Professor Despommier and Eric Ellingsen collaborated on this view of how a greenhouse skyscraper might look. Light penetration is key. (Courtesy of The Vertical Farm Project)
Cities may sprout vertical farms
Proposed high-rise greenhouses could help solve a looming food crisis, professor says.
By Gregory M. Lamb | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor/ December 24, 2008 edition
Courtesy of The Vertical Farm Project
Dickson Despommier’s idea for finding more places to grow food has captured the imagination of many, as in this conception by Blake Kurasek. In the Columbia professor’s opinion, though, none of the drawings would work exactly as shown.
Reporter Greg Lamb explains some of the benefits of vertical farming.
Reporter Greg Lamb
Farming would seem to be a horizontal occupation. Iowa corn or Kansas wheat pokes up from flat fields that stretch to the horizon.
That’s why the idea of “vertical farms” seems ripe for humor. When its biggest advocate appeared on the faux news show “The Colbert Report” earlier this year, comedian Stephen Colbert prefaced the interview by guessing it would have something to do with corn that grows sideways or perhaps “Chia blimps” that float overhead.
Such teasing hasn’t deterred Dickson Despommier, the Columbia University professor of public health. He sees putting crops into skyscrapers as a better way to feed a hungry world. Professor Despommier’s website, verticalfarm.com, features architectural concepts of high-rise buildings that could grow fresh produce in urban areas while at the same time being much more environmentally sustainable than conventional agriculture. [Editor’s note: The original story misspelled Dr. Despommier’s first name.]
The trouble is, he concedes, none of the beautiful drawings would work exactly as shown. “They all look pretty,” he says. “[A]t least it means they’re thinking in the right direction.”
What’s needed before millions of dollars are spent to construct or renovate an existing 30-story building into a vertical farm, Despommier says, are prototypes just a few stories high. They should be built at leading agricultural universities and tinkered with until the concept is proved. “Once it does, drive it out of the showroom and take it home,” he says.
While Despommier has won admirers around the world for his innovative thinking, skeptics still wonder how he’s going to handle the problem of solar energy – bringing necessary light to the interior and lower floors of his agri-towers. “As soon as you go vertical, you compound that problem of getting that [solar] energy to the plant,” says Gene Giacomelli, director of the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Dr. Giacomelli likes the audacity of vertical farms, but says a lot of problems must be solved first. Despommier, he says, “is a forward thinker. He’s challenging all of us to try to make it happen.”
The challenges also include finding and training indoor “farmers” who can operate what is likely to be a complex system. “There’s nobody at the moment,” Giacomelli says. The technical problems aren’t insurmountable – crops are being grown indoors at the South Pole, albeit at great expense, he says. But, he adds, “There are many more ways to fail [at indoor agriculture] than to grow a crop correctly and succeed.”
The world is going to need vertical farms because conventional agriculture can’t handle what’s to come, Despommier says. By midcentury, the world is expected to add another 3 billion people, pushing its population close to 10 billion. Feeding all those extra mouths will require finding an area of agricultural land larger than Brazil – without cutting rain forests needed to stabilize the world’s climate.
Heading skyward, under the controlled conditions of an indoor greenhouse, has many advantages, Despommier says. “You can control nothing outdoors, and you can control everything indoors,” he says. That means no floods, wildfires, hailstorms, tornadoes, or droughts. Plant diseases and pests are more easily controlled, too, meaning less need for herbicides and pesticides.
And indoor agriculture is more efficient. One indoor acre of strawberries can produce as much as 30 outdoor acres can. In general, indoor acreage is four to six times more productive, in part because of the year-round growing season. “Outdoors, you might get one crop [per year]; indoors, you might get four or five crops per year,” Despommier says.
By bringing high-rise agriculture to urban areas, transportation costs are eliminated, and the produce is fresher.
The problem of bringing light to the plants could be solved through artificial lighting, powered by solar, wind, or other methods, Despommier says. All cities have a huge source of unused energy: human sewage. It could be burned to create a significant energy source.
“It’s not a perpetual [motion] machine because you’ll have to supplement from the outside,” he says. But the energy requirements would still be lower than those of conventional farming, with its use of heavy machinery, fertilizers, and long-haul transportation.
Critics remain far from convinced. “The notion of filling a building [with plants] and artificially supplying the light for the plants … from any kind of energy system is one of the weirdest ideas I’ve ever heard of,” says Richard Register, author of “EcoCities: Rebuilding Cities in Balance with Nature.” “It’s not serious agriculture. It’s just not…. It’s an intellectual plaything.”
A better answer is to develop, over time, more compact, energy-efficient cities along the European model, he says. That would free up land near urban areas for conventional agriculture with “100-percent-free solar energy” falling on it. Urban community gardens and high-intensity conventional commercial gardens could also supply part of the need.
Despommier’s students, in fact, first looked at using rooftop gardens to feed Manhattan. They found that farming on flat rooftops could supply only about 2 percent of the island’s food needs. That’s when Despommier hit upon using some of the city’s abandoned buildings to create vertical greenhouses.
He received further inspiration from a children’s book his wife gave him. “Old MacDonald Had an Apartment House,” by Judi Barrett, tells the story of an apartment building supervisor who fills his building with vegetable plants and farm animals as tenants. While Despommier doesn’t see cows or pigs moving into vertical farms anytime soon, he thinks aquaculture could be part of the mix.
“You can start with mollusks – mussels and clams,” he says. Shrimp, striped bass, catfish, and flounder are other possibilities – or chickens, ducks, and geese. “This will have to be done in a way that’s agreeable to consumers, so consumers will set the standard,” he says.
The first working vertical farms are likely to be built outside the United States, Despommier says, where the need is greatest. He’s received interest from Shanghai, China, and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and is currently on a trip to India to address the Indian Institute for Architecture in Bangalore.
Next spring, a class at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will look into the idea. Some 15 to 20 seniors majoring in civil and environmental engineering will form teams and create design projects to see just how vertical farming might be accomplished.
“The potential for doing something is great, but frankly I don’t know yet what’s going to happen,” says Herbert Einstein, the engineering professor who will conduct the class at MIT. “If there’s something viable, hopefully we’ll know more by the end of the spring term.”
[Editor’s note: The captions for the vertical and horizontal captions were inadvertently reversed in the original version.]
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Comments
2. Melissa | 12.26.08
I’ve seen fiber optic lights designed to bring actual sunshine into a room for natural lighting, why not do the same for agriculture, seems better than artificial light.
3. oldguytoo | 12.26.08
Most office buildings have wide hallways. why not replace the florescence bulbs with full spectrum bulbs then run six inch or so, wide planters along the walls where instead of office plants you grow tomatoes and other vegetables. No need for employees to go to the store for these items. Just go to work
4. gremlin | 12.26.08
in japan there is a system of lighting that uses fiber optics and natural sun light. this reduces the power that building use in the interior, and sub floors. one side effect is plants on desk seem to grow larger and better. the fiber optics filter out the harmful rays and promote growing.
5. Vivian Faye | 12.26.08
The concept is doable - The Kaiser Center rooftop garden established in the early 1960s could transition to include fruit trees and edible plants to share with workers. How can we awaken possibilities here in Brentwood where corn had been king, to explore more growing opportunities and offer education for a community who ventured here into big houses built by contracts who had taken advantage of the farmers who drastically changed this community within a decade -now have marijuana growing in homes and programs like Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard ignored by school leaders.
Any small scale info besides this excellent article I could share with city leaders. I had been a 3-year Brentwood Art Commissioner and now teach k-12.
Vivian Faye, Brentwood CA 94513
6. CU Alum | 12.26.08
Other advantages of such a system include, in no particular order:
1. Fewer CO2 emissions as tractors, harvesters and long-haul trucks play less of a role in growing produce and getting it to market.
2. We can return to the days when farms grew many varieties of a given vegetable or fruit instead of the two or three we now see everywhere.
3. Some land currently used for agriculture can be returned to nature, while other such land can be put to residential or commercial use.
4. Less agricultural runoff into the environment as the need to use fertilizers and pesticides on outdoor farms would be reduced.
5. Fruits and vegetables that are consumed near where they grow could be bred for flavor and nutritional value rather than for their durability in shipping (which is why our tomatoes, for example, tend to be so bland).
6. Re-use of water (and the end of water loss to evaporation) would reduce the need to tap our ever-depleting aquifers and our overburdened rivers.
7. Produce that gets to consumers more quickly would retain more of its nutrients and flavor than most of what urban consumers can now buy.
8. Climate change will not force farmers to abandon a crop they were once able to grow and to find something else which can grow under new conditions.
9. Less traffic in urban areas as there would be less need to ship produce from distant suppliers. The reduction would be even more dramatic if the vertical farms use some of what we now throw into the trash as fertilizer, etc.
There are surely other benefits which aren’t coming to me offhand.
7. CU Alum | 12.27.08
Btw, Prof. Despommier’s first name is Dickson, not Dixon. See http://www.mailmanschool.org/msphfacdir/profile.asp?dept=EHS&uni=ddd1
8. punk rock permaculture | 12.29.08
I have as many reservations as I do hope for the idea of vertical framing. It seems most of the designs are high imput, and high cost. I want something a little more thrifty and scalable. I like the design called sky vegetable but it doesn’t include housing which I think is a crucial component. See my post coming soon to http://www.punkrockpermaculture.wordpress.com
9. Paco Verin | 12.29.08
High tech will never solve the ills of our relationship with nature. Concepts like this are a simply a result of our paving over our farms for suburbs. Oops! Now what?
Our disconnect with the land, with Earth, is the heart of the matter. A study revealed that the average 10-year-old can name 50 corporations but not 5 species of trees (paraphrased).
What we need is to stop putting buildings and roads on the remaining woods and farms, shift our economy to one that values real food and pays farmers what they are worth, and getting people to spend time out of the cities.
Of course this isn’t a sexy as a drawing of a glistening building with squash growing up, but we can’t eat sexy drawings.
11. herb | 12.31.08
This idea is up my alley, I am expecting to be laid off from my construction job later this year and was cntemplating the posibilities of creating my own employment buy using some shipping containers to start an indoor growing project. I havn’t gotten all of my thaughts sorted out on it yet but, reading about this guy’s idea is a sort of encouragement.
pulsating light stimulation as well as sound frequency stimulation are two of the things that I want to use if they are truely viable tecniques. The grow in the dark tecniuqe, using a concrete slab and copper wire is also another idea I hope I can implement. I have very limited access to land and therefore beleive that this sort of aendeavour would help with my agriculture passion .
12. DowntownResident | 12.31.08
This is already being done in many apartments, but on a much smaller scale. Anyone can grow foods that are roots next to their windows. For instance, I’ve grown radishes from a small ledge, downtown, in a major city, and without supplementing any light. I would imagine carrots and potatoes are the same. How much light you need depends on what you are growing, and the quality of product you are aiming for. Growing an orange tree indoors will probably require more supplement light that it’s worth (I’ve tried a dwarf orange tree, and only got a single orange). Growing plants for the produce indoors does require a lot more maintenance, especially if you intend to go hydroponic. If you are successful in recreating the plants ideal conditions consistently, the product will be larger than outdoor natural growth, and more often harvested. Anyone who’s seen it, knows it works, but it seems Mr. Register from the article hasn’t seen it yet. Try it before you deny it Richard.
Vivian,
I grew up in Brentwood CA during the 1980’s, when corn was still king. If you want examples on accelerating plant growth with hydroponics, and the required light supplements, maybe you should take a look at one of those indoor marijuana growing operations. We both know indoor marijuana growing is rampant in that area, and it looks like this is the one case were the potheads are ahead of you all.
13. Dickson.Despommier@gmail.com | 01.03.09
The pyramid image at the beginning of the article is by Eric Ellingsen and myself, not Blake Kuresek. Nice job on the article, including the selection of comments.
Thanks,
Dickson
14. Eoin O’Carroll | 01.05.09
Dickson, thanks for the correction. We’ve fixed the photo captions now.
15. gs lee | 01.09.09
when there is a will there is a means.
natural lighting can be brought deep into the building with the use of sunpipe or equivalent. Crops requiring differing level of natural light can be positioned in accordance to the amount of light available.
while commercial hydroponics crop is a distinct possibility, growing crop through commercial aeroponics farming should not be ruled out either. I understand aeroponic farming could cut down water needs of hydroponic farm drastically to about 10%.
We may need to explore an entire branch of agriculture science -what different complementary crops can be combined to produce a complete closed loop eco system that is far more sustainable than the present conventional system of single use zoning-commercial-residential-industrial-agricultural. A true mixed use development may thus entails a couple of agri-towers producing about 50% food needs of the local community with the balance supplemented by import from regional farms.
Tower floors could be divided into fruit farming floors, vegetable farming floors in the upper floors, poultry farming floors in the mid tiers and seafood farming on the lower or even basement floors. Detailed studies has to be done into the local demand pattern of agricultural produces and their relative commercial values, ideal controlled physical conditions for accelerated growth, how these conditions could be efficiently replicated in a commercial setting, comparison against current mode of production…
What we need is meeting of minds among the various disciplines and synthesis of the various needs into a commercially viable, physically doable and configuration for a small scale prototype to be built.
geokser
geokser@gmail.com
16. colluvial | 01.10.09
As any gardener can tell you, you won’t get very good production from a crop plant positioned even in a southern window. We’ve all tried that and know that to get good growth, you need to either use a greenhouse with overhead sky exposure or use artificial light. There are lots of rooftops out there that might be good for greenhouses — like the roofs of supermarkets.
But the windows in a multi-storied building are not a greenhouse. They’ll grow nice houseplants, but to grow productive food crops artificial lighting would be required. In the winter, the sun is at a low angle so it will shine deeply into the building, but the daylength is too short (less than 10 hours in Boston, for example). In the summer, the sun is at a high angle so only plants near the window get direct sun.
So the question is, can you produce the electricity from renewables at an economic rate to power all that artificial lighting?
My advice: before spending the time on any more renderings, get some farmers/horticulturalists involved. Imagination needs to be checked against reality now and then.
And by the way, the pyramids in the first rendering are impressive, but it’s disturbing to see that the rest of the landscape has been paved over.
Brian
vtvillage@yahoo.com
17. Anna Lisa | 01.13.09
What an intriguing idea! There would also need to be bees in this inside environment to pollinate the fruits and veggies– not a bad thing at all, but definitely an element to take into account.
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1. wnyoldguy | 12.25.08
The waste heat could be effectively captured and utilized in the greenspace. Cash crops such as herbs that are labor intenseive and provide a high mark-up per unit volume, cut flowers, fresh fruits (i.e. strawberries)& some vegetables (leaf lettuce, spinach, etc.) could be efficiently grown to provide cash flow to offset the construction and operational costs. The office views could be through the green space and walking trails etc. could be incorporated into the design. Hydroponics could be utilized with great efficiency starting with captured rainwater, recycled sewage water, and a layered gravity feed system that allows nutrients to work through to the lower layers rather than be lost to runoff and captured for reuses/reprocessing at the lower layers to prevent “runoff”. The best feature would be that the products would be grown close to the market, eliminating transportation, handling & storage costs.