Polydome Concept Overview V.3 Challenges Though comprehensive in its underlying vision, the Polydome concept is in need of significant practical and technical experimentation to evaluate the ideas presented here. There are several questions that may naturally arise about how such a system would function in practice. Some key concerns might include: • • • High up-front investment in system design and construction Potential difficulty in marketing a diverse product range Risk that products may be of suboptimal quality, since the system is calibrated to produce many crops rather than one Less control over the exact timing of crop production The knowledge required to operate such a system is much larger than that required for a monocultural production facility; knowledge barriers may be considered too high The basic technical ideas, such as the impacts of some crop arrangements and the proposed hydroponic system structure, require further testing The crop arrangement we have selected is certainly not guaranteed to perform exactly in the way we have modeled. However, the goal was never to create a model that was perfectly accurate; rather, it was to illustrate a highly plausible arrangement for how such a polyculture system might work. Regardless of the uncertainties involved, the need for innovation in a sustainable direction and the potential benefits of a Polydome system as have been outlined in this report are very high. We must begin thinking in entirely new ways if we are to solve the challenge of sustainable food production. The Polydome greenhouse represents just such a possibility. It shows us where we can afFord to reduce our reliance on technological inputs, and instead gain additional performance through “ecosystem design.” We believe the potential benefits of the Polydome approach are great enough to justify working to resolve the challenges laid out here. • • • From interviews with various parties involved in the Dutch greenhouse sector, it is clear that the level of technical expertise within the industry is very high. An appropriate design for Polydome would need to be worked out to the high standard of industry specifications, which would require an additional research effort. Polydome: High Performance Polyculture Systems 45 Pagina 44
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