops vertically indoors.
But such concerns have not stopped companies such as Plenty from attracting large amounts of investment. The San Francisco-based start-up produces leafy green vegetables on its indoor farms and claims it can grow 350 times more per square metre than an outdoor farm. Its crops are grown on a 6-metre-high vertical pole, using hydroponics (water-only planting systems) and LED lights, without the use of soil or pesticides. Infrared sensors monitor crop growth so that the system can adjust light, heat, and water flow accordingly.
Since its launch in 2013, plenty has raised $226 million in investors including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (Jeff Bezos), Softbank Corp. 's vision fund and Innovation Endeavors. This year the company will expand its operations in the US and open its first farm in the Middle East.
