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USA: DENVER, COLORADO: Is Urban Farming The Next Big Condo Trend?
Lakehouse is home to a 3,000-square-foot urban farm, from which residents can pluck herbs and lettuce for dinner
May 17, 2021 | By: LX Collection
Judy Weingarten doesn’t live in a rural cottage, but in a newly opened condo at Lakehouse in Denver. Aside from the perks, you might expect from a development like this—70-foot lap pool, yoga studio, elegant residents’ lounge—Lakehouse is home to a 3,000-square-foot urban farm, from which residents can pluck herbs and lettuce for dinner.
Photo Credit: Lakehouse
“I love looking out my window at the garden, contemplating what vegetable I am going to have with my dinner tonight,” Weingarten says. “I enjoy trying new recipes based on what is harvested at the time, as well as having fresh-cut flowers throughout the summer!”
The Condo with Its Own Urban Farm
Flourishing with green beans, poblano, oregano, carrots, and eggplant, Lakehouse’s raised vegetable and herb beds are overseen by Agriburbia. The company describes itself as “an innovative and growing design movement that integrates aspects of agrarianism with land development.” While Agriburbia oversees planting, irrigation, and harvesting, residents can weigh in on what gets planted—and are encouraged to chip in with the farming too.
Brian Levitt, co-founder and president of NAVA Real Estate Development, which developed Lakehouse, tells LX Collection: “Notices will go out on harvest days inviting residents to come to the harvest room and help themselves. They are able to cull herbs from the farm for their cooking at any time. Crops are also used for community events and cooking demonstrations.”
In 2020, Lakehouse’s urban farm turned over 1,600 pounds of produce. That’s enough to provide almost four Americans with their vegetable quota for the entire year.
The Growth of Condo Gardens
Outdoor space is increasingly desirable for potential condo buyers, and while this partly stems from the pandemic and the demand for residential space en plein air, the trend began before 2020 and made outdoor space a precious commodity.
Innovative outdoor spaces have been finding their way into condominiums for years. Sky gardens have shot up from London to Ho Chi Minh City. Courtyards, lawns, and pergolas are now commonplace. In New York City, condos like 70 Charlton and 565 Broome maximize greenery with living walls. Architects and designers are looking at every last inch of space, asking, “could this be a garden?”
Until now, designers of these spaces have focused on aesthetics and creating outdoor entertaining areas, but a movement in growing vegetables, fruits, and herbs is now underway. You can see it in the sheer number of articles and explainer videos showing how to grow microgreens on the windowsill or dwarf apple trees in patio containers.
In response, some new condo developments are sowing the seeds for a genre of urban gardening where edible produce is grown and harvested in a community environment.
Ambitious Plans in Europe
In the Netherlands, a particularly ambitious urban farm concept is in the offing. MARK Green Vertical Village is a proposed complex of three towers in the city of Utrecht. Taking its inspiration from the traditional Dutch villages in the area, plans for this Vertical Village show roofs with greenhouses growing the likes of tomatoes, cucumbers, mushrooms, and apples. These year-round gardens would be owned and operated by a collective of farmers and financed by inhabitants of the 1,128 apartments via a monthly service fee. An on-site restaurant and area residents would also have access to harvests.
As with Lakehouse, MARK’s residents needn’t dig for their supper: “Participation is encouraged but not vital to the food production,” says Darius Reznek, a partner at Karres en Brands, the firm behind the plans.
But vertical villages face steep challenges. The biggest, says Reznek, is competing with traditional and industrial farming practices on cost and yield. “The farming concept/system needs to have additional benefits,” Reznek says, “community spaces, community building, soundproofing.”
While MARK is on track for completion by 2025, the urban farming aspect of it remains up in the air: “It is a vital part of the entire concept but currently under feasibility studies,” explains Reznek. He is in no doubt that a condo garden like this can happen—and be self-sustaining, too—but in the first instance, it requires an initial financial investment.
An Enhanced Sense of Community
Lakehouse’s success shows that baby steps will get you places. And while its urban farm doesn’t produce enough crops to feed residents at every meal, Brian Levitt explains it has already grown something else in abundance: community spirit.
“Our goal was to create an enhanced sense of community through education and access to good food that is grown on-site,” says Levitt. “It provides a way for residents to come together either to help in the garden or to cook together in the collaborative kitchen and outdoor grills.”
Reznek agrees that community farms and gardens sow the seeds for healthy relationships, as well as sustainability: “Common spaces are the places that tie these communities together,” he says, “where you meet your neighbors, get to know them, and are more likely to share things such as food, energy, and space.”
The urban condo farm isn’t a trend just yet. But Lakehouse is a beacon of what can be achieved, while MARK Green Vertical Village is an ideal of what might.
As residents seek sustainability, wellbeing, and community in their daily lives, expect to see the green shoots of more urban farms appearing in condos near you.
Lead Photo: Photo Credit: Chuttersnap
Continuing Education: Urban Agriculture
It’s been 10,000 years since the agricultural revolution gave rise to cities. Agriculture now covers more than half of the world’s habitable land, and is spreading at a rate of about 15 million acres annually
April 1, 2021
It’s been 10,000 years since the agricultural revolution gave rise to cities. Agriculture now covers more than half of the world’s habitable land, and is spreading at a rate of about 15 million acres annually. Cities, meanwhile, now comprise more than half the global population (over 80 percent in developed countries), and the numbers are rising. Using current farming methods to feed a global population expected to hit 10 billion by midcentury would require adding new farmland equal in size to the continental United States.
This alarming situation is not even factoring in the impact of the climate crisis, which is expected to alter growing seasons and disrupt the phenological cycles that keep plants and their pollinators in sync. What’s more, new agricultural land mostly comes from felling biodiverse, carbon-sequestering forests to make room for mono-crops that stash very few greenhouse gases and for livestock that actually generate them. That makes the climate crisis worse and farming more difficult.
In addition to land consumption, agriculture guzzles three-quarters of the fresh water used globally each year, while runoff from fields treated with herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers contaminates significant amounts of the water that’s left. Then there’s transportation. As farms extend farther and farther from the cities they supply, food is trucked, shipped, and flown vast distances: farm to plate, the ingredients in a typical American meal travel an average of 1,500 miles. From a security perspective, the fact that most of the world’s food production is controlled by just a handful of corporations is unnerving. And from a public health perspective, the emergence of Covid-19 and other new diseases offers yet another indicator of ecological imbalance. It’s time to rethink the way we farm.
Food security, as defined by the United Nations, means that all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that serves their food preferences and dietary needs for an active and healthy life. Key to achieving food security in a way that’s more sustainable than current practices is urban agriculture—not as an outright replacement for rural farming, but as a crucial component in a balanced system.
Urban agriculture can take many forms: rooftop greenhouses raised beds, and community-farming initiatives such as the City of Atlanta’s “Aglanta” program, which turns underused parcels in utility rights-of-way into farm plots eligible for U.S. Department of Agriculture certificates and associated loans. Ultimately, though, horizontal strategies are not productive enough to make a real dent in the food needs of a city. (If raised beds covered every rooftop in Manhattan, the produce grown would feed only about 2 percent of the borough’s population.) Just as cities grow vertically, so too must urban agriculture, and that means bringing it indoors.
“Controlled environments have been used for many years,” says Chieri Kubota, a professor of controlled environment agriculture (CEA) in the Department of Horticulture and Crop Science at Ohio State University. “Now that multiple issues are making conventional production outdoors more difficult, putting controlled environments in and near cities brings food production closer to potential markets—and also to younger generations of potential farmers who want to live in urban centers.”
Vertical agriculture is a type of CEA that—like high-rise buildings—stacks layers to provide usable area many times the footprint of the site. Instead of growing in soil, which is a heavy way to deliver nutrients, plants in vertical farms are grown hydroponically, aquaponically, or aeroponically. In hydroponics, plants are cultivated in nutrient-enriched water, which is captured and reused so that the system uses as little as a tenth of the water conventional agriculture needs. An aquaponic system pairs hydroponics with fish production, circulating the nutrients in the fish waste to feed the vegetables, and using the plants as a biofiltration system that returns clean water to the fish. Reducing water consumption even further—by as much as 98 percent, compared to field growing—aeroponic systems deliver nutrients in a fine mist to plant roots that are just hanging in the air. And because controlled environments exclude the weeds and pests that trouble field-grown produce, the use of herbicides and pesticides is all but eliminated.
Stacked plants may need to be rotated to make the most of available sunlight, which can be supplemented (or even substituted altogether) with LED grow lights. These can be calibrated to provide blue and red light in optimal doses for each type of plant, and timed to increase plant growth with extended days and growing seasons. (While it’s technically possible to grow any type of crop this way, for now it’s mainly leafy greens and tomatoes that are economically viable.) Cool enough to be strung right in among the plants without burning them, LEDs reduce site electricity consumption (and costs) per square foot of grow area by about a third compared to older technologies, such as high-pressure sodium. “Energy is a game-changer,” says Dickson Despommier, an emeritus professor of microbiology and public health at Columbia University, whose seminal 2010 book, The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century, is widely credited with kick-starting vertical agriculture in North America. Cost-effective LED lighting opens up the possibility of converting urban and urban-adjacent building types such as parking garages, big-box stores, and shopping malls into productive local farms, he says.
With productivity rates that are orders of magnitude greater than conventional farming, high-rise growing is gaining traction worldwide. The world’s first such system began operations in 2012 in Singapore. The land-strapped city-state, which imports about 90 percent of its food, aims to grow a third of its produce locally by 2030. Indoor vertical farms in the country now produce about 80 tons of greens a year, and the Singapore Food Agency is supporting research into and development of the method as its main bet on the future.
In China, great swaths of arable land have been lost to development (more than 30 million acres between 1997 and 2008) and 20 percent of what’s left is contaminated. At the same time, the country has a strong tradition of urban-adjacent farming. When a 247-acre agricultural site, midway between Shanghai’s main international airport and the megacity’s center, recently came up for redevelopment, global design firm Sasaki proposed that, rather than create yet another tech park, the client take its agricultural mission to the next level. As a result, the Sunqiao Urban Agricultural District is slated to become one of China’s first comprehensive national agricultural zones. Sasaki’s master plan, which has received approval from the Pudong District and is now proceeding for formal approval from the City of Shanghai, expands the district’s role in Shanghai’s food network, integrating vertical agricultural production, research, and education into a dynamic public domain. In addition to research and development facilities and an agriculture production zone, the plan provides for a civic plaza showcasing productive landscapes, a science museum, an interactive greenhouse, an aquaponics display, and a destination market. “It’s urban agriculture on steroids,” says Michael Grove, chair of landscape architecture, civil engineering, and ecology at Sasaki.
The Sunqiao project will include a civic plaza with productive landscapes (top), a science museum, and an interactive greenhouse (above), among other elements. Image courtesy Sasaki.
Grove identifies three primary drivers for prioritizing urban agriculture globally: the need to curtail agricultural sprawl and thereby protect ecosystems, to reclaim economic agency by diversifying control of food production, and to build community: “Food brings us together,” he says. Behind Asia’s early adoption of urban agriculture, he sees a historic understanding among the region’s societies that the well-being of the population requires systemic support. That may also be a factor in Europe, where the Netherlands is a global leader in controlled-environment technology, and Denmark is home to the world’s latest and largest vertical farm, a partnership between a Taiwanese CEA tech company and a local start-up: with growing shelves stacked 14 deep, the 75,000-square-foot wind-powered facility has the capacity to produce 1,000 metric tons of greens a year.
A hub for teaching, research, and community engagement, located within sight of downtown Columbus and designed by Erdy McHenry Architecture, supports Ohio State’s CEA efforts. Brad Feinknopf
North America has been slower to adopt vertical farming, a lag that Ohio State’s Kubota attributes in large part to the year-round, nationwide availability of produce from California, Arizona, and Florida. But now, she says, climate disruptions and shortages of viable farmland in those states, along with the increasing urbanization of the workforce, strengthen the rationale for controlled environment agriculture. To support Ohio State University’s multidisciplinary research into CEA, a one-acre vertical greenhouse is under construction within sight of downtown Columbus. As part of the facility, the recently completed Kunz-Brundige Franklin County Extension Office serves as a hub for teaching, research, and community engagement around food, health, agricultural production, and sustainability. Both buildings are designed by Philadelphia-based Erdy McHenry Architecture.
Although still tiny, vertical farming is the fastest-growing sector in U.S. agriculture. A projected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 20 percent from 2020 to 2026 is expected to bring sales to around $10 billion a year. And while significant numbers of start-ups in the capital-intensive sector have failed—as indicated by the track record of several initiatives profiled in this magazine eight years ago —experts say that’s an inevitable aspect of an emerging technology.
Among the growing number of enterprises going strong, however, is Vertical Harvest, the first vertical hydroponic greenhouse in North America. Cofounded by architect Nona Yehia, principal at GYDE Architects, the company began operations in 2016 in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Jackson is a rural town, but it performs like a city in relevant ways: 97 percent of its developable land is already in use, and, with a four-month growing season, 98 percent of its food is imported. Inspired by Despommier’s work, the need for a local food supply, and the opportunity to provide meaningful work for community members with intellectual and physical challenges, Yehia designed a three-story greenhouse for a 30-by-100-foot municipally-owned lot next to a parking garage. “The town councilor who showed us the property thought we’d put up a plastic hoop structure to extend the growing season a couple of months, employ a few people, and call it a day,” recalls Yehia. But she and her business partners wanted to grow as much food as possible, to employ as many people as possible, and to do both year-round. “That’s where the idea to grow up came from,” she says.
Vertical Harvest’s three-story CEA facility in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, produces as much food on a tenth of an acre as on a 10-acre conventional farm. Photos © Vertical Harvest (1), Hannah Hardaway (2 & 3)
With a footprint of a tenth of an acre, the greenhouse produces as much food as would a 10-acre conventional farm. It employs 30 people, more than half of whom have a disability. And it’s profitable. “It would have been easier as a nonprofit,” Yehia says, “but we were committed to creating a replicable model that is not about charity: it’s about empowerment.”
After five years of operation, Vertical Harvest is ready to expand. Construction is scheduled to start this year on a second location that incorporates affordable housing and municipal parking in Westbrooke, Maine. The new 70,000-square-foot greenhouse is expected to provide the equivalent of 50 full-time jobs and to produce 1.3 million pounds of produce a year, supplying hospitals, corporate cafeterias, schools, chefs, restaurants, and caterers, as well as individual customers. “These ecosystems can put out a lot of food,” says Yehia. “Making sure you have customers who can buy at scale is as essential to success as growing plans.”
Vertical Harvest intends to build up to 15 farms in the next five years, with agreements already in place for projects in Philadelphia and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Chicago, and discussion is under way for five other locations. Like the Wyoming and Maine projects, they will integrate social value and community engagement with their agricultural mission. “It’s the perfect intersection to show what architecture can achieve in its social role in our communities,” Yehia says. And while she has run Vertical Harvest as designer, entrepreneur, and urban farmer, it’s entirely possible for architects to advocate for urban agriculture in their more usual role as prime consultants, coordinating the work of other experts.
As CEA picks up speed, the time may not be far off when every municipality will incorporate vertical farming into its civic infrastructure, valued the way public libraries and recreation centers are. “It should be something that we all expect to see when we go to cities,” Yehia says: “infrastructure that grows food and futures, and bolsters the sustainability of the community.”
Continuing Education
To earn one AIA learning unit (LU), including one hour of health, safety, and welfare (HSW) credit, read the article above and watch this video.
Then complete the quiz. Upon passing the test, you will receive a certificate of completion, and your credit will be automatically reported to the AIA. Additional information regarding credit-reporting and continuing-education requirements can be found at continuingeducation.bnpmedia.com.
Learning Objectives
Explain how conventional agricultural methods contribute to climate change.
Define terms such as urban agriculture, controlled environment agriculture (CEA), and vertical agriculture.
Describe technologies relevant to CEA, such as hydroponics, aeroponics, and aquaponics.
Discuss how CEA can enhance food security and bring social value to underserved communities.
AIA/CES Course #K2104A
Complete the Quiz
Lead Image: KEYWORDS cities / climate change / urban planning
Stockholm’s Indoor Farms Boost Food Security
The city is revolutionizing its food sector by showing results in eco-friendly urban farming
The City Is Revolutionizing Its Food
Sector By Showing Results
In Eco-Friendly Urban Farming
14 Mar 2021
In April 2020, the UN warned that the world was on the brink of a catastrophic famine.
It was estimated that about 135 million people in around 55 countries faced shortages in food, particularly nutritious food, in 2019.
Against this backdrop, the UN has set an ambitious goal to ensure food security and wipe out hunger by 2030. It estimated that around 183 million people could slide into starvation and malnutrition if stricken with a pandemic akin to Covid-19. The coronavirus crisis disrupted global food supply chains, leading to chronic shortages in many countries.
Even before this pandemic, the ecological costs of food production were rising, compounded by water scarcity in many places. Irrigation accounts for about 70% of freshwater withdrawals around the world, with the figure reaching 90% in some developing countries.
Food production, which is critical for survival, affects the ecosystem. With the Earth’s resources depleting every day and the world population growing, we must discover innovative ways to cultivate food. We need ground-breaking and resourceful approaches to not only feed the world’s population but to do so in eco-friendly ways.
Faced with this dilemma, we need to develop alternative methods of farming, particularly using artificial intelligence.
Stockholm’s modern indoor farming methods provide some answers on how to overcome global food shortages. The city is revolutionizing its food sector by showing results in eco-friendly urban farming.
Some buildings in Stockholm incorporate artificial intelligence and eco-friendly methods into indoor farming. Circular energy wastewater and carbon-absorbing mechanisms enable indoor-grown greens while reducing the ecological footprint.
Indoor farming in Stockholm uses LED lighting and hydroponic watering systems. Food, especially vegetables, is grown indoors all year round. Growing vegetables indoors not only cuts reliance on food imports but also makes cities self-sufficient in food.
More than 1.3 million plants are grown indoors in Stockholm every year. Indoor farming has allowed Sweden to slash food imports by 60% and cut carbon emissions incurred in transporting food. Such transport accounts for a quarter of emissions in Sweden.
In some Stockholm suburbs, bright LED lights illuminate a business space. In this building, plants follow an artificial daylight rhythm to grow as efficiently as possible. Delicate plants such as various herbs and lettuce grow in stacks of about 20 metres wide by six metres high. Local restaurants, supermarkets and airlines buy this indoor-grown indoors.
Weather conditions in Sweden allow open-air farming for only three to four months a year. But climate is not a constraint in indoor farming, which maximises the use of space using stacks. Each shelf has its own LED lighting and circulating water. Even fruits like strawberries can be grown throughout the year.
Sweden Foodtech, a government agency, acts as a catalyst in promoting and encouraging innovation in the food sector. This agency also offers support to firms that want to restructure the food ecosystem. Companies converge when business events are organized focusing on major themes revolving around the future of the Swedish food sector.
Besides Sweden Foodtech, the Stockholm Business Region, a business promotion agency, aims to create a resilient food ecosystem for innovative businesses. Its goal is to position Stockholm as a “leading food-tech hub” for 300 companies in the food-tech industry.
Public interest, environmental consciousness, and an innovative society has made Stockholm a conducive place for food-tech initiatives. Consumers in this city are more ecologically vigilant, and many of them feel it is their moral obligation to support eco-friendly products. The city itself also extends support to all kinds of sustainable projects.
As a society grows more affluent, it places greater emphasis on health issues and ecological considerations. Ecological degradation and the use of harmful chemical fertilisers and pesticides will spur demand for eco-friendly and healthier food products.
Some 55% or 4.3 billion of the global population of 7.8 billion are urban dwellers. This figure could reach 70% or 6.8 billion of the world’s population of 9.7 billion by 2050.
High-tech vertical farms offer alternative ways to grow food on a large scale. In this way, we can grow our food in more energy-efficient and healthier ways. Despite developments in agricultural technology, conventional farming faces problems such as pests, climate change, and natural disasters.
With the scarcity of arable farming land, ecological problems, and health hazards, the trend is towards indoor food cultivation. The only challenge is to reduce the cost of indoor farming, especially for urban dwellers in less affluent countries.
But with technology rapidly advancing along with ongoing R&D and innovation, costs will fall, allowing economies of scale in indoor farming. Technological advances will lower costs, enhance quality and improve harvests, all of which will provide better returns on investments.
The trend towards indoor vertical hydroponic or aeroponic farming will gain momentum, especially in urban areas. Mass food production in the future will probably focus on indoor farming in buildings rather than horizontal farming on the ground.
READ MORE: Use idle city land to grow food
What’s in it for Malaysia? Our total agricultural imports reached nearly $18.3bn in 2019, roughly 7% from the US. We must slash this high import bill.
The government should encourage more Malaysians to enter the food ecosystem and develop the sector completely along the value chain. It should give incentives to unemployed graduates, especially those in relevant disciplines, to venture into the food sector. It should encourage them to get involved in R&D, integrated farming, indoor farming, manufacturing, logistics, marketing and distribution.
If there is anything we can learn from the coronavirus pandemic, it is that we have to ensure food self-sufficiency. We saw how the pandemic severely disrupted global food supply chains, and so our national agenda should prioritize food security.
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From A Landfill Site To An Urban Farm: The Transition That Kept A Thai City Fed During COVID-19
Many residents of Chiang Mai, where the farm is based, lost their tourist-dependent jobs during the start of the pandemic
15 Jan 2021
Rina Chandran Correspondent, Reuters
An urban farm in Thailand, built on a former landfill site, has been helping feed nearby residents during the COVID-19 crisis.
Many residents of Chiang Mai, where the farm is based, lost their tourist-dependent jobs during the start of the pandemic.
It could provide model of how to turn unused spaces into places that benefit the whole community.
Urban farming is an important tool in promoting sustainability and tackling food insecurity.
An urban farm developed on a former landfill site in northern Thailand boosted the food security and livelihoods of poor families during the coronavirus pandemic, and can be a model for unused spaces in other cities, urban experts said on Thursday.
The farm in Chiang Mai, about 700 km (435 miles) from the capital Bangkok, took shape during a nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus last year, when many of the city's residents lost their tourism-dependent jobs.
Supawut Boonmahathanakorn, a community architect who works on housing solutions for Chiang Mai's homeless and informal settlers, approached authorities with a plan to convert the unused landfill into an urban farm to support the poor.
"We had previously mapped the city's unused spaces with an idea to plant trees to mitigate air pollution. The landfill, which had been used for 20 years, was one of those spaces," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
"Poor families spend more than half their earnings on food, so when their incomes dried up, they were struggling to feed their families. This farm has been a lifeline for some of them," he said, pointing to neat rows of corn and morning glory.
Coronavirus lockdowns worldwide have pushed more city dwellers to grow fruit and vegetables in the backyards and terraces of their homes, and forced authorities to consider urban farming as a means to boost food security.
In Chiang Mai, after authorities approved the farm plan, an appeal on social media resulted in donations of plants, seedlings and manure from residents, Supawut said.
With diggers loaned by the city, Supawut and his team cleared some 5,700 tonnes of rubbish on the 4,800 square-metre (0.48 hectare) plot that lies next to a canal and a cemetery.
The land was levelled, and a rich topsoil added to offset the degraded soil. The farm opened to the community in June.
About half a dozen homeless families, students from a public school and members of the public grow eggplant, corn, bananas, cassava, chilli, tomatoes, kale and herbs, Supawut said.
"In cities, we have lost our connection with food production, but it is a vital skill," he said.
"Urban farms cannot feed an entire city, but they can improve nutrition and build greater self-sufficiency especially among vulnerable people. They are important during a pandemic - and even otherwise," he added.
Supawut Boonmahathanakorn stands by the urban farm he helped create.
Image: Thomson Reuters Foundation/Rina Chandran
Come together
Urban agriculture can potentially produce as much as 180 million tonnes of food a year - or about 10% of the global output of pulses and vegetables, according to a 2018 study led by Arizona State University.
Rooftop farms, vertical gardens and allotments also help increase vegetation cover, which is key to limiting rising temperatures and lowering the risk of flooding in cities.
While land in cities is scarce and expensive, rooftops and spaces below expressways and viaducts can be repurposed, said landscape architect Kotchakorn Voraakhom, who designed Asia's largest urban rooftop farm in Bangkok.
"We need imagination and greater flexibility in our laws to turn such spaces into urban farms," she said.
"The Chiang Mai farm is a sandbox - it shows it can be done in even the most unlikely of spaces if the government and the community come together," she added.
For Ammi, a homeless indigenous Akha woman who has lived at the farm since July, the corn, melons and cabbage that she grows have fed her and her husband, and provided a small income.
"It gives people like me an opportunity to be self-sufficient," she said. "We need more such farms in the city."
Lead photo: The farm provides a model of how to turn unused spaces into places that benefit the whole community. REUTERS
This article is published in collaboration with Thomson Reuters Foundation trust.org
LATVIA: Safety of Food Grown In Urban Vertical Gardens
The project, called G(U)ARDEN, is a vertical garden experience set in Latvia aimed at exploring the safety of growing food in urban gardens.
26-10-2020 | Inhabitat
Interior architecture firm Annvil has brought together a team of urban planners, designers, environmentalists, and natural scientists to study the interaction between the urban environment and horticulture. The project, called G(U)ARDEN, is a vertical garden experience set in Latvia aimed at exploring the safety of growing food in urban gardens.
Urban agriculture has already been proven to reduce air pollution, collect and use runoff, increase productivity of space, and aid in urban cooling, but it is still lacking in substantial scientific research in the safety of these plants being used for food. The G(U)ARDEN project will measure the biochemical composition of vegetables and fruits grown in urban environments, especially in places with intense traffic and air pollution.
The primary urban vertical garden of this project is located in Riga, Latvia and is made up of local plants from the city’s horticulture centers and nurseries. Researchers chose to use endemic plants to inspire residents to grow and conserve locally as well as to encourage sustainable and effective urban environmental development discussions.
“Today we live in a digital world where everything is instantaneous. In answer to that, we want to stimulate people’s interest in real-life — interest in the physical world and in being close to nature,” said Anna Butele, author of project G(U)ARDEN and the founder of Annvil. “We can do that by creating even more green environments in the city — meeting places that bring together different groups of society. This way we can also bring attention to neglected environments in the city.”
The pilot program has started with the team studying the garden’s vegetable and fruit harvest in a scientific laboratory. Crops are measured for the presence of heavy metals, while the air and water is measured for the microbiological composition to help identify all possible risk factors associated with the impact of the urban environment on edible plants. The data obtained from the experiment will aid in continued projects to help create a series of urban gardens in Latvia’s largest cities next year.
Photography by Ingus Bajārs via Annvil
Source: Inhabitat
Exelon Invests In Reducing Indoor Ag Energy Needs And Costs With GrowFlux
“GrowFlux specifically can increase yields in indoor farming making it more economical for city centers and where it can serve often underserved communities fresh and healthier foods.”
June 11, 2020
A welcome impact from the Covid-19 pandemic has been clearer skies and returning wildlife to usually polluted areas after industry, transport systems, and more shut down across the world, reducing carbon emissions.
Today marks two months since the UK’s electricity industry last used coal; the longest period since the Industrial Revolution began more than 200 years ago and well beyond the 18 days, 6 hours and 10 minutes record which was set in June last year, according to the BBC. Renewable and nuclear energy have stepped in to make up the shortfall in a trend that’s been particularly pronounced in the US where renewables supplied more energy than coal for the first time ever this year.
Agriculture’s impact on the environment, particularly surrounding its carbon emissions, has been flung into the spotlight in recent years, particularly by alternative meat and animal products startups keen to promote the environmental credentials of their plant-based or cultivated alternatives. But of course, even a plant-based diet has carbon emissions associated with it, from the fertilizer and pesticides applied in the production process, to its transport to end markets. Plant-based products and diets are also not always affordable or accessible to certain demographics who may live in food deserts.
Indoor agriculture has long been a potential solution to food deserts and many of the carbon emissions related to crop production, making it an interesting prospect for city planners and city-based corporates. But the energy consumption associated with the production system, specifically related to lighting and climate control systems, has left much to be desired; not least because the costs involved have stunted the growth of viable business models.
Further, energy demand from these indoor farms is only set to increase as the need for more localized production in certain regions across the world has been highlighted during the Covid-19’s disruption of traditional supply chains; Singapore is a case in point.
“With over 8.6 terrawatt hours of energy consumed by horticultural lighting systems in emerging indoor farms and greenhouses in the US in 2019, utility companies are hard-pressed for rapidly scalable energy management tools that meet the needs of growers,” says Eric Eisele, CEO of GrowFlux. GrowFlux is an agtech startup focused on smart lighting controls for the horticulture industry working to significantly reduce the cost of lighting automation and its energy needs.
GrowFlux, a Philadelphia-based startup, was therefore immediately of interest to Exelon, the nuclear energy provider that claims to have the largest number of electricity and natural gas customers in the US after it launched a new startup incubator late last year aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and bolstering urban centers. GrowFlux is part of the first cohort of Exelon’s $20 million Climate Change Investment Initiative (2c2i) and recently received $100,000 in cash as well as in-kind services such as legal and advisory as part of the program.
“When we think about food & ag, we think about there being a mitigation and adaptation benefit from helping to advance the indoor ag industry for food. [By growing food close to city centers] there’s a climate change mitigation benefit from the decreased emissions related to traditional, carbon-intensive farming methods of harvesting, planting and transporting food from rural areas to cities,” Exelon Corp SVP Chris Gould told AFN. Indoor ag, where farming environments can be completely controlled, is also a good mechanism to adapt to climate change, he added.
“GrowFlux specifically can increase yields in indoor farming making it more economical for city centers and where it can serve often underserved communities fresh and healthier foods.”
GrowFlux says its technology allows even the smallest farms and upstarts to build advanced controlled environment agriculture automation without millions in venture funding. Its approach is different from the traditional high-level objective of optimizing climate control towards a constant set point; instead it aims to respond more dynamically to crops’ needs via distributed sensor data and cultivar specific crop models. “Crop responsive environmental controls have the potential to result in tremendous resource efficiency, creating opportunities to grow new crops in greenhouses, reducing the operating cost of existing CEA, and reducing the capital costs associated with CEA,” reads the company website.
“We reduce cost with cloud-based control (as opposed to cloud-connected control), which is new to the industry. This strategy is unique from our competition, which are essentially boutique engineering firms that do a full range of automation services using on-site controls that are slow to scale and come at a significantly higher cost,” added Eisele.
2c2i is a partnership between Exelon and its foundation and involves $10 million in funding from the foundation and $10 million in-kind contribution of pro-bono services from the corporation, such as mentorship and access to the company’s venture capital and R&D departments.
“Our partnership with Exelon Foundation will help GrowFlux advance its energy savings and energy management solutions, and allow our customers to drive down their operating costs and carbon footprint associated with greenhouse and indoor agriculture,” said Eisele about the investment. “We believe their guidance on energy management strategy is just as valuable, if not more valuable than the cash.”
2c2i is focused on innovations that will positively impact the cities in which Exelon operates, including Atlantic City, Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Wilmington. Innovations must also have the potential to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions; boost the resiliency of urban infrastructure (e.g., the power grid, transportation systems, buildings, vacant land) against flood, stormwater, and rising temperatures; help cities, businesses and communities adapt to climate change; or help achieve a state or city’s specific sustainability and climate goals. External consultant Freshwater Advisors selected a shortlist to pitch in front of the Exelon team.
“We also consider and have selected startups from outside of our cities, but in that regard we ask them to have a line of sight on one of our cities, with hope of attracting them to region to set up an office,” said Gould.