Farming Grows Up

Have you ever stopped and looked at the origin label on an apple? How about a banana? The food we consume daily has travelled an average of 1,500 miles from farm to plate. For those of us living in cities, the distance between us and our veggies is continuing to grow.

Right now, 60% of the population lives in an urban environment. This is expected to rise to an estimated 80% come 2050. We’ve been seeing the massive condominium complexes and high-rises that have been erected to accommodate this influx, but what we haven’t seen is the increasing difficulty farmers have been experiencing in feeding these new residents. As a result of this shift, we’ve been importing more and more produce from farther and farther away at immense financial and environmental cost.

Cue the solution: vertical farms designed to create sustainable agriculture in urban settings. These produce powerhouses resemble high-rises, with floors dedicated to various fruit, vegetables, mushrooms and algae. The concept was developed in 1999 by Dickson Despommier, a professor of environmental health sciences and microbiology at Columbia University in New York City.

In an interview with Miller-McCune.com; Despommier described how vertical farms would function:

“Each floor will have its own watering and nutrient monitoring systems. There will be sensors for every single plant that tracks how much and what kinds of nutrients the plant has absorbed. You'll even have systems to monitor plant diseases by employing DNA chip technologies that detect the presence of plant pathogens by simply sampling the air and using snippets from various viral and bacterial infections. It's very easy to do.”

Easy to do, and imagine how verdant this will make our cities. Instead of the oppressive walls of grey high-rises, these bright agricultural centers will liven up our sidewalks up with a splash of green. They’ll be livening up our wallets, too.

With the development of vertical farming, tropical produce can be grown here at home, eliminating the transportation costs of importations. The produce we eat will be produce we grow, and our crops are guaranteed to be plentiful: One indoor acre in a vertical farming facility is equal to up to 30 outdoor acres of specific crops (strawberries, in this case). As vertical farms are soil-free, the plants absorb all of the nutrients they need from the water-based solution they are grown in, meaning that they cut the amount of water wasted by a factor of, according to Despommier, up to 90%.

The benefits of this movement don’t stop there, however. We’re used to associating quantity with a sacrifice in quality. Not true with vertical farming. As it is indoors, no pesticides and chemicals are required to protect or ensure proper growth, making indoor plants organic. Previous farms can be restored to their natural environment to rebalance the ecosystems we’ve effectively destroyed.

This idea of renewal and recycling can also be applied to abandoned industrial buildings. Often on the outskirts of our major cities, these empty factories provide ideal opportunities as farm conversions in the trial stage of this initiative. These old abandoned buildings will brim – literally – with new growth in an elegant solution to two common problems. 

Greener cities, lowered food prices, no pesticides in produce and grapes available year round? — I’m in.

I look forward to having my delicious new neighbours over for dinner!

— Stephanie Maris