ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8675-0168
(2025):
Vanguard Visions of Vertical Farming: Envisaging and Contesting an Emerging Food Production System.
In: Science, Technology, & Human Values, Bd. 50, Nr. 2: S. 387-418
[PDF, 313kB]

Abstract
Vertical farming is an emerging urban food growth proposal that has gained considerable attention for its ability to be space-efficient, independent of outside weather conditions, and to address a dismal agricultural system and ecoclimatic crises. VF is also a field riddled with debates on the unsustainability and high (energy) costs of a highly automated, indoor growth system that produces only a small range of perishable food. This paper explores arguments, visions, and internal disagreements among scientists, engineers, consultants, and entrepreneurs who form a heterogeneous, elite group of sociotechnical vanguards that popularize not yet widely accepted vanguard visions of future urban food production. It demonstrates that for the dominant vertical farm vanguard vision, a majority of vanguards borrow popular concepts and imaginaries from other sectors: containment of plant growth, cleanliness, the capability to feed the world, and the land-sparing narrative. The findings suggest three dimensions that add to the theorization of vanguard visions: the central role of mobilized problem-scripts; internal disagreements that indicate the contingency of vanguard visions and the existence of fringe visions; and that disagreements can reveal caveat politics, where a technical system, like VF, is not seen as the solution, but one of many.
Dokumententyp: | Zeitschriftenartikel |
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Fakultät: | Biologie |
Themengebiete: | 500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik > 570 Biowissenschaften; Biologie |
URN: | urn:nbn:de:bvb:19-epub-120021-8 |
ISSN: | 0162-2439 |
Sprache: | Englisch |
Dokumenten ID: | 120021 |
Datum der Veröffentlichung auf Open Access LMU: | 16. Aug. 2024 06:52 |
Letzte Änderungen: | 05. Mai 2025 11:24 |