The biggest greenhouse in Britain unveiled

[marshlander]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... eiled.html

[ina]

Aren't there greenhouses like that in the Netherlands already? We've been eating that kind of veg for ages...

[Jobi1canobi]

my, my, that's really quite HUGE...

[MKG]

Big, yes, but I see nothing intrinsically wrong with the idea - it's just a huge polytunnel. As long as they don't drench the crops in insecticide, that is ...

[Clara]

You should see satellite photos of Almeria (where a lot of out of season produce gets sent to the UK from). You can drive for an hour with these "plasticos" stretching as far as the eye can see either side of the road. It´s horrid, it places a massive drain on scant available water......presumably that all started with just 1 IYKWIM. That said there isn´t the rife public corruption in the UK that led to the situation in Almeria

[Flo]

Hmm - that could cause a major blip in the food chain then due to structural failure, water shortage, pestilence, power failure, picketing .....

Cheerful soul aren't I?

[Clara]

Bingo! Industrial large scale agriculture is the problem not the answer. It´s market day tomorrow and there won´t be a bean there, there is no fuel and hasn´t been for 4 days. There is very little food in the grocery store as well. Amazing how quickly it all kicks in. Ironically (and awfully) it´ll be the old ladies who suffer here...the ones who have never had a car and rely on delivery having given up working the land for the sake of progress.

Me and the nipper are looking forward to a week of cherries and peas!

[eccentric_emma]

that greenhouse is awful. its pretty close to me as well (north kent, i am in the south). arghhh. thats just horrible!

[DominicJ]

Well, theres yes's and no's

Ok, its a giant green house.

But, on a traditional 220acre site can they grow 130million tomatoes, 21.84million peppers and 27.3million cucumbers each year?
Obviously it being a newspaper, that information is unimportant.

We(humans) ate more food than we grew last year, by about 2% and people are already rioting because they're hungry, if this means they can be fed, I find it hard to argue.

Of course one could say stop paying people to not grow food, but thats another issue.

[Silver Ether]

Well it isn't very pretty but I am sure that it can be screened ... Just think we can eat English toms etc all year round ... just think of the air miles saved. It would be great if they were moved around on the train though instead of the roads, good for employment ... folks get fed ... but as MKG said as long as they don't go all chemical on us...

[Clara]

I´m sure that´s what they thought in Almeria too....cept the only people who got rich are the folks who own the land. The workers have to deal with sweltering heat and a toxic cocktail of inhaled chemical, and you guessed it they aren´t local.....the only people willing to do such work are desperate immigrants.

It´s all well and good saying that it will save food miles but isn´t this trying to have your cake and eat it? Just how much energy will this monster consume? The point of eating local is surely to have your tomatoes in season.

[oldfella]

Whew another 130 million perfectly round balls of water tasting slightly of tomatoes, I would have thought we had enough of those already.

[AnnieR]

I am so glad I grow (and eat) my own veggies and tomatoes,
they may look a bit odd sometimes, but I know they are organic, and they taste fantastic. (Far better than looking fantastic and tasting odd)

[Michelle]

Oh dear me I heard about this on radio 4 a few months back but this is worse than I imagined.. they are huge! all that countryside lost, monoculture at its extreme! Goodbye insects, goodbye hedgerows, goodbye birds...

Where you sometimes don't get great flavour, it's often because you've not controlled the feeding or the shade or temperature. But we can do that.

What?!!! This is what got us in trouble last time man thought he knew better. The vitamin and mineral content of vegetables has dropped dramatically since we started using artificial fertilisers

A cable drip will feed each plant with water, and nitrogen, phosphate, potassium and magnesium.

What about trace elements? What about the soil bacteria and mycorrhiza that allow the uptake of trace elements?

Wikipedia: "Plants grown in sterile soils and growth media often perform poorly without the addition of spores or hyphae of mycorrhizal fungi to colonise the plant roots and aid in the uptake of soil mineral nutrients. The absence of mycorrhizal fungi can also slow plant growth in early succession or on degraded landscapes"

Even if they are delicious, they will be nutritionally poor plants, more succeptible to pests and diseases. No surprise that they still have to use pesticides. Yuk. No thank you.