“Empire Pig Building” and “Netherland’s City of Breeding”
Welcome to Netherland’s Deltapark in Rotterdam: Hey, scared pigs, you guys are going to stay in the lower levels of Deltapark’s super tower. I am sure it’s going to be easy to locate this large complex, six levels high; stuffed with pigs, chicken, fish, flowers, mushrooms and tomatoes: just follow the smell and the screaming of dying animals, the chit-chat of stressed-out chicken and roaring engines of loud trucks, carrying all these products to consumers all over in Europe and in the world. Sounds crazy? It is crazy but not crazy enough for Dutch movers and shakers to consider. Dutch agricultural minister Laurens Jan Brinkhorst believes that such a ‘agri-cultural’ park is going to be the future — and ‘organic’, even ’self-feeding’: What pigs and chicken drop before they’re on their way to the ice-box will help nurture vegetable as fertilizer. A pig could be born in the park, live there for a while, eat well and then it gets butchered, right on the spot — now, isn’t that efficient and also economic? Pigs and chicken live first class: little balconies help bringing in fresh air and keep those meaty power plants — I grew up with the saying: “Meat is a piece of the power of life!” — in shape. Consequently, because of this enormous space to play, the meat and muscles of the pigs will be more flexible and soft — yummmm! And the best argumentation I’ve read so far comes from the inventor of the Deltapark: If two legged (we human beings) lived in skyscrapers, why not also animals? Right. So, why not share a tower, have ‘animal farm’ one level above? We would never have to leave our house again — butcher’s right next door! Everything’s fresh and we’ll be healthier than ever!
But wait, the Deltapark inventor is already working on a new project: the ‘pig tower’. Really! This is going to be the “Empire Pig Tower”: 140.000 pigs on 40 levels…what a “Schweinerei” (note: when Germans get annoyed, they shout “Schweinerei” — “pig business!”): live high, die fast! so, little pigs, life IS exciting, hmm? And: who needs farmers? I mean, people who actually care?
Now, this is not a joke. It’s a mirror of society, of us. It could happen, these people are serious. It just shows that we’ve lost touch with the process of producing our food and it also documents a loss of values. What counts are results, deep red tomatoes that taste like a waxed paper box, filled with water, are so 90s. “Holland tomatoes” are ‘organic’ now but still, they are not ‘natural’. But we still have the choice: First grade Tomatoes or ‘first floor tomatoes’…who wants to live in a skyscraper anyway?
SocietyGuardian.co.uk | Society Guardian | Farm of the future? The scale is vast: imagine 10 football fields laid out in a rectangle, roughly 1km by 400 metres, and then six floors of equal area, a total of 200 hectares (500 acres) stretching skywards. Within the building would be animal production, aquaculture, vegetable and insect growing. The complex, known as Deltapark envisages 300,000 pigs, 1.2m chickens, tens of thousands of fish and a giant vegetable growing area all under one roof.
The pigs could inhale the sea breeze on the balcony, enjoying more space than in an average pig farm, and ending their days in the slaughterhouse downstairs. Space without daylight in the giant building could be used for cultivating mushroom and chicory which thrive in the dark.
Higher up, greenhouses full of tomatoes and flowers, grown in nutrient solutions collected from elsewhere in the building would profit from the light and, with wind turbines on the roof to power the whole thing, the system is theoretically a complete ecological farming cycle, with one activity feeding another and everything being recycled.
