A key development in the quest to create sustainable ecosystems in space, this expandable greenhouse prototype aims to generate essential food and oxygen for long-term astronaut travel.

Recently, Peggy Whitson broke the record for longest stay in space (534 days) and astronauts have started growing their own vegetables on the International Space Station. This collapsible growing unit aims to take things to the next level, enabling longer-term settlements on places including the moon and Mars.

Developed by NASA and agricultural researchers at the University of Arizona, the test unit spans 7 by 18 feet. Its primary functions: convert carbon dioxide from crew, support plant photosynthesis. This bio-regenerative approach to life support is an essential system for recycling scarce resources off-planet.

It also takes its queues directly from our own world: “We’re mimicking what the plants would have if they were on Earth, and using of these processes for life support. The entire system of the lunar greenhouse does represent, in a small way, the biological systems that are here on earth.”

But a big trick to the design is simply its portability: materials take up space, so engineering minimal frameworks that will work when the system is expanded is critical to getting space greenhouses into (and out of) orbit in the first place.

Meanwhile, on the ISS, astronauts continue to grow (and consume) plants outside of Earth’s normal gravity, paving the way for a better understanding of how agriculture will really work off-planet in the future.

Now you calcium, now you don’t… OK, that was awful but so’s the sight of these abandoned dairy farms moldering away ’til the cows come home.

The so-called “Scary Dairy” in Camarillo, California was a dairy farm operated under the auspices of the former Camarillo State Mental Hospital. The dairy opened in 1932 and was part of an enlightened (for the time) program that explored alternative treatments for the mentally ill. We’ll refrain from making any “mad cow disease” references.

The dairy was closed in the mid-1960s and the hospital itself shut down in 1997. Five years later, the hospital was renovated and occupied by the new California State University, Channel Islands and in 2009 the university bought the 367-acre parcel of land that included the abandoned dairy farm.

Now known as the CSU Channel Islands University Park, the land is open for public use though the Scary Dairy is fenced off – not that this has stopped graffiti artists from making their marks. Flickr user Thomas Hawk visited the Scary Dairy in June of 2011, taking these and many more spectacular and spooky photos.

Boom To Bust

Here’s the Sinton Office of the Red Canon Dairy in Cañon City, Colorado. Flickr user jimsawthat‘s photo captures the well-worn aura of a business with deep roots going back many decades. The photographer captured the above image on December 26th of 2014.

No Milk Today

Flickr user David Benjamin visited an abandoned dairy farm in early May of 2013, and although he doesn’t give any hints as to where this gently decaying farm is located, that’s just as well: not everything needs embellishment with graffiti.

Southburied

The Southbury Training School in Southbury, Connecticut opened in 1940 and stopped accepting new mentally-challenged “students” in 1986. The facility has operated in a sort of weird limbo since then: in 2001 there were 639 residents (down from 1,111 in 1986). At that time the average age was 55 and the average resident had been at STS for 43 years.

The school’s on-site dairy farm was closed in the late 1990s with the last 101 cows sold off to a local farmer in 2003. Urbex explorer infraredrobert visited STS in March of 2015, where he snapped the photos above and more.

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Two hundred species of edible greens occupy a quarter of this 215,000-square-foot office in Tokyo, Japan, sharing space with thousands of workers who in turn consume harvested fruits, vegetables and rice right in the building’s cafeteria, a direct farm-to-table connection.

Plants are expertly interspersed with other functions throughout the building, sustained via soil-based and hydroponic systems, including 1,000 square feet of rice paddies and extensive broccoli fields.

Kono Designs elaborates on the ways different food-bearing plants occupy any extra (and sometimes hidden) spaces throughout the structure: “Tomato vines are suspended above conference tables, lemon and passion fruit trees are used as partitions for meeting spaces, salad leaves are grown inside seminar rooms and bean sprouts are grown under benches.”

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Powered by solar-paneled roofs overhead, these barge farms feature hydroponic space for produce above and support fish farming below, using extant technologies to offshore vast quantities of food to be grown on the water.

Based in Barcelona, Forward Thinking Architecture is pushing its Smart Floating Farms concept to interested cities and investors, boasting the modularity of this system that can start with a single barge or morph into a fleet of connected vessels. Each barge is designed to yield over 8 tons of fruits and vegetables and nearly 2 tons of fish per year.

The barges would be 656 by 1,150 feet and contain its own desalination plant, able to turn saltwater to fresh for farming purposes. Solar, wind and wave power render each platform self-sufficient in terms of energy as well as relatively independent, needing little human interaction or intervention to function.

While there is no set date for launching the first of these floating farms, the feasibility of the system is promising. It does not presuppose any technology that does not already exist, and represents a natural expansion of development beyond land to adjacent open spaces on the water.

From the architects: “The world population is predicted to grow from 6.9 billion in 2010 to 8.3 billion in 2030 and to 9.1 billion in 2050. By 2030, food demand is predicted to increase by 50% (70% by 2050). The main challenge facing the agricultural sector is not so much growing 70% more food in 40 years, but making 70% more food available on the plate.”

Honey, I’m not home! These abandoned apiaries and busted beehives once dispensed sweet liquid gold but now lie deserted, de-pollenated and depopulated.

Fancy some honey? The charming red brick building housing The Altamaha Apiaries in Gardi, Georgia dates from 1900 and originally served as a post office / general store. At some point a local family took over the property and set up an apiary. Now gently deteriorating and festooned with flowering vines – descendants of those that once provided fancy pollen, perhaps – The Altamaha Apiaries no longer offers honey but serves instead as a favorite photographic subject for abandonment addicts.

Mutiny On The Botany

Abandon a commercial beehive box for 8 days and you might not notice much difference. Abandoning a hive for 8 years is another story, however, and since every picture tells a story (thanks, Rod Stewart), kindly shift your gaze to the vine-encrusted hive above. According to The BeeHolder, this British bee box “had been neglected due to the beekeeper being hospitalised 8 years ago.” Hopefully the cause wasn’t being stung multiple times by his honey-making servants.

In The CatBee Seat

Better not bug this cat, it might start shooting bees out of its mouth. That would presume the ginger feline had been eating bees, mind you, and considering it’s resting in the midst of an abandoned apiary you’re free to draw your own conclusions. Kudos to Flickr user brainfeet, who captured this slightly surreal scene on May 17th of 2010.

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