Vertical Farming: Thinking Upside The Box
By Cindy Naas
Dr. Dickson Despommier, a professor of Public Health at Columbia University, is credited with starting the idea of vertical farming.
He’s also the man responsible for pushing it to the next level.
Despommier and French architect Augustin Rosenstiehl have designed a prototype of the 30-story building Dr. Despommier says is necessary for it to be commercially viable.
This building incorporates hydroponics, fish farming and egg production all literally under one roof.
It is estimated that 150 of these 30-story buildings could completely feed the residents of Manhattan. While that may not seem like a viable option, long-term predictions for worldwide crop yields estimate that crop production will fall by 20% over the next ten to fifteen years due to global warming and disappearing cropland.
Urban gardeners are already trying to at least partially solve the problem of lowered crop yields- but there are very few of us who can reliably produce the majority of our food. Despommier’s plans for including vertical farms in every large city seem remarkably daring, but also possibly necessary.
This idea is receiving worldwide attention. There has already been a vertical garden building design contest in Seattle, and Portland, Oregon is on track to be next. The president of the borough of Manhattan, Scott Stringer, is determined to obtain funding to build the first vertical farm in Manhattan. Despommier envisions such a building as being transparent, filled with beautifully growing plants, and surrounded by restaurants and green markets all using the food produced in the high-rise building.
Whether hydroponic growing will really turn out to be the Third Green Revolution as Despommier and his followers believe, or just a dream which cannot be realized remains to be seen. It is almost counter intuitive to urban farmers- to enclose gardens in glass and to eschew soil in favour of nutrient-filled water.
Yet, I wonder how far apart the two groups really are? If urban gardeners really are interested in producing more food grown locally, then isn’t this concept worth some serious consideration?
For a series of very interesting interviews with Dr. Dickson Despommier, please visit.
December 15th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
A complimentary approach with vertical farming is sub-acre SPIN-Farming which is now being practiced throughout the U.S. and Canada. SPIN makes it possible to earn $50,000+ from a half-acre by growing vegetables on land bases under an acre in size, and this makes vegetable farming compatible with densely populated areas. SPIN farmers utilize relay cropping to increase yield and achieve good economic returns by growing only the most profitable food crops tailored to local markets. SPIN’s growing techniques are not, in themselves, breakthrough. What is novel is the way a SPIN farm business is run. SPIN provides everything you’d expect from a good franchise: a business plan, marketing advice, and a detailed day-to-day workflow. In standardizing the system and creating a reproducible process it really isn’t any different from McDonalds. So by offering a non-technical, easy-to-understand and inexpensive-to-implement farming system, it allows many more people to farm, wherever they live, as long as there are nearby markets to support them, and it removes the two big barriers to entry – sizeable acreage and significant start-up capital. By utilizing backyards and front lawns and neighborhood lots, SPIN farmers are recasting farming as a small business in cities and towns and “right sizing” agriculture for an urbanized century.
While vertical farming will still take some time and considerable investment to get off the ground, sub-are farming is already showing how agriculture can be integrated into the built environment in an economically viable manner. You can see some SPIN farmers in action at http://www.spinfarming.com