Vertical farming is fair game for Scott Kleeb.
Transcript:You look at our global food needs going forward, we’re gonna need to produce a lot of food in a very short period of time. We’re gonna need about 50 million acres of production and I’m not, you know, we’ve gotta have to find better ways of doing things, increase crop yields in traditional states like Nebraska, but also find ways of doing things here in New York too and we’re doing it in Nebraska. The guy I was talking about from Lyons, Nebraska, I mean, how is he growing the algae on top of a very flat building in Lyons, Nebraska? He’s flooding it with two inches of water and growing algae in that environment too and then that’s how he harvests it off on the tops of buildings. So even in the state like Nebraska, we’re talking about agriculture on tops of buildings. We’re talking about vertical agriculture as opposed to just horizontal agriculture. So, yeah, you know, there’s no loss here or there, it’s about finding new ways of doing stuff that are gonna benefit, benefit consumers and benefit the planet whether it comes to climate change, and Nebraska can be a part of that. I mean, we’re experts when it comes to agriculture that this could be a tremendous export from us, not just on the goods but on the technology, on the science, and on everything else to go into that transformation that can happen. So this could be a boon for us. The research, that’s gonna be done for this type of stuff is going to happen at places like the agricultural extension units for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. So this is a great boon for us. The more we start thinking about agriculture not as the past, not as flyover country that’s one of the states that none of us ever visit that happens on the 19th century, we really start thinking about agriculture as a means for the future in energy production and new food production and a whole host of things, that’s good for my state, that’s good for agriculture. And what’s good for agriculture is gonna be good for the country.
Recorded on: 8/13/08
