Vertical Farming

Vertical Farming

Vertical farming is an eco-friendly architectural concept for cultivating food within skyscrapers.
It uses green inventions and green technologies related to hydroponics, aeroponics and agua-farming to economically produce food for personal and communal consumption.
It is estimated that over the next four decades, our population will increase by 3 billion people and that 80% of us will be living in cities.
Many scientists are concerned that the amount of land required to feed us in the future will not be available nor will it be economically or environmentally sustainable.
Currently, the amount of land required to produce food for 6.8 billion people on earth is equivalent to the continent of South America. In four decades, we will require an additional 2 billion acres for cultivating food. But that much arable land doesn't exist.
Global warming and geological events will continue to create extreme weather conditions causing frost, floods, droughts, hailstorms, wildfires and torrential rainfalls that will severely effect the economics and sustainability of our food supply.
India has the world's second largest population and is experiencing extreme changes in temperatures and rainfall patterns.
It is predicted that within this century, India will lose 30% of it's agricultural production. So as the population increases, scientists are wondering - "Where are we going to get food?"
Currently, seventy-percent of available freshwater is used for agricultural irrigation, which subsequently contaminates our diminishing supply of fresh water with pesticides and herbicides.
Transporting food thousands of miles is also becoming increasingly impractical and unsustainable because of the rising costs of gasoline and diesel fuel.
In the United States, it is estimated that twenty-percent of all fossil fuel consumption is used for agriculture.
Dickson Despommier, a microbiologist and professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University, is credited with popularizing the concept of vertical farming.
The idea originated from an assignment given to his students to determine how 2 million inhabitants of Manhattan could be fed from crops produced on 13 acres of rooftop gardens.
It was discovered that only 2% of the population could be fed from these gardens so vertical farming became an alternative solution.
Vertical farming stacks and grows plants "vertically" in skyscrappers and usesmineral enriched water instead of soil. It also uses the recycling concept of aquaponics where fish are cultivated in tanks and their waste provides nutrients for edible plants that reciprocate by filtering the water for the fish.
Advances in green inventions are making vertical farming a reality. The Illinois Institute of Technology is currently designing such a project for the city of Chicago.