I hope you are all enjoying your "extra" leap year day.
I thought this short video about a guy who built a green house using geothermal energy in Alliance, Nebraska was interesting. It sounds promising from a green energy point of view, he claims that it is possible to get his energy costs for the green house down to about a dollar a day, by utilizing geothermal and solar.
I have been to Alliance, NE. It is even more arid and given to extreme temperatures than where I grew up. But this man is able to raise oranges and figs. And one well kept secret about Nebraska is that we get plenty of sun. According to a sun map that I saw recently we get approximately 2500 to 3000 hours of sunlight per year, comparable to Spain.
The video is several years old, but there is a lot on the internet about utilizing geothermal energy to grow food.
It is important for us to begin growing our food locally to avoid the transportation and environmental costs of growing it hundreds and thousands of miles away.
ReplyDeleteIt is also important to use greenhouses and methods that allow us to produce a great amount per square foot, e.g. by growing in soil enriched by local compost.
While growing oranges and lemons in Nebraska may catch attention, I wonder how much water it costs to produce them? Would we be further depleting our underground water supply if we did a lot of this?
I don't know how much water it takes to grow citrus fruits, but it seems logical that a greenhouse would prevent a lot of water loss that happens from evaporation. Also it would be possible to direct the water exactly where it was needed, unlike sprinkler irrigation (which has been largely superseded by drip systems for crops).
DeleteI think Russ Finch was growing oranges to prove that it could be done in a geothermal/solar greenhouse. It would be more likely to grow things such as strawberries, tomatoes, or melons. . You could have a harvest a lot quicker that waiting for an orange tree to mature.