Local urban farming is not assured to produce healthier nor tastier food. That squarely lies in the hands of the farmer. Farming is a skill; most people are not good at it.

LED powered farmhouses would be nice. But going back to the person that you commented on, now we're making energy to give to plants, instead of using the sun directly to make plants. This has the potential (especially in today's economy) to increase the carbon footprint of urban growing.

Certainly local. Fresh most likely. Efficient? Not so simple, probably not as efficient. And unless you're using GMOs that are resistant to invasive insect species, you'll still need pesticides (or lots of human hours....which severely decreases efficiency and increases cost).

>Local urban farming is not assured to produce healthier nor tastier food. That squarely lies in the hands of the farmer. Farming is a skill; most people are not good at it.

One word: tomato. Supermarket tomatoes are grown to survive shipping. Tomatoes that you grow yourself are always more delicious.

I'm not sure why I was downvoted without an explanation. What I've stated is 100% factual: http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2118455,0...

Because you can't generalize from a single datapoint. Tomatoes are pretty much the extreme example of this where it favors home grown plants. There's a large swath of plants where they aren't likely to be clearly better, and some where they're likely to be worse than the ones grown at scale (i.e. try growing an Apple tree from seed).

Yes but, generally speaking, urban farmers know which crops are worth growing and which ones aren't. This is why you won't find many of them attempting to grow apple trees, and a whole lot of them growing tomato and basil. Except for the occassional case of an idiot urban farmer (or, more kindly, an overly ambitious), it makes no sense to criticize urban farming on the ground that not all potential crops can be grown better in one's back yard. (Except the relatively extreme view that all agriculture can be replaced with people growing crops in their back yard -- a view that I've never heard a person espouse.)

> you'll still need pesticides (or lots of human hours.

Searching for "arduino laser insect control" doesn't come up with a lot hits (but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser)

...yet.

Ah, but v2 of my Arduino Mosquito laser system will get a lot more hits, I promise! (Sorry about your dog, though)

Most of these are closed systems - no need for pesticides or any human hours. The insects simply cannot get in.

> And unless you're using GMOs that are resistant to invasive insect species, you'll still need pesticides (or lots of human hours....which severely decreases efficiency and increases cost).

And good luck convincing pseudo-environmentalists that GMOs aren't evil.

"That squarely lies in the hands of the farmer. Farming is a skill;"

I want to believe. However most food production is now controlled by large corporations.

It's a more robust food source if your supply chains break down or are subject to things like oil price increases. Pests can be controlled with careful selection of plants and other factors--you don't need to douse your plants with chemicals in a lot of cases.

Not saying urban gardens aren't beautiful or enlightening. But people are advocating local food grown in urban gardens for environmental and health reasons. I want to show that this is false, except in a few exceptional cases. Your link is one of them. But realize that hydroponics isn't most people's idea of urban farming. Also, there are drawbacks to the hydroponic approach (energy costs for lighting, manufacture of nutrient solution).

That said, there's a lot of potential in hydroponics, especially when you combine it with renewable energy, and I hope it continues to spread.