After a late arrival and nice night of rest, we got to meet the famous cows from the Floating Farm in Rotterdam!
I was very excited for this industry tour because one of my student teams were assigned to research them before we arrived in-country. Even with my prior research, I was still surprised about how much history there was behind the project. Before we were given a tour of the facilitites, we had a presentation explaining the neccesity of the floating farm and about the current working prototype. The founder of the floating farm, Peter van Wingerden, was inspired by the food shortage created by the aftermath of hurricane Sandy in New York City; if there had been a floating farm on the coast when the main bridge bringing in food was destroyed, the food shortage from the storm would have been less of a problem. In addition to this, with rising sea levels, population, and urbanization, space for farmland is only decreasing. The floating farm model provides a sustainable solution to all of these problems by utilizating water space to preserve land and circular resources to support the farm.
The model that is currently in use by the Floating Farm is only their first prototype. We went over many different ways they could improve it when explanding their business and building a second farm. Some of these things included making the farm self-sufficient, reusing cow waste for fertizlier, making the farm bigger for more animal and crop space, and utilizing more solar panels to power the farms (at the moment, the solar panels they have power 50% of the farm). While these designs are extremely innovative and very sustainable, the Floating Farm is also much more expensive than a regular farm, costing more than two million euros for the prototype alone and another seven years for the company to break even. I love all of the sustainable and inventive ideas used for building the farm, but I don’t think it is a realistic solution to food crises until they find some way to bring the costs down or find a reliable and long term sponsor willing to fund multiple farms. I hope that one day I can see the technology used here used more worldwide.
We followed up the Floating Farm visit with a quick water taxi ride across the river chanel to the Rotterdam Droogdok Maatschappij, or RDM, ship yard company. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the shipping port experienced a golden age of trade and profit, but after being inundated with drugs in the 80s and the economy crash in the early 2000s, the port was struggling and needed to pivot business model. They started housing other small buisness in their warehouse and started a technical school for a nearby univeristy, creating a combined workspace that encoruaged connection and collaboration between businesses and students. All the student makerspaces looked super fun to work in, and I loved the idea of having a strong relationship with local businesses in your line of work all throughout school. All the businesses RDM housed looked super interesting too – one they used to house was even trying to building electromagent accelerated bullet trains!
