WHAT IS VERTICAL FARMING?WHAT IS HYDROPONICS?WHAT ARE MICRO NUTRIENTS?ADVANTAGES OF VERTICAL FARMING? FOR PRELIMS AND MAINS GS PAP III | THE FORTUNE STROKE Ø Yes it's vertical because you are trying to grow more crops on a smaller land area and this usually means going upwards into buildings Ø It normally means that, instead of having a single layer of crops over a large land area, you have stacks of crops going upwards Ø It's also associated with city farming and urban farming Ø Who is "Dickson Despommier"? Ø Who is William Frederick Gericke? Ø Dickson Despommier, Columbia Microbiology Professor, is the Godfather of Vertical Farming Ø William Frederick Gericke, in the early 1930’s, pioneered hydroponics at the University of California at Berkley NB: Will read more about it WHY IS IT HAPPENING? Ø By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth’s population will reside in urban centers Ø Applying the most conservative estimates to current demographic trends, the human population will increase by about 3 billion people during the interim Ø At present, throughout the world, over 80% of the land that is suitable for raising crops is in use No not at all..!!
Can Urban Farming Go Corporate? Farms have sprouted in cities across the country over the past several years as activists and idealists pour their sweat into gritty soil. Now Paul Lightfoot wants to take urban agriculture beyond the dirt-under-your-nails labor of love. He wants to take it corporate. In June, Lightfoot's company, BrightFarms, announced a deal with The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co., or A&P, to provide New York City-grown vegetables to the local chain's supermarkets year-round. The goods will grow in what the company says will be the country's largest rooftop greenhouse farm, a high-tech hydroponic operation that will boost yields, allowing the company to face-off with organic vegetables trucked from California, cutting thousands of miles from the supply chain while aiming to provide a fresher product at a competitive price. With similar deals announced for St. "We're not trying to change the fringes of the supply chain," he said. If that sounds too good to be true, it may be.
Can Cities Feed Their Inhabitants? David Thorpe looks at the options A greenhouse developed by Priva, an international company that provides innovative solutions for the more efficient control of energy and water within indoor environments. There are three dominant trends to which cities and national governments must respond in order to secure food supplies for their people. First, between 1980 and 2011 the global population not dependent on agriculture doubled to 4.4 billion, and, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization this population is growing at a rate about five times that of the agriculturally dependent population. Second, the amount of agricultural land available for growing food is declining and will soon start to be adversely affected by climate change. Third, in 2011 agricultural subsidies in the world’s top 21 food-producing countries totalled an estimated US$486bn. The growing of food in cities won’t mean that conventional agriculture will disappear. His personal website is: www.davidthorpe.info
Sky Farm by Gordon Graff | The Rathaus For our second installment of six architectural projects dedicated to vertical farming, renewable energies, and the construction of a better, greener 21st century, s.a.johnson discusses the Sky Farm project by Gordon Graff. While a Masters of Architecture student at Waterloo University, Gordon Graff developed the concept for a 58-story agricultural tower called the Sky Farm. Its 8 million square feet of growing area, equal to over 180 acres, has the potential to provide enough food for 35,000 citizens per year. Because of the building’s large floor plates plants will be grown primarily with artificial lighting which in turn uses nearly 82 million kilowatts of power per year, equivalent to 8,000 households. However, about 50% of this need will be supplanted by burning the large amounts of methane found in plant waste which produces much less carbon dioxide than other fuels, making it a cleaner option.
FarmedHere Incorporating Urban Agriculture into Urban Planning: The Tale of Three Cities A comparative study: Urban Agriculture in Vancouver, Dar es Salaam and Copenhagen Independent Study by Afton Halloran University of Copenhagen Faculty of Life Science Jan 21, 2011 Abstract Although generally thought of as a livelihood strategy for the urban poor in developing countries, urban agriculture is prevalent in both the global South and North. Urban agriculture has been heralded for its environmental, social and economic benefits. However, in some cities it is an unrecognized practice and some typologies of urban agriculture are even treated as illegal. Urban planning has an important influence in determining the structure of a city. This paper explores the influence of urban planning structures on the development of urban agriculture within three cities: Copenhagen, Denmark; Vancouver, Canada; and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. 9. With increased urbanization and global food insecurity on the rise cities around the world are looking for solutions. Read the complete study here.(2.4MB)
This Week in Virology - The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century Product Description "The vertical farm is a world-changing innovation whose time has come. Dickson Despommier's visionary book provides a blueprint for securing the world's food supply and at the same time solving one of the gravest environmental crises facing us today."--Sting Imagine a world where every town has their own local food source, grown in the safest way possible, where no drop of water or particle of light is wasted, and where a simple elevator ride can transport you to nature's grocery store - imagine the world of the vertical farm. When Columbia professor Dickson Despommier set out to solve America's food, water, and energy crises, he didn't just think big - he thought up. Despommier takes readers on an incredible journey inside the vertical farm, buildings filled with fruits and vegetables that will provide local food sources for entire cities. A Look Inside Vertical Farm (Click on Images to Enlarge) Review “A book you will read, and then you will read it again. And so on.
Farming the Cities, Feeding an Urban Future WASHINGTON - June 16 - As people move from rural to urban settings in search of economic opportunities, urban agriculture is becoming an important provider of both food and employment, according to researchers with the Worldwatch Institute. "Urban agriculture is providing food, jobs, and hope in Nairobi, Kampala, Dakar, and other cities across sub-Saharan Africa," said Danielle Nierenberg, co-director of the Institute's Nourishing the Planet project. "In some cases, urban farmers are providing important inputs, such as seed, to rural farmers, dispelling the myth that urban agriculture helps feed the poor and hungry only in cities." The United Nations projects that up to 65 percent of the world's population will live in cities by 2050, up from around 50 percent today. The rate of urban migration is particularly high in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where inadequate urban infrastructure struggles to keep up with the large influx of people. Close to home (and market).
In Newark, a Vertical Indoor Farm Helps Anchor an Area’s Revival Scheduled to open this fall inside the new Ironbound site, AeroFarms projects it will reap up to 30 harvests a year, or two million pounds of greens, including kale, arugula and romaine lettuce, Mr. Rosenberg said. At that output, AeroFarms would be among the most productive vertical farms in the country, analysts say. Photo But in an industry where profitability is elusive, success is hardly guaranteed. Comparing vertical farms can be tricky. Still, in real estate terms, the Ironbound operation would be among the country’s largest. In contrast, FarmedHere, an Illinois company, grows plants in about 47,000 square feet of a low-slung 93,000-square-foot former box factory near Chicago Midway International Airport. Mr. But in a sign of the risks inherent to the industry, other fledgling companies trying to grow crops in small spaces have sputtered and failed. If the industry is nascent, it can still attract big backers. Continue reading the main story
Is a 60-storey skyscraper the farm of the future? How to get local produce in the city? Look up. Illustration by Peter Mitchell. Canadian architecture student Gordon Graff attracted worldwide interest when he designed SkyFarm, a 59-storey farm for downtown Toronto. What inspired you to design a vertical farm? Sometime in 2006, when I was first working on my masters at the University of Waterloo, I knew I wanted to focus on how to turn a city like Toronto into a truly ecologically sustainable city. What happened next? In 2006 I was researching hydroponic configurations, and I came across a website for Dr. You called your design SkyFarm. Let’s be friends! I did it rather hastily, and it didn’t win. This is the 60-storey building you proposed for downtown Toronto. Yeah. What are the main features of the building? It’s really just a high-density hydroponic farm that has food growing on different floors. What kind of lighting would you use? LCD grow lights. So it would use an awful lot of energy— —and a lot of water. What could be grown?
- City Farms, Parks and Boston: Let’s Grow Up Vertical Farm, photo credited to Valcent via www.economist.com It’s been days since Edward Glaeser published his urban farm-bashing piece in the Boston Globe, but I’m still annoyed. Glaeser, a professor of economics at Harvard University and director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, managed to argue against farms in a way that could extend to urban parks, gardens, zoos, swimming pools, and most sidewalks. He also ignored some intriguing trends in making urban farming more efficient, a.k.a. the Vertical Farm. But before I give you a view from the roof, let’s consider what’s happening on the ground. Now, just for fun, I’m going to substitute the word “park” for “farm” and “plants” for “food.” Who needs the Emerald Necklace when you can get plants from a florist? Of course, we do have parks. But really, the reason we still have most of our parks—with some glaring exceptions, like Wood Island—is that people like them, and are willing to work to protect them.
The 8 Most Interesting Ideas to Revolutionize Urban Farms Today, while the Center for Science in the Public Interest was busy coordinating Food Day events across the nation, we got to thinking about all the delicious plants that will have to grow on buildings if our rapidly urbanizing world is to produce enough sustenance for the projected 9.1 billion people who will need access to fresh food by 2050. Could it really be a coincidence that so many of the causes CSPI addresses—healthy eating, hunger, food security, agriculture policy—find some resolution in the promise of agritecture, farmscrapers, and other utopian portmanteaus? We think not! As the vertical farming trend has taken off in recent years, many architects and designers have begun tackling the question of how to marry agriculture with architecture. Here’s a look at some of our favorite concepts (most of them un-built) for fanciful food-producing pyramids, geodesic domes, flower pods, and insects. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Lamar Anderson is a San Francisco–based freelance writer.