Green Roofs and Vertical Farming-A Pipe Dream or Coming Reality?
At the risk of oversimplifying things, I'm going to try tackling green roofs and vertical farming all in one post. Shocking, I know, its as if I'm wearing a giant bulls eye on my drupal page. In any case, I've been inspired.
My first inspiration? This video twittered by Social Earth a few days ago featuring Ashoka Fellow Van Jones (now Special Advisor to the White House) and DC Greenworks, a local non-profit organization right here in the hometown bringing green roofs to high-end clients and neighborhoods alike:
My other inspiration? This op-ed post in the NYT by the father of the vertical farming movement: Dickson D. Despommier.
Green roofs are popping up both on homes and office buildings around the world. Staying true to my Midwestern roots, I'd say the City Hall building in Chicago is still my favorite example of a green roof. Green roofs help insulate the buildings underneath them, absorb and purify rainwater runoff, improve air quality and lower temperatures for the city as a whole, and provide in-city sources of nutrition and rest stops for migrating birds and insects. Care and maintenance for the roof can also provide green collar jobs for the local economy. Most green roofs host herbs and plants particularly suited for their roof-top lifestyle, but some roofs can also grow food as well.
Most everyone thinks green roofs are great for improving air quality and taking care of rain water runoff, etc. If providing food for the building's inhabitants is the goal though, then a green roof is definitely not the most efficient way to do it. Even if every roof in New York City grew food on it, there still wouldn't be enough to go around. That's where the concept of vertical farming comes in.
I think the best way to explain vertical farming is probably to look at a picture:
Fans of vertical farming say it will lower the carbon footprint of produce for city dwellers and provide more bountiful harvests. Technologies exist to monitor produce to be picked at peak ripeness, and hydroponic and solar power technologies can provide energy and nutrients to the plants with less waste. Plus, growing food indoors means no droughts, floods, pests or blights. What's the hold up then?
Huge capital costs. Normal farms take huge amounts of work and capital to start and stay productive. Throw in the costs of purchasing prime downtown real estate, building the structure, installing all of the high-tech equipment and paying a staff and all of a sudden we are looking at an astronomically expensive farm to build-even if it does become profitable over time. As some critics point out, even if vertical farms turn out to be as productive as we hope, are there other things that we could be doing with that money?
To be honest, I have been skeptical. I'm in love with the idea in theory, but if this is such a great idea, shouldn't someone have started doing it already?
And indeed, some people already have. A Twitter tipper showed me the way to Valcent and there are big plans in the works for vertical farms in Dubai, but we are still a long way off from proof that the concept works as well in real life as it does in theory.
What do you think? Should we continue to strive for funding of vertical farms to see how they work out? Or put our resouces towards less dramatic but still very beneficial endeavors like green roofs? What's the 3rd way?
Photo Credits:
Globe Photo by: flickr/kimberlyfaye Globe sculpture by: Deborah Adams Doering; Vertical farm Diagram: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign via the NYT
