Why would we want to build skyscrapers filled with lettuce when we've been farming on the ground for 10,000 years?
Maybe, because modern factory farm based agriculture has been associated with deforestation, petroleum-laden fertilizers, carbon-emitting transportation and the weakening of biodiversity due to genetic modification of crops.
So how do we save energy, protect the environment, and avoid impending disaster while producing sustainable crops in an urban environment? One possible answer is to Farm Vertically.
The Vertical Farm Project
TheVertical Farm Projectproposes indoor vertical farming, like a greenhouse, but scale up the concept. These new vertical farms would produce a wide variety of produce in quantity enough to sustain even the largest of cities without significantly relying on resources beyond the city limits. According to Dickson Despommier, an ecologist and epidemiology professor from the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University,
"Working within the framework of [various] calculations, one vertical farm with an architectural footprint of one square city block and rising up to 30 stories (approximately 3 million square feet) could provide enough nutrition (2,000 calories/day/person) to comfortably accommodate the needs of 10,000 people employing technologies currently available."
A Sustainable System
As with the best sustainable systems, there seems to be environmental, economic and social benefits to a vertical urban farm.
The food would be grown hydroponically, in an entirely glass structure to for allow sufficient sunlight. These "sky farms" would be impervious to drought and other dramatic weather changes. They would not require herbicides, pesticides or non-organic fertilizers, and would use limited water as well as collecting and recycling the water it does need.
Each buildings would have solar collectors or wind turbines to create energy while at the same time adding energy back to the grid via methane generation from composting non-edible parts of plants and animals. Additional, these systems could also farm seafood, poultry and other meat protein sources.
Vertical farming addresses our social welfare by converting abandoned urban properties into sustainable food production centers and creating new employment opportunities. These farms have the potential of real measurable economic improvement in less developed and third-world countries.
Theoretical but Possible
Despommier sums up his philosophy by saying,
"The vertical farm is a theoretical construct whose time has arrived, for to fail to produce them in quantity for the world at-large in the near future will surely exacerbate the race for the limited amount of remaining natural resources of an already stressed out planet, creating an intolerable social climate."
Is large-scale vertical urban agriculture possible? According to an article in the December 2008 issue of Time magazine, Despommier concedes that it would cost hundreds of millions to build a full-scale skyscraper farm. "That's the main drawback: construction and energy costs would probably make vertically raised food more costly than traditional crops. At least for now." But we can dream, can't we!
Stuart Stein - Stuart Stein When it comes to regional, market-driven cooking, many chefs talk the talk, but few walk the walk quite as ardently as ...
