Carey’s sustainable mobile food factories ~ Mobile food security in any environment.

[Carey Ma]

Applications: Separate communities and landless institutions.

Separate communities can include: Refugee camps, Military/ Police base, and disciplinary institutions.

Landless institutions can include: Universities and Corporations.

 

My original title for this article was “Hoarding Water” but as I began I started to drift and eventually am trying to figure out what it is we really need, to be food independent in the smallest space possible. Please comment and feel free to add suggestions or criticize deficiencies.

 

Say a refugee, on an arid rock shelf where the only constant is bright skies and drastically fluctuating day/ night temperatures. How can we really help them become self-supporting instead of being utterly dependent, simply hanging on to survival?

 

What would a totally inclusive, modern, self-sustaining, independent community look like?

 

How much water should every person be allotted to “hold”? How many % of that total can be transferred to their supplier or farmer, (in the future)?

 

On paper, I am designing a portable food production system based on the following figures:

• There are 7.481 gallons in a cubic foot
  • *Stocking rate in China can be up to one pound per gallon with supplemented DO.

• A 20 x 8x 8/ (1280 cubic feet) foot shipping container can hold a 18x6x7.5 = 810 cubic feet or 6,050 galons of water in the main tank.
• Stocking @ 0.25 lbs per gallon = 1,515 lbs of fish, (or 5,000 max), (tilapia)

 

With a mature system running at full capacity (fifteen hundred pounds of tilapia), can supply inflated greenhouses to grow all sorts of fruits and vegetables.

 

Five trailers with different functions combine to form a portable farm, servicing a community of up to one hundred people, which live on the circumference in a doughnut like shelter. Dwellings open to the inside to give a sense of security and community. All items are made of recycled products and if possible in a fold out, snap-to configuration to save on materials and transportation volume/ weight.

 

Container 1: Basic AP - grow out

* Container 2: Bio processing station

Container 3: Fry development

Container 4: Rabbit/ chicken house/ worm bin

Container 5: Sprout and pellet factory with rooftop solar dryer

 

* Rooftop of living quarters can act as a rooftop AP system to grow and raise even more food. An additional inflatable greenhouse can be added to extend the growing season and capture/ recapture heat for more comfortable living.

 

 

These five base units become the hub of our sustainable emergency shelter community (including greenhouse and housing structure). Modular see-through photovoltaic panels in conjunction with solar heat sinks will act as light penetrable rooftops, located in between the containers. Unlike conventional roofs, this roof allows trapped heat to evacuate through slits that also allow light to penetrate the interior so even on cloudy days, the “outside” isn’t too dark. Supplemental LED lighting in the g

[david day]

This is fantastic stuff Carey! I think many who get involved in AP (me included) do so with these sorts of systems in mind. Granted, I am far away from developing something on this scale as I am just starting out. Cycling up my first small system and am gonna add fish tomorrow. Not only could this system, or one like it, be developed into a highly portable emergency food generator but could also be designed for a more permanent application, imo. I think once people got involved in such a project and the benefits of their labors are realized, they would be hard pressed to go back to relying on outside sources for much of their food. Nice work!

[Faisal Sarwar]

These are incredible ideas. I have seen the misery of people when in October 2005 earthquake killed almost 80000 people in Pakistan and left hundreds of thousands homeless. So such sort of a unit can really be handy in desperate situations.

 

[Miguel Afonso]

I would love to build something like this.

[Homefire]

 

Carey wrote:

"Say a refugee, on an arid rock shelf where the only constant is bright skies and drastically fluctuating day/ night temperatures. How can we really help them become self-supporting instead of being utterly dependent, simply hanging on to survival?"

Hi Carey,

I think about such things a lot.  I actually lived in an 8' x 20'  'greenhouse' made of bamboo and salvaged plastic, during part of my 15yrs. 'homeless'.  (prefer to call it house free)

Now, we know that straw bale gardening works.  We know that pee fertilizer works.  Nitrogen fixers will grow on most any airy media.

Here's what i have in mind: Partly rotted straw bales in salvaged troughs or tubs, with bales just touching the water.  The troughs go gradually down hill so that each waters the next.  A person with a bucket carries urine fertilized water up to the first bale every hour. 

If he lives in a temperate climate then he has the bales in his greenhouse, where he lives with a rocket stove mass heater. 

I had a wood stove in my then north Florida 'greenhouse' but i didn't grow plants at the time.  It was pleasant even during a rare ice storm of January 1987 or 88.

Homefire