Luxury Agriculture

I've always loved greenhouses. I like spending time in them rather than working in them, so maybe I really like botanical conservatories. Chicago has a gem in the Garfield Park Conservatory, especially now, when you can walk from arctic air into a lush tropical fern room.

I like the greenhouse look, panes of glass overhead, arrayed in minimalist or ornate splendor. I like the controlled chaos of greenery. I like the artisanal nature of horticulture, attempting quality rather than quantity. Sounds like I want a greenhouse.

It's starting to look like we will need greenhouses, as global warming takes a toll on our agriculture. More specifically luxury agriculture. Things like chocolate, coffee, vanilla, etc. Not only is it becoming a problem to grow them, but the industrial agriculture aproach destroys the environment.

Case in point: Brazil has destroyed 20% of the Amazon rain forest to grow vast monocultures of coffee, among other things. A similar thing happened in West Africa for cocoa. Sustainable agriculture of these crops work, but you have to have a forest to sustain them (coffee and cacao being under canopy plants). 

A few years ago I read a story about a greenhouse in Iceland growing bananas. I found a more current article and most greenhouses in Iceland are at the "greenhouse capitol" of Hveragerdi. They grow tropical things like bananas, coffee, cocoa, but they don't do so well. Probably being grown in isolation from their prefered habitat, with all their little forest pals and fungi and mushroom networks is not so good for them. Kind of like being raised on the Moon.

For all the land in Iceland they haven;t built many greenhouses. Maybe because of the elves. The huldrafolk, described as looking like us, only taller and thinner, want their volcanic wasteland just the way nature wanted it . And Icelanders agree. But it made we wonder who does have the most greenhouses? I'm gonna bet Canada even though I know it's China. Yeah, it's China, the Jupiter of the Solar Greenhouse system. Followed by Spain, Italy, Mexico. The Netherlands is interesting, at number 9, their Westland green house complexes make them the 2nd largest food producer in the world.

But I'm interested in the luxuries like coffee and chocolate/ And vanilla. I'd probably nned a Garfield Park sized conservatory for the rain forest I'd need for proper growth. And all the critters as well. Bees like coffee buds, but cacao is fertilized by a tiny biting fly no longer than a few millimeters. I don't know what fertilizes vanilla. Edmond Albius figured it out. Humans are now vanilla's pollinators.