Rather Than Importing Their Food, Coastal Cities Can Build Their Own Floating Farms—Like This One

This floating farm in the Netherlands is taking sustainability to a whole other water level.

The food industry is responsible for producing massive amounts of greenhouse gas emissions simply through transporting goods and produce into a city. In fact, one in four freight trucks on the highway is responsible for transporting food into urban areas.

Not only does this create excessive air pollution, it also means that cities could fall victim to food shortages during natural disasters and harsh weather conditions.

Peter and Minke van Wingerden were inspired to build a 3-story floating farm right in their Dutch city of Rotterdam after they found themselves in New York City following Hurricane Sandy back in 2012.




https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/coastal-cities-can-build-floating-farms-like-this-one-in-rotterdam/

The cows presumably live on the floating farm all the time? So its factory farming.

It’s a great idea!

Vintage wrote:The cows presumably live on the floating farm all the time? So its factory farming.

Looks to me like it's just vegetables -- that looks more like a really big garden than an actual farm. Look at the size of it compared to the cars. No way they have room for cattle.

A "millionaire's folly" being promoted by "futurist" techno-geek carpetbaggers aiming to make money out of other peoples' problems, while paying zero attention to the underlying environmental causes.

These kinds of 'solutions' will cost $$hundreds of millions$$, even billions --  making them largely the provence of big corporations and/or national governments --  while locking out and displacing thousands of 'family farmers', currently losing out to encroaching troubles already..

Then again, this kind of inflexible 'hard engineering' development may well be necessary for places like the Netherlands, Philipines and Thailand, already suffering from decreasing farmland and increasing pollution worries...

Ben Reilly wrote:

Vintage wrote:The cows presumably live on the floating farm all the time? So its factory farming.

Looks to me like it's just vegetables -- that looks more like a really big garden than an actual farm. Look at the size of it compared to the cars. No way they have room for cattle.

It actually does have cattle ben, as uses this as a cycle system of manure for fertilzer for the soil

Cows should have Fields to Graze in, not stuck on a bloody Boat !

They should, if they are kept on concrete even with bedding they get leg and foot problems. So more vet bills and antibiotics, if indeed the people managing this horror give a damn.
Its a good idea for plants.

P.S.  I can easily tell that the promoters of that nightmare are a bunch of clueless techno-geek 'futurist' carpetbaggers,  with zero knowledge and background in genuine agriculture...

By their cavalier and totally inaccurate misuse and abuse of the term "sustainable" in their conjob of a presentation..

Heavy use of concrete, steel and electricity, and the inevitable overuse of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides that this artificial kind of "factory" farming will always rely on, is anything but 'sustainable' in the long run.

Vintage wrote:They should, if they are kept on concrete even with bedding they get leg and foot problems. So more vet bills and antibiotics, if indeed the people managing this horror give a damn.
Its a good idea for plants.

reethink: Is this a humane place to keep cattle?

Peter: For us, animal welfare is essential. The entire world is watching. We did a lot of research on what could be the best stable for our cows. We have a very famous university on agriculture, and they said there are three elements essential for a good stable. That is space for the cow, a soft floor, and fresh food.

So what we did here is we created double the space compared to a regular stable. We have a rubber floor. We have rubber poles so the animals will not hurt themselves, and we have fresh food every day from the city. We created, in our opinion, one of the best stables in the world.

https://www.freethink.com/articles/the-world-s-first-floating-dairy-farm

Crap, Livestock of all kinds should be out in the open air !

They still have to bring in fresh food for the cows, what happens when you need to bring in the bulls or is there a rota system. Its still factory farming which ever way you look at it . You keep large numbers of animals in unnatural conditions however good they may be, you get problems. The problems are then overcome with more rescourses
why not leave the country to the farms and build floating blocks of flats for the people. Rain water can be collected and used again as can the waste from the people.

nicko wrote:Cows should have Fields to Graze in, not stuck on a bloody Boat !

Tell that to Noah, dude!

Vintage wrote:They still have to bring in fresh food for the cows, what happens when you need to bring in the bulls or is there a rota system. Its still factory farming which ever way you look at it . You keep large numbers of animals in unnatural conditions however good they may be, you get problems. The problems are then overcome with more rescourses
why not leave the country to the farms and build floating blocks of flats for the people. Rain water can be collected and used again as can the waste from the people.

I am sorry but this is a false argument and I have debated this for days

Its as if cows now based morality wise as humans

They are natural food

The issue is an attchment asome peopole may have on this

We never got to be this way by havibng such reservations

Our brains expeanded because of hunting

This would be extremely expensive. Cows graze. Moving all of their food to them would be problematic and make for some pretty expensive hamburgers.

Maddog wrote:This would be extremely expensive.  Cows graze. Moving all of their food to them would be problematic and make for some pretty expensive hamburgers.  

It is bu;lshit mate

phildidge wrote:

Maddog wrote:This would be extremely expensive.  Cows graze. Moving all of their food to them would be problematic and make for some pretty expensive hamburgers.  

It is bu;lshit mate

There would be a little of that. Mostly cow shit though.

False argument from you I think.
They may be natural food, for some anyway, but at least their ancestors were free to roam, then became a little less free, then a little less free until we get to this, kept in artificial conditions and fed unnatural foods cause all sorts of problems, not just with the animals but with humans as well. Look how the Amazon is being depleted for cattle 'ranches' and soya, its time more of us became more attached not just to animals but to the planet. If eating meat expanded our brains why haven't other carnivores evolved into Corpernicuses, Shakespeares, Richard Bransons and Lord Sugars.

Hormones and antibiotics are already heavily fed to mostly feedlot-raised cattle, pigs and poultry in the Netherlands, anyways...

Holland is not known for quality and clean beef or dairy products, either --  a country producng shit produce under shit conditions, while not giving a shit about animal welfare, and receiving more government subsidies than most other countries in the world, can't really be expected to know (or expect) any better --  'forget all that crap, and pass another spliff, dude'..

Visitors to the Netherlands often report on their first impressions being that lovely aroma from intensive piggery feedlots and chook farms gently wafting across the whole country !

As for Rotterdam having a "famous" agricultural university --  first I've heard of it.

The fact that they are importing cattlefeed into their factory farming operation on a daily basis does sort of further undermine their false claims as to running a cleaner and greener "sustainable" business..

Vintage wrote:False argument from you I think.
They may be natural food, for some anyway, but at least their ancestors were free to roam, then became a little less free, then a little less free until we get to this, kept in artificial conditions and fed unnatural foods cause all sorts of problems, not just with the animals but with humans as well. Look how the Amazon is being depleted for cattle 'ranches' and soya, its time more of us became more attached not just to animals but to the planet. If eating meat expanded our brains why haven't other carnivores evolved into Corpernicuses, Shakespeares, Richard Bransons and Lord Sugars.

They are bred simple for the purpose of humans
Free to roam?
Sorry but they are animals and animals are a food source, where many farmers would better provide to them than any chance they would have in real nature
I get your point of the point on deforestation, but come on vintage your point on cows is a tad silly
I was called a murderer the other day because I ate beef. If this is the fine tuning we come to on such topics, where animals have always been a food source. That now people will litterally ttack humans over this. When we would not be at the level of intelligence. If not for our ancestors hunting skills which did enlarge our brains
Good luck to you if you want to npt eat meat. Do not expect the rest of us to follow such a path

I have no intention of expecting you all to not eat meat, I would just like you to remember you are taking a life to enjoy it and respect that fact.
Animals are not unfeeling walking lumps of meat, its becoming clearer just how feeling and social they are. I just don't understand the 'they are only animals' argument its quite apparent if you ever work with them, unless you are totally unfeeling yourself, that they certainly aren't 'only'
at all. Let's not forget we too are 'only animals' if you feel that way.
Its man's general approach to nature and the uncontrolled breeding in human populations, that has got us into the situation. We were once part of the whole once we became dominant and arrogant it all began to fall apart.

Vintage wrote:I have no intention of expecting you all to not eat meat, I would just like you to remember you are taking a life to enjoy it and respect that fact.
Animals are not unfeeling walking lumps of meat, its becoming clearer just how feeling and social they are. I just don't understand the 'they are only animals' argument its quite apparent if you ever work with them, unless you are totally unfeeling yourself, that they certainly aren't 'only'
at all. Let's not forget we too are 'only animals' if you feel that way.
Its man's general approach to nature and the uncontrolled breeding in human populations, that has got us into the situation. We were once part of the whole once we became dominant and arrogant it all began to fall apart.

Sorry but what?
These animals get better treatment than they ever did when in the wild
Animals are a natural food source and its more about how humans come to love certain animals

I bet if your house was infested with rats. You would not care a jot if they were exterminated and this is the point
Its more about how we humanise certain animals Vintage

They are not humans and yet we because of how we hunted and through evolution enlarged our brains from this. We now have a conscience over eating meat? Really? How would you survive in the wild that way?

Sorry but I do not because i grew up with hunting and if you did, you would feel the sa,e

The reality is this, its not hunting that got us into this mess., It was civilisation. Before cities, humans only hunted what they needed. What screwed this up was urbinization.

The reality is, if a diaster happened tomorrow, 99% of people would be fucked and they would turn on each other in order to survive.

That is evolution

At one time we were part and parcel of nature, we were part of the food chain ourselves. Now, that we have risen to the top of the food chain, except in certain circumstances, we have commoditised everything, even our own species into three catergories, the useful, the irrelevant and the pest. We use and abuse the first catergory whether human, animal, plant or mineral, the second we care less what happens to this catergory
you can ignore it or abuse it, the third category you get rid of without a thought. No hunting didn't get us into this mess, over population did
by having to industrialise the food supply. We turn on each other for the slightest reason already but I agree about the disaster scenario and no I doubt I would survive for long if at all.

Vintage wrote:At one time we were part and parcel of nature, we were part of the food chain ourselves. Now, that we have risen to the top of the food chain, except in certain circumstances, we have commoditised everything, even our own species into three catergories, the useful, the irrelevant and the pest. We use and abuse the first catergory whether human, animal, plant or mineral, the second we care less what happens to this catergory
you can ignore it or abuse it, the third category you get rid of without a thought.   No hunting didn't get us into this mess, over population did
by having to industrialise the food supply. We turn on each other for the slightest reason already but I agree about the disaster scenario and no I doubt I would survive for long if at all.

Sadly that is evolution Vintage

Ou cannot deny this reality of our species. Yes its great we now have formed a feelling to protect others, but animals are a food source.
The arguments I always see on this. Is about reducing suffering and its again how we humanise certain animals.

I have seen people argue that I am immoral for eating meat
I was like, wtf

I am all for people to have choices, but the moment you place a prohibition on meat. Wil simple create more crime

Prohiition has always created actually more crime
Its notim,moral to eat meat

If p[eople choose not to, I also support that, but some people are pushing to force people to only eat a Vegan diet

That is also wrong

Using force is no good but its what we as humans rely on all the time.
Surely if you eat meat you can have compassion for the creature that has provided it for you, even though humans aren't designed to eat meat. We don't have the teeth for it or the intestines.

Vintage wrote:Using force is no good but its what we as humans rely on all the time.
Surely if you eat meat you can have compassion for the creature that has provided it for you, even though humans aren't designed to eat meat. We don't have the teeth for it or the intestines.

Compassion? No, if I did, I would never eat the animal and no predator would do the same
I certainly have respect for them
Many animals toy and play with their prey
Killer whales ae as intelligent as us and they never attack humans. Why do you think that is?
Compassion does not come it to this
They do not have 0r will have a taste for humans

Let's not forget that free range animals are usually better for us when we eat them.

Stressed out animals often dont taste as good either. Granted, you can get a little more meat from one animal if its contained.