Skyfarming: Turning Skyscrapers Into Crop Farms

An interesting article from New York Magazine describes a Columbia University professor's plan that could make it possible to have farming in skyscrapers in New York City, or any city for that matter. These so-called vertical farms have many benefits, including producing food for local people, providing sustainable energy, and purifying wastewater, and potentially reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

There is another reason to develop indoor farming: exploding population growth. By 2050, demographers estimate there will be an additional 3 billion people (a global total of 9.2 billion). If current farming practices are maintained, extra landmass as large as Brazil would have to be cultivated to feed them. Yet nearly all the land that can produce food is already being farmed—even without accounting for the possibility of losing more to rising sea levels and climate change (which could turn arable land into dust bowls).

Depending on the crops being grown, a single vertical farm could allow thousands of farmland acres to be permanently reforested. For the moment, these calculations remain highly speculative, but a real-life example offers a clue: After a strawberry farm in Florida was wiped out by Hurricane Andrew, the owners built a hydroponic farm. By growing strawberries indoors and stacking layers on top of each other, they now produce on one acre of land what used to require 30 acres.

The article goes on to provide an interesting and informative diagram about how one of these vertical farms would function. Definitely a neat read.