Vertical Farming…?

Just got a shout out from my friend Lance. There’s a captivating article in the NY times called “Country, the City Version: Farms in the Sky Gain New Interest”. It details the work of Dickson Despommier around creating vertical farms in the city-basically applying the skyscraper model to agriculture:

Dr. Despommier estimates that it would cost $20 million to $30 million to make a prototype of a vertical farm, but hundreds of millions to build one of the 30-story towers that he suggests could feed 50,000 people. “I’m viewed as kind of an outlier because it’s kind of a crazy idea,” Dr. Despommier, 68, said with a chuckle. “You’d think these are mythological creatures.”

Photo courtesy of www.verticalfarm.com

See his website http://www.verticalfarm.com/ for more info: 

The cons to his proposal:

“Why does it have to be 30 stories?” said Jerry Kaufman, professor emeritus of urban and regional planning at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Why can’t it be six stories? There’s some exciting potential in the concept, but I think he overstates what can be done.”

and

Armando Carbonell, chairman of the department of planning and urban form at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Mass., called the idea “very provocative.” But it requires a rigorous economic analysis, he added. “Would a tomato in lower Manhattan be able to outbid an investment banker for space in a high-rise? My bet is that the investment banker will pay more.”

Mr. Carbonell questions if a vertical farm could deliver the energy savings its supporters promise. “There’s embodied energy in the concrete and steel and in construction,” he said, adding that the price of land in the city would still outweigh any savings from not having to transport food from afar. “I believe that this general relationship is going to hold, even as transportation costs go up and carbon costs get incorporated into the economic system.”

As we move into a post-oil economy and transporting food over long distances, potentially, becomes non-viable thinking and discussions like this are exactly what we need. There are empty buildings all over the place. Why not turn them into farms? If a community were to invest in a building it would be a tremendous source of community generating energy as well as a way for people to integrate waste and water management into the creation of neighborhood food security. Think about it: waste to compost to food. It works for me in my small garden and vermiculture compost system in Tokyo. Closed loop local solution to waste generation and food production. Think about it, now,

Do something about it.

 

Tags: agriculture, green buildings, sustainability, urban farming