Farming in the Sky
How do we feed a growing population?
Our food system needs a revolution! With a growing human population, something needs to be done to resolve the issue of feeding our planet. Western society relies on a global economy to provide them with their edible demands. When every food group is grown and eaten in different places this contributes to increased greenhouse gases, climate change, and reduces food security.
People are moving to the cities
The UN reports that the global population will rise to 9.6 billion by 2050. The majority of this population growth will occur in cities with the result being that 80% of the global population will live in urban areas by 2050. This influx of people moving to cities reduces the availability to clean, fresh and affordable food. Food prices in city centers for fresh food can be very expensive where only the wealthy can afford to eat healthy. This in turn has motivated individuals to seek alternatives to our modern techniques of farming to support society in a sustainable way.
With the increasing demand for food comes the increased amount of space to grow the food. According to Stanford news, “most new farmland comes from cutting tropical forest. Cutting down rainforests for agriculture sends carbon into the atmosphere and drives global warming.” By 2050, WWF predicts that "a further 120 million hectares of natural habitats will be converted to farmland" to meet the rising demand, an area approximately the size of South Africa. Clearly, this expansion is unsustainable in the long-term, particularly as intensive agriculture can cause irreversible damage. But there is a solution to this problem.
This To This
Solution: Urban Roof Top Farming!!!
Farmers are looking to the sky to farm
Farming in the past decade has gone through a facelift. People are now finding areas never thought of before to grow local produce. Below are 3 examples of successful roof top gardens.
Gotham Greens: NY, USA
Viraj Puri, Co-Founder CEO; Eric Haley, Co- Founder and CFO; Jennifer Nelkin Frymark, Chief Agriculture Officer
Whole Foods Flagship Grocery, Brooklyn, New York
Gotham Greens is a worldwide pioneer in the field of urban agriculture and a leading regional producer of hyper-local, premium-quality, greenhouse grown vegetables and herbs 365 days a year.
Gotham Greens’ pesticide-free produce is grown using ecologically sustainable methods in technologically-sophisticated, 100% clean energy powered, climate-controlled urban rooftop greenhouses. Gotham Greens provides its diverse retail, restaurant, and institutional customers with reliable, year-round, local supply of produce grown under the highest standards of food safety and environmental sustainability. The company has built and operates over 170,000 square feet of technologically advanced, urban rooftop greenhouses across 4 facilities in New York City and Chicago. Gotham Greens was founded in 2009 in Brooklyn, New York and is privately held.
Viraj (CEO- Founder) stated, “Gotham greens can produce a profit after the 7th year and can survive without subsidies, while also paying rent for the roof top space. In the eyes of a property owner this is a huge incentive to let someone grow on top of their roof. More rental space equals more cash flow. Along with the economic incentives. Roof top gardens act as a bubble to insulate the tenants space below which increases efficiency of the building. Roof top gardens keep the below tenant space cool during warm months and warm during cold months.
Also, when talking to Bud Sorenson, (Whole Foods board of director) He believes, “the fact that we can grow vegetables on the roof of our grocery store is changing the way we think about developing our future stores. How much more local can you get?” http://gothamgreens.com/
Lufa Farms: Montreal, Canada
Mohamed Hage, Founder-CEO Lauren Rathmell, greenhouse director and founding member
Lufa Farms specializes in new agricultural technologies in urban zones. In 2009, Mohamed Hage founded the company and brought on a team consisting of Lauren Rathmell, Kurt Lynn, and Yahya Badran, which built the first rooftop greenhouse in early 2011. Lufa Farms’ headquarters is located beneath its first greenhouse at 1400 Antonio-Barbeau Street, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Covering an area of 31,000 square feet, Lufa Farms produces vegetables year-round for more than 3,000 people in the greater Montreal area. The farms produce forty varieties of vegetables grown without synthetic pesticides, capturing rainwater, and recirculating irrigation water. The company delivers more than 2,000 baskets per week, or about 700 pounds of produce per day.
The farms produce forty varieties of vegetables grown without synthetic pesticides, capturing rainwater, and recirculating irrigation water. The company delivers more than 2,000 baskets per week, or about 700 pounds of produce per day.
Lufa Farms' relies on a direct-to consumer business model, which minimizes the transport of food. Unlike traditional greenhouses, Lufa Farms recreates several microclimates to provide the quality and productivity of cultivars. According to the founder of Lufa Farms, Mohamed Hage, "If we were using the roofs of 19 shopping centers in Montreal, we could make the city self-sufficient.
A second greenhouse of 43,000 square feet opened September 2013 in Laval. This facility was built in conjunction with the Dutch greenhouse manufacturer KUBO. Lufa Farms plans to export the model to the United States in the near future, targeting cities including Boston. https://lufa.com/en/
Sky Greens: Singapore
Hydro powered Vertical grown agriculture.
Sky Greens is the innovator and builder of the world’s first low carbon hydraulic water-driven vertical farming system. This commitment towards innovative green urban solution marked the beginning of our journey in constantly re-inventing low carbon footprint agritech in fulfilling food supply security and food safety needs.
Ensuring food supply resilience is important to land-scarce city-states such as Singapore. Mr. Jack Ng, Inventor and Founder of Sky Greens, has shown that the objective can be actualized by the creation of innovative green solutions such as a high-rise vertical farming system, to achieve significantly higher yields per unit area of land with minimal land, water and energy resources.
Jack started experimenting with various prototypes as early as 2009 in the backyard of his aluminum factory. A Research Collaborative Agreement was signed with the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) in April 2010 to formally structuralize cooperation. This people-private-public (3P) collaboration resulted in the development of multi-layer troughs in a rotating A-frame vertical structure using hydraulic and gravitational principals and the birth of the world’s first low carbon footprint vertical farming system. The system was first test-bedded with the production of tropical leafy vegetables and proved to be a resounding success. The results were announced and publicized on 28 Jan 2011, and commercial operation began in 2012.
Jack the founder stated in an interview, “that his vertical farm is 10 x more productive compared to conventional farming.”
Benefits of Roof Top Farming can…
Reduce/Eliminate…
transportation costs
greenhouse gas emissions
climate change
food deserts
use of arable land/ deforestation
agricultural runoff of chemical pesticides
labor
use of water
energy expenses
food miles
urban heat island effect
Increase…
access to high quality nutrition
affordability
year-round local food production
efficiency
yields
food security
environmental responsibility
taste
jobs
As populations increase, humans will continually need to seek out other ways to feed our planet. Urban roof top farms are a way to meet the demand for locally grown, fresh and affordable produce without destroying sensitive ecosystems. Also, urban roof top farms can use roof top space that previously were underutilized. Furthermore, if we stick to conventional ways of farming we will be destroying natural habitats that provide key ecosystem services that humans need to survive. Look to the sky and start farming those roof tops.
