Vertical Farming

An article in today's New York Times spotlights a potential new building type that has already generated discussion in Portland and Seattle: vertical farming.

The article talks about a proposal from a Columbia University professor to build a 30-story tower in Manhattan devoted mostly to hydroponic agriculture and able to generate its own power. Once thought of as a ludicrous idea given the cost compared to regular horizontal farming in the ground, the idea has attracted supporters such as Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer. What if a land parcel near Wall Street downtown or Times Square in midtown put fresh produce a few blocks away? Well, actually such amenities exist now in the form of produce trucked in from actual farms. But with land growing ever more scarce and world populations seemingly adding another billion every few days, it's less of a harebrained scheme than it used to be.

One of the most viable proposals for vertical agriculture is one from Seattle architecture firm Mithun that won top honors at the Cascadia chapter of the Green Building Council's Living Building Challenge held here in April.

Mithun’s Center for Urban Agriculture packs over an acre of farm and forest land into a slice of downtown Seattle. The design for this as-yet unbuilt 23-story vertical farm combines many other sustainable building features, like producing its own energy and collecting and recycling its own water, in an effort to illustrate the potential and increasing value of an urban built environment that functions without drawing on scarce resources and acts in balance with its surroundings.

“As a society, we don’t really look at the true cost of all that we do," Mithun CEO Bert Gregory told AIArchitect magazine recently. "As climate change comes to the forefront, [and] as value is placed upon greenhouse gas emissions and mitigation or elimination of those, then the cost of projects like this will actually be more directly tied to their value,” Gregory says. And therefore, he hopes, it will be a lot more practical. “That’s a watershed moment we’ll face in just a few years.”

I've heard that Portland leaders were energized by the Mithun proposal and would like to make it happen here instead of Seattle. Is this a viable move for west coast cities like Seattle and Portland that still have a lot of nearby farmland? To me it seems more plausible for larger urban areas and metropolises without much available farmland nearby, like a Shanghai or, again, New York. Even so, if Portland were to become the first city to build a vertical farm, it would be a quintessential expression of the sustainable mindset that originates here.

Comments

[Dave]

I could see this generating some negativity in Oregon just because we kind of pride ourselves on our local farms, and I could see it being perceived as undermining that tradition.

However, one great advantage it would have, is that there would be very little cost of transportation from the vertical farm to the New Seasons or Pastaworks (or other places that distribute local produce in Portland).

It does seem to generally make more practical sense to a huge city like New York though. In Portland, we actually have farms within an hour drive from the center of the city, we don't have to get all our produce from halfway across the state or country.

[Ethan]

My understanding of the vertical farm model (as espoused by Dickson Despommier) is that it would be fed hydroponically with waste produced in urban areas - creating a closed-loop system.

I find the prospect of farm towers quite eerie. All you need to do is slap a Monsanto sign on the side of that building in the rendering and you've turned ecotopia into econightmare.

[Kristin]

Urban grown food? That seems a little gross. In the future either there won't be cars, buses, cranes, etc. stirring up the grime, or there won't be land left at all...

...and PDC will have to create urban renewal districts out of postage stamp neighborhoods that don't make the highest and best use of their gardens.

[PG]

Vertical, huh? No sweat, just make the rain and sunlight go sideways, develop super-dextrous harvesting-robots that cost nothing & never break down...then get to work solving another million engineering conundrums of this green hallucination.
Actually I've noticed lots of horizontal surfaces in a city that could produce food: the roofs of buildings.

[John Russell]

Could we please just get places like Vancouver, WA (where I live) enforced urban growth boundaries that aren't simply expanded for suburban sprawl at the cost of the farmland that we already have so close to town? Maps I look at show that we have something like it, but when I go out on my bike, I'll pass sign after sign for "proposed development" on what is still thankfully farmland. All of this when we still have large undeveloped lots within the city limits!

It's nice to hear how Portland is doing so well with all of this and what other cities have ideas for utilizing their land, but when I see that just across the river the opposite is happening, it makes me a tad angry.

I think that is where our opportunity lies.

[Roxanne Christensen]

There is a low-tech way of integrating agriculture into the built environment, and it's called SPIN-Farming. SPIN is a commercial farming system that makes it possible to earn significant income from land bases under an acre in size. It takes the challenges of urbanization and turns them to the farmer's advantage and it recasts farming as a small business in cities and towns. Sub-acre SPIN farms can be incorporated into any existing neighborhood and any new school, housing development, shopping mall, casino, condo, hospital. The applications are far-reaching once the notion of engaged and integrated agiculture is embraced.

[John T]

I think a "vertical farm" could succeed as a spectacle, a wry urban monument to agriculture — a public visual reminder that the food we eat is made up of growing organisms that need light, air, soil, and manual labor before they are transformed into a commodity stacked on the supermarket shelf. But as an economically feasible food production option — you gotta be kidding me! However, perhaps some marketing genius could convince wealthy foodies to pay an exorbitant premium for skyscraper-grown produce (stranger things have happened).

[billb]

what about solar shadow laws ?
Your farm tower is shading our
community garden , dude

[kyle]

this could work - maybe it is plugged into a greater community, or maybe a community within the same building.
put housing above that then uses the garden below to clean the greywater. maybe compost and blackwater for absorption chillers or fertilizer. who knows maybe even the people that tend the garden live above, and then a farmer's market and a small whatever cafe as well at the street? there could be a series of them per community that are sized to meet the needs of the community? a new community garden model.

[Stephen]

I really want to see this project succeed because I think this is could be a solution to are rising food shortage…I am trying to get the first working tower built: http://www.thepoint.com/campaigns/vertical-farm-in-new-york-city

[Stephen]

I really want to see this project succeed because I think this is could be a solution to are rising food shortage…I am trying to get the first working tower built: http://www.thepoint.com/campaigns/vertical-farm-in-new-york-city

[Justin]

I organize a group that is trying to help bring the first vertical farm to Portland. Please join us http://www.meetup.com/FarmUP/.

[Justin]

I organize a group that is trying to help bring the first vertical farm to Portland. Please join us http://www.meetup.com/FarmUP/.

[Sarah]

Absolutely pathetic. Enviormental interaction is essential to understanding what the word is actually about, and how divine nature is. I'm sick to my stomache thinking that we're actually considering building upwards for farm growth. What are we doing to our Earth? STOP HAVING BABIES. Industrialism is nothing but a method of eventual suicide.