Inner-city, multi-storey farming: Genius or dubious?

Farms of the future?

The food industry is one of the great silent polluters on the planet. Whilst oil, chemical and transport industries get blamed for destroying the planet, our ever-growing need for more food is destroying our planet at a far great rate than people think.

Now, I'm not just talking about the meat industry here which, with its masses of livestock, represents 18 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions and uses 30 percent of the Earth's land surface, I'm talking about the more mundane things like transporting the food.

Currently, we import food from all over the world and in some cases, the food generates its own weight in C02 during its journey around the world - such as New Zealand gala apples. Not just that, but despite us producing more and more food for an ever-growing and more indulgent society, a third of the global population is still starving.

With that in mind, multi-storey farms located in the heart of cities have been touted as a wall to minimise land use, reduce emissions from transport and make regions self-sustainable. In recent years, floods, droughts, wildfires and pollution have devastated traditional harvests and in many cases, it is expected to get worse. India's agricultural output for example, is predicted to diminished by 30 percent by the end of the century due to changing rain patterns. Not just that, but mankind is rapidly running out of land to grow crops due to a rapidly growing population. According to the United Nations, the amount of arable land per person decreased from about an acre in 1970 to roughly half an acre in 2000 and is projected to decline to about a third of an acre by 2050.

For these reasons, inner-city farming makes sense. Also known as Vertical Farming, it would see high storey buildings turned into high-rise meadows using the latest hydroponic and aeroponic technologies to cultivate crops. It is also hoped that by using water-and-nutrient solutions or nutrient-laced mist, the entire production would be soil free, therefore enabling the projects to use 90 percent less water than conventional farming.

A vertical farm would also behave like a functional ecosystem, in which waste was recycled and the water used in hydroponics and aeroponics was recaptured by de-humidification and used over and over again. This in turn would lead to less pollution as the CO2 of major cities were absorbed by the abundance of plant-life being grown.

So far, only a few cities have taken the idea seriously. Barcelona has seen proposed plans circulate online of 'hanging gardens' dominating the skyline showing the scale of the idea, whilst a recent article in New York magazine has applauded the idea.

What is clear is that something needs to be done. Last month, the media reported that by 2030, a 'perfect storm' of resource shortages would lead to 8 billion people fighting for food, water and energy. It is therefore essential that we have plans in place to be able to feed the global population as soon as possible.

After all, there has long been a saying that civilisation is three meals away from anarchy.

So Vertical Farming? Genius? Or simply impractical... like solar roads? Either way, it is simply the latest invention in the battle to combat climate change and save the planet resources. For more ideas, click here.

Images from the Arkinet and New York magazine

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