by COOLcat, 3 June 2009

Imagine you live next door to a 30-storey building about the size of a city block. You look in through the windows one day and instead of office desks you see rows of corn and tomato plants. A trip up an elevator reveals floors with chicken enclosures.

We're talking an entire building dedicated to farming.

This futuristic scenario may well materialise before 2050. That is if scientist Dick Despommier manages to convince enough people. The Columbia University professor says a piece of land the size of Brazil would be needed to grow enough food for the three billion additions to Earth’s population by that year. He unveiled his vision of a "vertical farm," a 30-storey tower right in the middle of an urban landscape, that could grow enough food to feed 50,000 people in the surrounding neighbourhood.

Floods, protracted droughts, hurricanes, and severe monsoons take their toll each year, destroying millions of tons of valuable crops. Despommier makes a radial statement: “Don't our harvestable plants deserve the same level of comfort and protection that we now enjoy?” The buildings for these projects can be constructed according to need and available space, and will almost eliminate greenhouse gases; weather caused crop failures, diseases from untreated biological wastes, and without the use of pesticides and herbicides. The growing environment can be completely organic, and scientifically controlled. Imagine such a Farmscraper in hot Dubai, crowded Hong Kong or busy downtown Manhattan. The added benefit is that the plants will help purify the air in the area.

Interviews with some New Yorkers showed initial resistance to eating plants grown in buildings and not from the earth. Traditional farmers sang the praises of the fresh air and sunshine in the countryside. Weighed against transportation costs and possible destruction of crops through bad weather, the case for the vertical farm is a strong one.

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