Vertical Farms – A new feature to the future urban landscape?

Charmian Love

September 1, 2009

We are facing a few big ‘crunches’ right now…the credit crunch which we all know, as well as an emerging energy crunch and climate crunch. Many also argue that another big one on the not-to-distant horizon is a food crunch.

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With the longest season of drought in 83 years in India, where 700 million people depend on the earth and rains for their livelihood, there are signals this crunch is approaching fast and furiously. As we race towards a world with 9 billion people, how are we going to feed this rise in population?

< In the midst of the loud and active debates about the virtues and vices of GM (genetically modified food), I’ve recently been thinking – are there other ideas out there?

While watching a BBC show this Sunday on I was struck at first by the aesthetic, followed quickly by an appreciation of the functionality – of a brilliant architectural wonder – The Vertical Farm. Dickson Despommier from Columbia University’s School of Public Health proposes that there are ways of combining advances in architecture with sophisticated farming technology. The result? A 30-story building occupying a Manhattan block that, in theory, could produce enough food for 50,000 people.

In a recent interview, Despommier argued that to continue farming as we do now, we would need to set aside new land the size of Brazil. So if we can grow horizontally, we better find a way to grow vertically.