Urban Farming Hits The Roof

Smart, sustainable, and ultimately profitable use of valuable city space that can bring farmers and shoppers much closer together

UP ON A ROOF

A good deal of the credit for the urban agriculture trend goes to startup firm Gotham Greens, which has made a name for itself with three rooftop greenhouse/farms around New York City, including a very high-profile farm atop a Whole Foods Market in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Gotham Greens executives point out that cities don’t have arable land, but they do have lots of available roof space, and landlords are happy to find a way to rent it out. With a growing understanding of the impact of modern agriculture on the environment, Gotham Greens sees increasing demand for responsible, sustainable food, and its methods use 20 times less land and 10 times less water than traditional farming to achieve the same output. There are no pesticides—predatory insects are introduced to control pests—and no fertilizer runoff.

In Gowanus, the company grows herbs and produce — it specialized in basil — and some of it is sold downstairs at Whole Foods, with a distribution distance of one single staircase. In fact, everything the farm produces is distributed within seven miles, which cuts way down on the typical 50 percent waste of America’s produce supply chain, not to mention the fact that with its state-of-the-art greenhouse technology, Gotham Greens can harvest year-round.

The model is so successful that the company has expanded to Chicago, where, starting this fall, it will run a huge $30 million, 75,000-square-foot hydroponic greenhouse atop a new factory opened by Method, the environmentally friendly cleaning supplies manufacturer. The goal: 500 tons of produce per year. The roof will be very heavy, but it will also help to insulate the building below. The project is designed by William McDonough + Partners, the same firm that designed Ford’s massive living roof atop its Rouge River plant in Michigan.

FOOD COURT COMPOST

Down in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the Eldorado shopping mall is equipped with a rooftop farm that uses compost created from the food court scraps collected downstairs. Every day, 800 pounds of food waste is composted, and mall employees plant lettuce, eggplants, peppers, basil, mint, and tomatoes, which they then get to take home. The amounts of trash, landfill, and carbon dioxide are all reduced. In fact, the farmers say, the plants seem to thrive on the elevated levels of CO2 in the urban environment.

CHILLY CLIMES

To confirm that climate doesn’t matter when it comes to rooftop greenhouse farming, head to chilly Montreal, Canada to visit Lufa Farms, which has been operating a 31,000-square-foot hydroponic rooftop farm for four years. It grows 25 kinds of produce for local restaurants and shoppers, who can order customized food baskets for pickup, vastly simplifying and shortening the supply chain. The farm captures rainwater, recirculates it, and avoids releasing the nutrient-rich water into the city system, where it might grow algae. Despite the harsh winters, the farm requires little heat, in part because it captures warmth from the building below.

Read More Related Content On This Topic - Click Here

Attached link

Media

Taxonomy

• Agriculture
• Solutions
• Organic Farming