Gaea Ecosystem Research Paper

The waters are her blood, the vegetation her organs, and the atmosphere is her skin. She is known by many names such as Gaea, Tera, Mother, and Earth. Gaea fosters the home in which her children of all shapes, sizes, and species live. In the past a symbiotic ecosystems developed creating an existence where everything has its place, purpose, and use. Fast forward to the present and things have changed drastically. Human beings have in many ways stepped outside of the natural order of the planet's ecosystems. We are no longer an integrated part of the environment around us. Instead we force changes to the area around us to accommodate our existence to our particular level of comfort. The planet is slowly reaching a point where it can no longer
tolerate the unnatural existence we are forcing upon the it. A proposal to alleviate, if not correct, many pressing issues of today and the future is vertical farming. Vertical farming is an upscale version of urban farming. Dickson Despommier briefly states in his article “We Need A Third Green Revolution.” that vertical farming involves growing most of the crops we desire in tall buildings within city limits (14). Emma Marris furthers the description of what vertical farming does in her article "Agriculture: Greenhouses In The Sky." as creating “the urban equivalent of a natural ecosystem (374). Although many Americans oppose to moving away from traditional farming, vertical farming offers better benefits to the public because the isolated environment protects against damaging sources, increases food security, and decreases the degradation of finite resources. Purposefully isolating agricultural products from the external environment benefits both what is being grown and the natural world around it. The separation by vertical farming creates several layers of protection on many areas of concern to environmentalists. As Despommier explains, our planet experiences catastrophic events that hinder crop yields or permanently ravage farmable land to include droughts, floods, fires, and plant diseases (14).
In the United States it has become commonly expected that Florida will possibly be devastated by hurricanes, California could experience fires that burn down hundreds of acres of land, Texas will experience a substantial drought, and tornadoes will possibly devastate the wheat belt. Natural disasters happen every year with no guarantee that they will occur but their seasonal occurrences do grant us the knowledge of when they will possibly occur and their potential for damage to crop yields. Businesses already exist that are attempting to build upon vertical farming in urban environments such as Lufa in Montreal, Canada, and Local Garden in Vancouver, Canada. These are two areas where the cold kills the vast majority of plants in farming during the short growing season. Flavie Halais writes about Lufa in “Can Urban Agriculture Work On A Commercial Scale?” stating, “And in a cold-weather region with a growing season of four to six months, Lufa works year-around, growing enough tomatoes, eggplants, zucchinis and lettuce to help feed 10,000 people in the Montreal area” (38). Halais further explains that Lufa uses biological pest controls to
get rid of unwanted bugs and does not use any pesticides, herbicides or fungicides (38). This means the elimination of toxic chemicals to include neurotoxins and carcinogens. Halais continues on that Lufa’s second farm was further progressed with more features such as a system that prevents undesirable bugs from entering by increasing the air pressure inside the building and a system that regulates the airflow to maintain peak growing conditions (40-41). Sarah Berman quotes Tracey Chappel of Local Garden in the article “Salad Towers”, “If there’s aphids or any, other unwanted pests, we treat them all naturally […] For example we’d bring in lady bugs or other natural predators” (49). Berman further addresses that Local Garden uses no pesticides, herbicides, or genetically modified seeds (49). Genetically modified seeds were initially created to better protect produce from environmental factors, such as drought, heat, and cold, and pest infestations, such as locus, and aphids. Since the creation of genetically modified foods there has been extensive controversy on the long term effects on both the environment at large and on human consumption, but this is another topic on to itself. Tracey Chappel states that “[Local Garden] can produce 1,000 to 1,500 pounds of leafy greens every week, all year round […]” (Berman 50). The year round production of food is protected from the environment and pests ensuring little lose from these extraneous events. At the same time the human race is protected from its own food source by the elimination of the harmful toxins that we use to ensure survivability of the produce. This protection further provides better food security.
According to Fred H. Besthorn, in the article “Vertical Farming: Social Work and Sustainable Urban Agriculture In An Age Of Global Food Crisis”, the United States Department of Agriculture in 2011 defined food security as a household having “access by all members at all times to enough food for an active healthy life […including] at a minimum (1) the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, and (2) an assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways (that is, without resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing or other coping strategies)” (190). From this definition it is not just enough that we are able to grow and accumulate large amounts of produce, but more importantly that every person is able to acquire proper nourishment within legal means. It is common knowledge that in every country, city, and town there are less fortunate individuals. In some countries it is more expected than others due to the local economy and governmental
body.