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Up Top Acres Is Planning To Grow Rooftop Farming In The DMV
After turning five empty rooftops in the D.C. area into working farms, Up Top Acres is looking to expand this year.
Up Top Acres Is Planning To Grow Rooftop Farming In The DMV
The co-founders are planning a new farm at Pike and Rose in Bethesda. A Kickstarter launched last week is quickly moving toward the goal.
Up Top Acres' farm at 1015 Half Street (Photo via Facebook)
After turning five empty rooftops in the D.C. area into working farms, Up Top Acres is looking to expand this year.
Founded in 2014 by Kathleen O’Keefe and Kristof Grina, the social enterprise looks to bring farming to the city by turning underutilized rooftops into small scale farms. The Halcyon Incubator fellows and Forbes 30 Under 30 honorees are finding office buildings to be the best fit due to the available space, but are also working on smaller scale farms with residential developments.
“We opened our first rooftop farm in May 2015 on top of the restaurant Oyamel,” O’Keefe said. “We’ve been gradually expanding since, but will be doubling our growing space this year. We’ve spent the last few years testing our business model and are now at a place to expand.”
The newest farm will be at Pike & Rose in North Bethesda, Md., which will be its largest to date. To help with the expansion, Up Top Acres launched a Kickstarter campaign last week which is already most of the way ($28,675 as of Monday morning) to its $30,000 goal.
The funding will help purchase new equipment and seeds, as well as training for new farmers they’re bringing on. It will also go toward upgrading infrastructure at other locations, O’Keefe said.
While they use a green roof growing system to reduce energy, the farms are largely people-powered, O’Keefe said. The resulting produce has included greens, carrots, tomatoes, peppers, radishes, turnips, eggplant, chard, edible flowers and even watermelons. To distribute, the venture runs a pair of Community Supported Agriculture Program, and also sells to a few restaurants.
Eco-Activist Joost Bakker Plans Rooftop Urban Farm For Shopping Center
Eco-Activist Joost Bakker Plans Rooftop Urban Farm For Shopping Center
PAUL BEST | Feb 9, 2018
Flower grower and sustainability activist Joost Bakker promotes green design and zero waste. Photo: Simon Schluter
Flower grower and sustainability activist Joost Bakker finally has the chance to help realize one of his long-held ambitions – to see the tops of our metropolitan buildings harnessed to become productive urban farms.
Frasers Property Australia has enlisted Bakker to establish an urban farm and restaurant on the 2000-square-meter rooftop of its proposed shopping center development on the former Burwood Brickworks site in Melbourne's east, which begins construction mid-year.
"It's the kind of [project] I've been talking about for years and years, and here's a company that actually has the balls to go out and do it," says Bakker, best known for his pop-up restaurants promoting sustainable design, recycling, and zero waste. His ventures include Greenhouse by Joost in Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney, as well as Silo and Brothl in Melbourne's CBD.
Artist's impression of the sustainable shopping center and urban farm planned for the former Burwood Brickworks site. Photo: Supplied
In what the developer is labeling an "Australian first", the Burwood Brickworks rooftop will feature a mix of greenhouses, planter boxes, and gardens, both horizontal and vertical – something Bakker has been instrumental in designing – supplying food and beverage outlets.
Bakker also envisages a larger version of his terracotta-pot vertical garden design, growing Asian produce, reflecting the area's strong Chinese and south-east Asian communities, as well as event and activity areas, especially for schoolkids.
The rooftop urban farm and restaurant is part of Frasers' larger initiative to create "the world's most sustainable shopping centre", a mixed-use development with 12,700 square metres of retail space incorporating such green measures as a solar PV system and embedded electricity network. The developer expects the centre to open in the second half of next year.
At this stage, Frasers has released an expression of interest without approaching prospective tenants. Bakker says he has designed the urban farm without anyone particularly in mind. "I deliberately haven't spoken to the Neil Perrys and the like," he says. "I like the idea of someone who is a conventional hospitality player that can [use this garden to] inform the rest of their business."
Rooftop Gardening For Greener Cities
February 15, 2018
Rooftop Gardening For Greener Cities
Shykh Seraj with Sheikh Al Ahmad Nahid at the latter's rooftop garden in Chittagong. PHOTO: Hridoye Mati O Manush
Rooftop farming is expanding throughout the country very fast.
Two and a half years ago, the initiative of featuring rooftop farming on the television was taken by Channel I's Hridoye Mati O Manush (Soil and People in Heart). In fact, this was my second attempt to expand rooftop agriculture across the country.
During the late 80's, I worked with rooftop gardening in Bangladesh Television's Mati O Manush. At that time, many people raised orchards to grow Kazi guava on their rooftops. Cultivation of other fruits and flowers on rooftops also started. Many housewives and working people used to find self-satisfaction by growing fruits and vegetables on rooftop gardens.
The work was very much out of passion. Later on, I did many TV programmes that featured even poultry farms on rooftops. Raising chicken on rooftops and balconies spread rapidly afterward. Many unemployed youths, housewives, even service-holders, and businessmen started investing in the poultry industry. I mentioned those stories in different articles and TV programmes. A huge expansion of rooftop farming followed countrywide.
Today, more and more people are becoming interested in rooftop gardening, especially in city areas. Many have already turned their passion into a commercial endeavour. Their efforts are helping to make the cities greener, despite lack of cultivable lands there. Some people even rent others' roofs for the purpose. It's expanding also because people always prefer chemical-free organic vegetables and fruits. They can easily get organic and fresh food from rooftop gardening. Moreover, through the spread of greenery on the rooftop, these people are also contributing to creating a healthy environment in urban areas.
Dhaka city has been facing the question of liveability for years. In the yearly residential report of UK's Economist Intelligence Unit, Dhaka stands at 137 among 140 cities of the world. If we want to get out of this situation, obviously Dhaka has to be turned green. The growing number of concrete structures in Dhaka means shrinking of greenery in the megacity.
In 1997, according to the decision of Kiyoto Protocol, Japan made it mandatory to grow spacious gardens on roofs to save the cities from the greenhouse effect. But very few people in our country think that the roof needs to be filled with greenery. When we took 'rooftop farming' as a regular TV programme, there were many issues in front of us. First, we can ensure the production of pure and nutritious vegetables and crops by small-scale rooftop agriculture. Secondly, we can contribute to a better environment by doing it. Thirdly, the roof can be a source of income. Fourthly, it can refresh the mind.
According to World Health Organization, every year 250 thousand people are getting affected by cancer in our country and 150 thousand die. The number is increasing day by day. According to International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) survey, the rate of death caused by cancer is 7.5% in Bangladesh at present. One of the many reasons for cancer is the consumption of poisonous food. We need to produce pure food to evade such poisoning. We need to turn to organic farming. To meet the family needs, many people are growing organic vegetables, fruits, and crops on their roofs.
I have seen that retired government and private service holders, businessmen and industrialists have made their leisure time productive by getting involved in rooftop agriculture. It gives them peace, they say. Even a section of people who don't have their own house or roof, convince their house owner and do gardening in one side of the roof or even in the balcony. It also provides nutrition for the family. Besides cultivating fruits and vegetables and raising chickens, pigeons, turkeys etc, some are cultivating fish in drums set on roofs. This might sound strange, even goats, sheep, and cows are being raised on rooftops.
I have seen an inspiring scene recently. Sheikh Al Ahmad Nahid, assistant professor of Fisheries Department of Chittagong Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, established an integrated rooftop agriculture research centre on the roof at their campus quarters. Many students successfully do research there. Along with vegetables and fruits, there is a reputable research centre for aquarium fish reproduction. He is finding new technologies to spread rooftop agriculture nationwide. This is a great milestone for our rooftop farming mission.
Those who are building a new home can take advice from experts to make the roof suitable for small-scale agriculture. Those who don't have their own home can do it by persuading their house owner or do it in the balcony. I have seen people of different cities becoming interested in rooftop agriculture. To lessen the pollution of the city and increase the oxygen in the air, rooftop agriculture can be a nice solution. In this case, the government has a role to play. For example, they can make it mandatory to arrange solar panel and greenery while constructing a building or house. Everyone will make their roof green. I hope that the day is not far when every city including Dhaka will have a layer of greenery.
Anchorage Wants To Make It Easier To Build Rooftop Greenhouses
Anchorage Wants To Make It Easier To Build Rooftop Greenhouses
February 12, 2018 | Author: Devin Kelly
Artist rendering: Baxter Senior Living, a planned senior housing project in East Anchorage, included rooftop greenhouses as part of its initial plans, but that piece is on hold until the city approves new regulations. (Provided by J.R. Wilcox / Baxter Senior Living)
As part of plans to build senior housing in East Anchorage, the development company Baxter Senior Living wanted to give residents a place to garden — and settled on rooftop greenhouses.
But the idea ran into trouble at the city's permitting office. The greenhouses would have made the building too tall.
It was a wrinkle for a new project — but it also fed into a larger conversation in Anchorage about making it easier for people to grow and even sell their own food. Now, a few years later, there's a proposal from the administration of Mayor Ethan Berkowitz to make rooftop greenhouses easier to build.
The proposal would allow developers to build rooftop greenhouses 10 feet above height limits. It's aimed at new construction for large apartment, commercial and industrial buildings, said city planner Ryan Yelle.
The measure, being introduced to the Anchorage Assembly Tuesday, is one of several efforts by the city to ease regulations farmers and food advocates have called burdensome. In the past two years, the city has adopted laws that cut fees for farmers markets, eased the sale of cottage foods like bread and jam, and allowed the markets to be located on parkland.
For the greenhouses, a land use permit and inspection would be required, because of how much a greenhouse weighs and holds water. The greenhouse also can't block sunlight for neighbors between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. in the winter.
Anchorage, like all other towns and villages in Alaska, is vulnerable to disruptions in the food supply network. The state imports nearly all of its food, mostly on container ships. A mechanical problem on a ship in Seattle can mean that milk, eggs or bananas don't make it to Anchorage shelves.
The rooftop greenhouse proposal isn't meant to fix Anchorage's supply shortage, Yelle said. He framed it as an extra way for developers to offer gardening to people who live and work in Anchorage.
City restrictions haven't entirely stopped rooftop greenhouses from sprouting up in Anchorage. But the current laws make it more difficult, Yelle said.
J.R. Wilcox is the president of Baxter Senior Living, a senior housing facility being built in East Anchorage. The plans call for 116 apartment units for seniors, including services for residents with Alzheimer's and dementia.
The company's architect came up with the idea of putting greenhouses on the roof, Wilcox said. Renderings of the project show transparent structures with slanted tops.
"This is something really nice in assisted living, for people to be able to garden," Wilcox said.
But the greenhouse would have exceeded the height limit for the building, Wilcox said. The developers would have had to remove an entire story to make it work. After talking to the city, it turned out that changing the law itself was easier than granting an exception to the rule, Wilcox said.
Rooftop gardens are ubiquitous in New York City and other cities around the U.S. and Canada. Yelle, the Anchorage planner, said he looked at regulations in New York and Montreal while drafting the city's proposal.
"It's a very popular thing throughout the north," Wilcox said.
More than a year ago, the Alaska Food Policy Council, a nonprofit coalition that advocates for more self-reliance in statewide food production, began floating the rooftop greenhouse idea to city planners and economic development officials.
Danny Consenstein, a board member of the council, said there's a business argument for changing regulations that otherwise make it difficult to garden on a small scale.
A few months ago, the Food Policy Council and the Berkowitz administration announced "mini-grants" for local food projects. Consenstein said he's been impressed while reading through the applications. Many came from schools and involve hydroponics, the process of growing plants indoors in water, Consenstein said.
Consenstein said rooftop gardening is another piece of that puzzle.
"There are exciting, good things going on at the school level, the apartment complex level, at the community garden level," Consenstein said.
When applying for its building permit, Baxter Senior Living excluded a greenhouse from the plans.
But Wilcox said the building is months from being finished, and it's been engineered so a greenhouse can be added if the Berkowitz administration's proposal becomes law.
The Anchorage Assembly is expected to hold a hearing on the proposal on Feb. 27.
About this Author
Devin Kelly covers Anchorage city government and general assignments.
Is Personalized, Next-Day Delivery the Future of Urban Farming?
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Lauren Rathmell in Lufa Farms' Anjou greenhouse in March 2017 Lufa Farms
Is Personalized, Next-Day Delivery the Future of Urban Farming?
February 9, 2018 | SARAH TRELEAVEN
A rooftop-farming venture in Montreal has found success with a model that’s part CSA, part Amazon Prime.
Canadians have grown accustomed to seeing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pop up in unlikely photos, sometimes shirtless or in athletic gear. But Trudeau was wearing a suit for a planned photo op when he toured Lufa Farms, a 63,000-square-foot rooftop greenhouse in Montreal, last March. During his visit, Trudeau took a moment to harvest a bag of greens for his family.
One of Canada’s largest urban farming projects, Lufa Farms is the brainchild of Mohamed Hage and Lauren Rathmell. Back in 2011, Hage and Rathmell—partners in business and life—opened the world’s first commercial rooftop greenhouse, a 31,000-square-foot space atop an old Montreal warehouse. They now oversee three hydroponic greenhouses, each placed on a sturdy, low-rise building, with a combined 138,000 square feet.
The rooftop greenhouse in Montreal’s Ahuntsic neighborhood (Lufa Farms)
The enterprise is part of a wider movement to bring rooftop gardens and greenhouses to North American cities. Gotham Greens operates a 75,000-square-foot rooftop greenhouse in Chicago, said to be the world’s biggest. In Brooklyn, a 65,000-square-foot greenhouse is planned to open on top of a building in the Navy Yard later this year. The concept is suited to a range of environments. Cold-weather cities like Montreal and Chicago have limited growing seasons, which a greenhouse can extend. A rooftop garden maximizes space in a dense urban area and uses less water than traditional agriculture, an advantage in a city or region with a limited water supply.
Whereas many urban farms sell to restaurants or grocery stores, or via farmer’s markets, Lufa has a key point of differentiation: its direct-to-consumer business model. On its website, shoppers can customize baskets of fresh food, which are then delivered to more than 300 pick-up points across the city, or to their homes for an added fee. It’s like community-supported agriculture (CSA) or a farm share merged with the personalization and convenience of Uber Eats or Amazon Prime. “We decided that we needed to give people the option to order what they wanted, and that we would figure out how to get those items to them,” Rathmell said.
In order to serve customers year-round, Lufa Farms pulls in other partners, including more conventional farmers. This helps it prevent seasonal defection (as can happen with some CSAs, once winter arrives and turnips become dispiritingly abundant). Shoppers start with a base basket—suggestions that are automatically included but can be removed. The website offers everything from locally baked bread and Florida citrus to blood sausage and pork pies, quinoa tabbouleh, and organic face wash.
Customers receive an email on Friday to notify them that the marketplace is open, and they have until Sunday night at midnight to lock in their order for a basket to be delivered the next day. From there, the Lufa Farms team gets to work—notifying suppliers, picking the appropriate produce, and channeling it all through a central distribution team that sends the baskets out late Monday morning to pickup points (such as cafes and yoga studios) via electric vehicles.
Part of Lufa’s delivery fleet (Lufa Farms)
Lufa has a checklist of criteria that partner farms and suppliers—numbering in the hundreds—must meet, including no synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides. An organic certification is common, but not required; Lufa Farms’ own produce is not organic, since hydroponic growing methods are not eligible for the certification in Canada.
Currently, Lufa supplies about 25 percent of the food it sells, although that proportion goes up in the middle of winter when more conventional growers have to contend with Quebec’s frozen ground. Rathmell and Hage anticipate the share will increase with their newly opened third greenhouse. “We’re continuing to scale up, and we want to grow as much as we can ourselves,” said Rathmell. The company grows lettuce, bok choy, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, eggplants, zucchini, and many kinds of greens. Lufa also offers foods from other growers that consumers are surprised to see in the middle of a Montreal winter, like locally-grown strawberries.
“If you can grow a strawberry in January, you can charge whatever you want.”
The idea of growing strawberries in Montreal in January may seem, to put it in produce terms, bananas. But Aaron Fox, an assistant professor of urban and community agriculture at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, in California, said it makes good business sense to focus on these kinds of coveted items: “If you can grow a strawberry in January, you can charge whatever you want.” Urban farmers, he noted, often end up growing boutique crops because they offer a better financial return than cheaper staples like corn and potatoes, which are not cost-effective with a small yield.
While many urban farmers struggle to make a living, Lufa Farms is shaping up to be a success. It now delivers more than 10,000 baskets of food every week in the Greater Montreal, Trois-Rivieres, and Quebec City corridor, feeding about 2 percent of the population in that area. Launched with some $1.6 million from the founders, it has since received $2.8 million in venture capital, and broke even in 2016. Districts in Montreal are competing to host the next greenhouse, and loyal customers have dubbed themselves “Lufavores.”
Rathmell described Lufa as a “local food engine,” and said the plan is eventually to replicate it in other seasonal food deserts. (The company was recently in discussions to expand into New England, but it is focusing on Quebec for now.) “We’ve created a scalable model for urban agriculture that can theoretically make cities self-sufficient in their food production by growing year-round in greenhouses,” Rathmell said.
For now, though, what makes Lufa work is not strict self-sufficiency, but partnering with suppliers far and wide, and giving the customer exactly what she wants—not a box full of rutabagas.
About the Author
Sarah Treleaven Sarah Treleaven is a Canadian journalist who divides her time between Toronto and Jerusalem.
New Rooftop Farms Sprout Up In Singapore!
American Hydroponics (AmHydro) of Arcata, CA and ComCrop of Singapore are proud to announce the development of an 8-greenhouse rooftop farm to provide pesticide-free, sustainable food to this Island Nation.
Singapore to produce more of it's own food!
New Rooftop Farms Sprout Up In Singapore!
Published on February 2, 2018Joe Swartz Vice President at American Hydroponics / Hydroponic and Controlled Environment Agriculture Consultant
American Hydroponics (AmHydro) of Arcata, CA and ComCrop of Singapore are proud to announce the development of an 8-greenhouse rooftop farm to provide pesticide-free, sustainable food to this Island Nation.
ComCrop, Singapore’s premier rooftop farming company, will be utilizing specialized rooftop greenhouse technology and state of the art AmHydro hydroponic growing systems to address skyrocketing demand for locally grown, sustainable produce.
Converting previously neglected rooftop spaces into urban farms, ComCrop is the 1st and only AVA certified rooftop farm in all of Singapore. Their goal is to increase the volume of domestically produced food, as over 90% is currently imported. ComCrop sells fresh herbs and leafy greens online, to supermarket customers, as well as to restaurants. "This new farm will be producing new crops for these customers by July 2018". - ComCrop CEO, Peter Barber
AmHydro, worldwide leader in hydroponic rooftop farming technology has previously designed and built rooftop hydroponic systems for successful industry leading growers, such as Lufa Farms in Montreal, Gotham Greens, and Sky Vegetables, both in NYC. This new rooftop farming project now puts AmHydro in 66 countries across the globe.
To design and build their new rooftop growing systems, ComCrop CEO Peter Barber explains that “ComCrop chose AmHydro over competing systems because they are best suited for our rooftop environment and will deliver the best yields in Singapore’s unique climate.”
He also adds that “the new greenhouses combined with AmHydro growing systems will significantly increase our yield and allow us to sell higher volumes and larger varieties of leafy green vegetables to local customers.”
AmHydro High-Performance Growing System
AmHydro Vice President Joe Swartz says, “We are very pleased and look forward to extending our close working relationship with ComCrop as they expand to more sites across Singapore and beyond.”
He adds, “Rooftop farming is just one of the many tools that we will use to feed our urban populations in the future, and working with great companies such as ComCrop will help us to achieve that goal.”
Worker tending current ComCrop rooftop farm
This rooftop farming complex will consist of 8 rooftop greenhouses. The first farm (phase 1) will be 6,930 square feet, capable of producing over 332,000 plants (approx. 90,000 pounds of fresh food) per year. The entire project, when complete, will total over 35,000 square feet.
For more information, please contact Joe Swartz, Vice President of AmHydro at:
Joe@AmHydro.com
Hotels Design Functioning Gardens to Cater to New Trends
As guests demand fresher food that has been sourced locally (not to mention organically), hotels across the country are creating gardens and small farms to grow herbs and vegetables, and to even keep bees for honey. Best of all, even urban hotels are putting their rooftops to use and growing some basics for the kitchens below.
Hotels Design Functioning Gardens to Cater to New Trends
by Jena Tesse Fox | Jan 22, 2018
As guests demand fresher food that has been sourced locally (not to mention organically), hotels across the country are creating gardens and small farms to grow herbs and vegetables, and to even keep bees for honey. Best of all, even urban hotels are putting their rooftops to use and growing some basics for the kitchens below.
Creating these gardens and farms and making them—literally—fruitful can be more challenging than simply planting some seeds, as chefs and food-and-beverage teams often learn through experience.
Water, water everywhere...
At the Westin New York Grand Central, chef Brian Wieler created a garden for vegetables and herbs on the high-rise’s rooftop, but didn’t think about irrigating the soil. “The first year, it was me with a garden hose,” he said. “I'd have to spend about an hour-and-a-half up there every day to water the garden.” After that first year, the hotel installed an irrigation system with timers to make sure all of the plants get the right amount of water at the right time of day.
When executive chef Daven Wardynski created a garden with 15 raised beds on the fifth floor sundeck at the Omni Chicago Hotel, he also didn’t have an irrigation system during the project’s first year. “The tomatoes didn't perform very well because of that,” he said. When he transferred to the Omni Amelia Island resort in Florida, he had an opportunity to create a full farm as part of the resort’s Sprouting Project—and remembered to create an irrigation system first. He decided to create two aquaponic lines rather than a hydroponic line because aquaponic systems include live fish that supply natural nutrients to the plants.
At Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., executive chef Bernard Ibarra thought that he would have sufficient irrigation when he started building the resort’s Catalina View Gardens, but didn’t realize how quickly it could get out of control. During the garden’s first season, Ibarra would open the pipeline from a water tank up the hill to irrigate the soil for an hour—but would then get tied up in the kitchen and not be able to close the pipeline for six hours or so. “The place looked like a lake,” he said. “A better irrigation system was put in place and now we still open it manually, but because of the numerous pipes and the hose alongside the the growing rows, it's a lot easier to control.”
Evolving a Garden
When Wieler began planning the rooftop garden at the Westin, he tapped one of the hotel’s in-house carpenters from the engineering department to build the vegetable beds from white cedar wood. “It’s resistant to rot and several species of insects and things that can burrow in the wood and help to destroy them more quickly,” he explained. “I didn't want to put in any pressure-treated wood or the treated wood that people use outside. It's got arsenic and other chemicals and you really don't want to associate it with food. The pressure-treated wood that they sell in the lumberyards, wood that's got some sort of a green hue or tinge to it, that is actually soaked in chemicals to prevent pests and rot and things like that. So it's not something that you really want to utilize for your garden.”
Masons then put the beds up on risers made of paving bricks to help protect the integrity of the roof base, which itself is lined with small rocks (a “rock ballast roof”) to help with drainage and to handle the weight of the vegetable beds.
When Ibarra wanted to create the Catalina View Gardens at Terranea, he consulted owner Jim York to learn about designing an effective space. To prevent gophers from attacking the vegetables, Ibarra and his team installed chicken wire 1 foot under the ground and also as fencing surrounding the gardens. “For the most part, for the past four years, it’s been gopher-free,” he said.
The Omni Amelia Island, meanwhile, had an old greenhouse that Wardynski was able to repurpose for the Sprouting Project. “We had to replace the tarp and lay cement on the inside so it wasn't an earth floor,” he said. “There was not necessarily any engineer that was brought in to design the space; it was me with a post hole digger putting in an enclosure for our chickens or a post that we could level off so we can set beehives off the ground. It's just a continual process of evolving.”
Wardynski—who grew up on a farm in Michigan—also faced challenges in creating his Florida garden. “In Michigan, we grow lettuces in spring and summer,” he said. “When you try to grow lettuces here in the summer, it's an epic fail because it's too hot. Everything wants to go to seed and then die.”
Make a Garden Grow
Much like designing a lobby or restaurant, the hotel teams have been able to see what works and what doesn’t as they develop their gardens and farms, and adjust them as needed. “The sun and the wind have a big say in the way the vegetables grow,” Ibarra said. “It's an ongoing lesson because the weather changes at times and the sun doesn't always shine at the same times.”
Since the rooftop garden opened at the Westin, it has grown from four vegetable beds and four whiskey barrels (for herbs) to 12 beds and nine barrels. And over the years, Wieler learned how to take advantage of the rooftop locations, using shade from the surrounding buildings to protect more sensitive plants (like lettuce) that can be scorched in the summer heat. He also learned what crops are suitable for a rooftop and which are not: While zucchini and squash may be popular in the kitchens, the huge leaves make them impractical for a limited footprint. The Sprouting Project at the Omni Amelia Island also developed an apiary that started with two colonies of bees and eventually grew into 16 colonies, as well as a “barrel room” with 36 20-liter barrels that are filled with everything from cocktails to hot sauces made on-site to vinegar made from leftover wine.
And Wardynski isn’t done designing his farm. “This year, my hope is to move one of the fence rows back and lay in an area that can actually have beans and vine items,” he said, noting that squashes, corn and beans can “flourish” off each other as they grow.
This Caltech Dining Center’s Freshest Vegetables Are Grown On Its Roof
This Caltech Dining Center’s Freshest Vegetables Are Grown On Its Roof
Executive chef Zach Chambers, of Caltech Dining, walks through Caltech’s Chandler Cafe’s roof garden on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2018. The aeroponic towers are growing greens, mixed lettuces, chills, eggplants, onions, and herbs with the help of LA Urban Farms. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)
By JASON HENRY | jhenry@scng.com | Pasadena Star News
January 14, 2018 at 8:22 pm
The first course prepared for the most recent “Dress Dinner” at Caltech wasn’t unusual for the fancy, end-of-term meal for students, but the source of the mixed greens, flowers and other vegetables in the dish is a point of pride for executive chef Zach Chambers.
Forget farm-to-table, everything on the plate was grown on the dining hall’s roof.
“The whole first course this term was a mixed salad from up here,” Chambers said, standing among rows and rows of Tower Gardens, aeroponics systems installed by L.A.Urban Farms on theChandler Cafe‘s roof over the summer. The 48 towers, standing about 5 yo 6 feet tall, can each grow more than two dozens vegetables at once and they are easy enough for the cafe’s staff to harvest as needed.
(Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)
“We literally have a roof-to-table program here,” said Jonathan Webster, senior director of Caltech’s dining services.
Today, the garden grows peppers, eggplants, heads of lettuce, kale, arugula, basil and other herbs.
Webster wanted to make use of the cafe’s large rooftop, but he initially thought a traditional garden, with heavy soil, would weigh too much and require more attention than his staff could give. At a conference, he learned about the vertical Tower Gardens, which take up less than 3 square feet each. He found immediate support from his superiors because the students get better food, the dining center is more environmentally responsible and it might just save some money too.
The aeroponics system pumps water to the top of the tower and then drips it onto the roots of the plants for about 15 minutes every half an hour.
Eventually, most, if not all, of the water will come from condensation collected from the dining center’s air conditioning unit, Webster said. He also wants to have solar panels installed to generate the power needed for the pumps.
All of the food is utilized in the Chandler Cafe, a dining hall that serves more than 700 students each day. The chefs plan menus around what crops might be available up to three weeks advance. The forecasting allows them to plant more of a particular vegetable if they know they’ll need it in the future.
“That’s kind of the essence of cooking seasonally,” Chambers said. “One way or another, we’re going to make use of this stuff.”
When they didn’t have an immediate need for chilies they grew in the garden, the cooking staff turned the remainder into chili powder. A particularly large bounty of peppers was preserved for later use.
Chambers said at least one or two dishes each night contains something from the roof.
Caltech is known for its experimentation, and Webster said the institute’s kitchens are no exception.
There have been some unexpected hiccups. Birds destroyed a number of tomato plants in the beginning, prompting Webster buy a wooden owl to act as a scarecrow. There hasn’t been a problem since, he said.
Caltech spent about $24,000 on the towers, but the exact cost of the entire set up wasn’t available. The first 23 towers went up at the end of the last academic year; they added another 36 shortly before students returned this fall. There’s plenty of space left on the roof for an even larger garden if the initial experiment proves successful, Webster said.
Currently, every piece of produce is weighed and added to a spreadsheet to track what the kitchen is using compared to traditional vendors. He said the experiment has only been running for a few months, and it’s too early to determine the fiscal impact.
“The prospect of payback is there,” Webster said.
India: Startups Reaping Dividends in Urban Farms
India: Startups Reaping Dividends in Urban Farms
The urban farming startup ecosystem could be worth $1billion in India in the next two to four years and will become essential due to environmental concerns
By Shashwati Shankar
Economic Times India
Jan 5, 2018
In the past three to four years, more than a dozen urban farming startups have been launched in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Jaipur and elsewhere. They provide services such as setting up rooftop and balcony farms for independent homes and companies with vertical farming options for those with more wall space than floor area.
“I began with conducting farming and gardening workshops but in the last one or two years we have seen interest significantly increase,” said Kapil Mandawewala, founder of Edible Routes. “I get about 30 orders a month, with a majority coming from independent homes and the rest from community centers, educational institutions or corporates.” Edible Routes was registered in 2016 but were operational in the urban farming space for three years prior to that. Mandawewala began experimenting with farming on family-owned land in Gujarat in 2008.
The space for terrace, balcony or farm gardening could range from 50 square feet in a balcony to 50 acres on a farm, with the initial pricing to start a terrace garden ranging from Rs 5,000 to Rs 50,000. “The maintenance cost for most urban farms usually ranges between Rs 1-2 lakh in a year, whereas for the gardens it’s a few thousand rupees. This remains a challenge as 10 out of 20 requests from customers interested in setting up an urban farm are lost because of the initial investment,” said Mandawewala. Delhi-based Edible Routes has operationally broken even and makes revenue of Rs 3-5 lakh a month, he said.
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North Bethesda, Maryland's Pike & Rose Getting Big Rooftop Farm For Tenants
North Bethesda, Maryland's Pike & Rose Getting Big Rooftop Farm For Tenants
By Jeff Clabaugh | @wtopclabaughJanuary 4, 2018 12:29 pm
WASHINGTON — D.C.-based Up Top Acres, which got its start planting rooftop farms in the D.C. area in 2014, is preparing for its biggest project yet: a 17,000-square-foot rooftop farm at North Bethesda’s Pike & Rose mixed-used development
And it will offer a membership program, called community-supported agriculture, to both Pike & Rose office workers and residents.
“It’ll be about $25 worth of fresh produce a week. They’ll get anywhere from eight to 10 items per week,” Up Top Acres co-founder Kristof Grina told WTOP.
“They’ll grab it in the evening and take it home and cook with it, and we’ll provide recipes to go along,” he said.
Up Top Acres runs a small network of close to a half dozen rooftop farms in the D.C. area. Its largest prior to the upcoming Pike & Rose farm is a 7,000 rooftop farm at 4905 Elm Street in Bethesda Row. That rooftop farm has partnered with nearby restaurants, including Jose Andres’ Jaleo Bethesda, since its first planting in 2015.
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Grina says they have learned much about what works and what does not work, as far as crops planted in rooftop farms in the last couple of years.
“Stuff that really likes the heat,” do best, Grina said. “It gets a lot of sun up on the roof, so your tomatoes, your peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, all of those things do really well, plus we have an extended growing season,” he added.
Both the Pike & Rose and Bethesda Row projects for Up Top Acres are in partnership with building owners Federal Realty Trust, which has said it plans to replicate large-scale rooftop farms at more of its buildings in the future.
In addition to the produce, rooftop farms also save money by reducing roof maintenance costs in the long run and increasing efficiency as a green roof, FRT said.
Up Top Acres said traditional farms measure the distance their produce travels in miles driven, while it measures it in flights of stairs. The company also has a farm membership at 55 M Street Southeast in the Capital Riverfront.
In addition to Jaleo, Up Top’s restaurant and retail customers include Blue Jacket, Equinox, Little Red Fox, The Oval Room, A Baked Joint and Glen’s Garden Market.
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Reclaiming Our Cities, Starting From Food
Reclaiming Our Cities, Starting From Food
10 JANUARY 2018 MICHELA MARCHI
Over half the world’s people now lives in cities, an extraordinary statistic given that in 1900, just over a century ago, only 10% of the population was urban.
And the trend is continuing in the same direction: Predictions estimate that 75% of us will be city-dwellers by 2050. The roots of this anthropological upset lie in the very idea of progress, in that paradigm of infinite, rule-free growth that dominates the West: Modernity is by definition urban. The rural and natural are disappearing from our lives and everything that lies outside the metropolitan area is swallowed up and transformed into mere function, answering to the city’s needs, or rather adapted to the urban organization of the world. But could we rethink the urban fabric and the metropolitan area, starting from a recovery of that lost rurality? Could we imagine and above all design our cities in a way that recolonizes with greater humanity the spaces in which modernity lives?
Modernity has in fact forgotten to answer a fundamental question: If everyone lives in cities, then how will we be fed? Who will feed us? How is the food that arrives in our metropolises produced, distributed, sold, consumed (and shamefully wasted), now and in the future?
The industrial production model has in practice engulfed every aspect of our life, and most worryingly has relegated agriculture and rural areas to a marginal role, with a removal of the rural that is not only physical but also intellectual. This has progressed so far that agricultural areas are perceived and treated by urban and regional planning as “not yet urbanized” spaces. And yet until a few decades ago, the agricultural areas at the edges of cities had close links with the centers, and many areas inside the cities themselves were being cultivated and serving important functions such as maintaining the climate during the hottest season. These days the most common image we have of agriculture in cities is limited to urban food gardens, which, especially in Italy, tend to be “marginal” in all senses: often illegal and located along the edge of railway lines or in other degraded, peripheral areas. And environmental education often struggles to leave room for the multidisciplinary food education that could ensure children and young people get the training they need to interpret the world from different perspectives, prioritizing social and environmental aspects over purely productivist ones.
What has happened? And how can we reappropriate those spaces, rural identity and agricultural knowledge that would allow us to tackle the challenge of an urbanized future at the mercy of a dramatically changing climate?
Agriculture and Urbanization: A Common History
As architect Carolyn Steel writes in Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives, this process of urbanization began 10,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, when agriculture and urbanizationdeveloped side by side. It is no coincidence that these activities developed at the same time, she says. Cities and agriculture are linked and each needs the other. She outlines the subsequent course of history, as the domestication of wheat gave our ancestors a food source that allowed them to establish permanent settlements. The cycles of the harvest then went on to dominate life in cities throughout the pre-industrial era. Not only was food grown and reared within the city, but streets, squares and other public spaces were the only places where food was bought and sold. We need to imagine cities full of food, places in which it would be hard to ignore where your Sunday lunch came from, given that it had probably been bleating outside your window a few days earlier, as the picture of Smithfield in 1830 reminds us.
The birth of the railway and a food revolution
Only a decade later the railways had arrived, with pigs and sheep among the first passengers. Suddenly these animals no longer reached the city markets on their own trotters, but were slaughtered somewhere in the countryside, out of sight and out of mind. This changed everything. Cities were able to grow in every shape and direction, with no more geographical restraints limiting its growth and access. Just look at how London developed in the 90 years following the arrival of the trains, morphing from a small, compact, easy-to-feed cluster to a vast sprawling metropolis that would be very hard to feed if food was only being transported on foot or by horse.
With cars came the total emancipation of the city from any visible relationship with nature, and then the arrival of foodstuffs that made us dependent on unsustainable models, harmful to us and the planet: factory farms, monocultures, the indiscriminate use of pesticides, herbicides and synthetic fertilizers that leave the soil sterile, products that travel across continents, refrigerated and plastic-wrapped, consuming water and emitting greenhouse gases with terrible effects on the climate, the environment and our health.
What can we do about all this?
It is not a new question, and in fact Thomas More was already asking it 500 years ago in his Utopia, writes Steel. More describes a series of semi-independent cities, a day’s walk apart, where everyone enjoys cultivating vegetables in their gardens, and eats communal meals together. Another famous utopian vision is that of Ebenezer Howard and his “garden cities”: a similar concept of semi-independent cities surrounded by arable land and linked by railways. Attempts were made to make them a reality, but they failed. Carolyn Steel explains that there is a basic problem with these utopian visions, which is that they are utopian. More chose this word intentionally because it has a double derivation from the Greek: It can mean a “good place” (eu +topos) or a “non-place” (ou + topos), in other words an ideal, something imaginary that we can never have.
From Utopia to Sitopia
Instead, as a conceptual tool for rethinking human settlements, Steel proposes “sitopia,” from the Ancient Greek sitos (“food”) and topos (“place”). In order to think about the question of human cohabitation and how we want to see our urban future, we must realize that we already live in a sitopia, that our world is guided by food and that if we become aware of this then we can use food as a powerful and extraordinary tool. This process starts from knowledge, from educating people so that they can recognize what they are eating. We must rediscover markets and we must demand and put into practice policies that can renew a pact with the countryside. We must act on the food supply chain, valuing quality and encouraging direct sales, including in the restaurant industry, making sourcing easier and launching awareness-raising campaigns.
Many cities have already introduced urban agriculture programs to support food production: Ghent, for example, has involved restaurateurs in the spread of a local quality brand and the promotion of a vegetarian option on restaurant and café menus as well as in school cafeterias. Through the creation of 50 community kitchens, Vancouver is encourging neighbors to be more social and to cook together. Lusaka has involved local women in the development of a program to help them start their own food businesses, while Toronto has developed a strategy with local residents to come up with a list of healthy foods to be sold within affilitated shops located within food deserts.
We must look at how agriculture offers sustainable solutions to designing and living in cities, imagining food systems that take into account urban needs and lifestyles, but also and above all the challenges that the future holds for us. And the future can be imagined starting from the education of our children, our young people, starting perhaps with the cultivation of an educational food garden supported by serious food and environmental education programs that talk about prevention and health too. This process must necessarily expand to the entire surrounding area and region so that it is not reduced to mere administrative marketing.
Sources
“Food and the city,” Slowfood 44, February 2010
Research Outlines Interconnected Benefits of Urban Agriculture
Research Outlines Interconnected Benefits of Urban Agriculture
Led by ASU and Google, the study assesses the value of urban agriculture and quantifies its benefits on a global scale
January 10, 2018
From a vacant plot in a blighted neighborhood spring neatly combed rows of plants put in by the neighbors. They meticulously care for this small piece of land, and among the drab-looking buildings sprouts a patch of green. Cultivating the land may have started as a way to unite a neighborhood, to give pride to place, or it might be the project of a local high school to teach land stewardship.
The urban agriculture phenomenon has grown over the years for many reasons, each specific to the plot of land or rooftop it covers. While most of the benefits from these efforts seem to be limited and very local, when taken collectively the result is a significant environmental impact.
The Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis campus garden. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Now a team of researchers led by Arizona State University and Google has assessed the value of urban agriculture and quantified its benefits at a global scale. They report their findings in “A Global Geospatial Ecosystems Services Estimate of Urban Agriculture,” in the current issue of Earth’s Future.
Crunching the numbers
“For the first time, we have a data-driven approach that quantifies the ecosystem benefits from urban agriculture,” said Matei Georgescu, an ASU associate professor of geographical sciences and urban planning and corresponding author of the paper. “Our estimates of ecosystem services show potential for millions of tons of food production, thousands of tons of nitrogen sequestration, billions of kilowatt hours of energy savings and billions of cubic meters of avoided storm runoff from agriculture in urban areas.”
The researchers analyzed global population, urban, meteorological, terrain and Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) data sets in Google Earth Engine to come to their global scale estimates. They then aggregated them by country.
Overall, the researchers estimated the annual value of four ecosystem services provided by existing vegetation in urban areas to be on the order of $33 billion. In this scenario, they projected an annual food production of 100 million to 180 million tons, energy savings of 14 billion to 15 billion kilowatt-hours (insulation properties provided by soil on roofs), nitrogen sequestration between 100,000 to 170,000 tons and avoided storm runoff of 45 billion to 57 billion cubic meters annually.
With intense urban agriculture implementation, the researchers estimate the overall annual worth of urban agriculture could be as much as $80 billion to $160 billion. Importantly, urban agriculture could help feed a world that may face future challenges in industrial agriculture as a result of climate change.
“We’ve known there are benefits to having these small plots of land in our cities, but we found that the benefits extend well beyond having fresh food in the hands of those who will consume it,” explained lead author Nicholas Clinton of Google.
“By integrating across elements that comprise the food-energy-water nexus, our work characterizes the heterogeneous nature of ecosystem services. It is a benchmark global scale assessment,” added Georgescu, who also is a senior scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at ASU.
In addition to Georgescu and Clinton, co-authors of the paper are Albie Miles of the University of Hawaii; Peng Gong of Tsinghua University, Beijing; ASU graduate students Michelle Stuhlmacher, Nazli Uludere and Melissa Wagner; and Chris Herwig of Google.
Urban agriculture’s full effect
“The most obvious benefit of urban agriculture is that it improves access to healthy foods,” Stuhlmacher said. “In addition to considering yield, our analysis evaluates the potential ecosystem services — such as urban nitrogen fixation, pollination, biological control of pests, control of damaging stormwater runoff and energy conservation — that result from urban agriculture.”
The work, the researchers say, provides more than an accounting of the effect of urban agriculture in one scenario. It can be used as a tool for future assessments of the changing urban agriculture landscape to better understand tradeoffs between urban design strategies.
“The value of this approach to the global community — research, governmental organizations, political groups — is that it provides local stakeholders with a quantitative framework that they themselves can use. For example, they can assess local implications of varying urban agriculture deployment scenarios based on current or projected urban extent, current or projected building height and facades, different yields, etc., that are all specific to the location under consideration,” Clinton explained.
“The global estimates that we provide are useful because they provide a benchmark for other researchers but the societal benefits extend well beyond that because of the implementation of Google’s Earth Engine platform,” Georgescu added. “Anyone on the planet who wants to know whether and how much urban agriculture can provide for their locality can now do so using open data and code provided with the paper.”
Looking at the future of urban agriculture, Clinton said countries that have the most incentives to encourage it to share two primary characteristics — sufficient urban area, and a national-scale mixture of crops that lends itself to urban cultivation.
“Relatively temperate, developed or developing countries with the right mix of crops are expected to have the greatest incentives for urban agriculture,” he said. “These would include China, Japan, Germany and the U.S.”
Seeing the whole picture
“Analysis of the food-energy-water nexus sometimes leaves the impression that benefits are concentrated in one place and costs in another,” said Tom Torgersen, program director for the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Water, Sustainability and Climate program, which supported the research. “But that’s not always the case. Urban agriculture, for example, is an underdeveloped industry that could produce food, sequester urban nitrogen, generate energy savings, help moderate the urban climate and reduce stormwater runoff, as well as provide more nutritious foods.”
In addition to the NSF, funding for the project came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a National High Technology Grant from China and Google Inc.
Urban Rooftop Farms As New City Culture
Urban Rooftop Farms As New City Culture
January 3, 2018 11:30 AM Aditya Neupane
KATHMANDU, January 3, 2018
Do you feel that the price of vegetables is increasing by the day? If so then rooftop farming can be the best solution for your problem. Rooftop farming could be the best available option, considering you have some open space, for greenery and some organic vegetables.
In any highly populated city, one of the main issues is constantly increasing the price of agricultural produce and their poor quality. Though Nepal is an agricultural country, where agriculture is the main source of income, our agricultural products are not enough even for the local population. Growing urbanization in cultivable lands and migration to central cities might be the main reasons behind the gradual fall in production of crops.
According to the data of economic activities at Nepal Rastra bank, cultivable land in Nepal has decreased by 30,334 hectares in the fiscal year 2016/17. Hence, rooftop farming can significantly contribute to decreasing the import of agricultural products from other countries. Vegetables and fruits like spinach, spring onion, coriander, spring garlic, strawberries, guava, oranges, and tomatoes can be produced through rooftop farming.
Rooftop farming comprises various techniques, including Aeroponic Agriculture (agriculture done in air without soil), Hydroponic Agriculture (agriculture done in nutrient solution without using soil) and traditional agriculture (agriculture done in soil), among others. Meanwhile, traditional rooftop farming can be done with the use of different mediums like containers, plastics bags, bottles, while you can also turn your entire roof into a farmland by waterproofing the concrete.
One of the main specialties about rooftop farming is that you can also grow unseasonal vegetables and fruits through the green house effect. Rosy Maharjan, trainer of a project named ‘Phohor Maila Bewasthapan Ko Lagi Pratifal Ma Aadharit’, said, “Small families can easily produce enough vegetables for themselves through rooftop farming if it is done in a scientific way.” The project has been providing training on rooftop farming, waste segregation and composting to the residents of Lalitpur Metropolitan City.
Maharjan added that hybrid breeds of fruits are also available in market, which can be grown in a simple pot on your roof. “People don’t have to waste a lot of money for rooftop farming, household materials such as perforated water jars, bottles, plastic bags and pots can be used for cultivation. If waterproofing and drainage of the roof is good, the farming can also be done for longer period of time,” Maharjan said.
Garden designer at Paknajol-based Kumari Nursery and trainer of rooftop farming, kitchen gardening as well as floriculture, Sesh Maharjan, said people should know that a medium between mud and concrete, like pots or any insulating materials, is a must while doing rooftop farming.
Rooftop farming is quite different from land agriculture because the load and moisture of mud can damage the concrete of the roof. Hence training is necessary before starting rooftop farming, said Maharjan. The weight of mud used in rooftop farming can be decreased by 45 to 50 percent by mixing it with different materials such as straw, compost manure and sand. Maharjan said if rooftop farming is done in a scientific way, the production could suffice an entire family.
Waste management is also one of the reasons for an increase in the trend of rooftop farming because people can use 50 to 60 percent of the household wastes as compost manure. If you’re thinking of doing rooftop farming, it is vital that you insulate the concrete first before laying mud on your roof. Six to eight inches of light mud with good drainage should be enough to begin your agro-adventure.
With an innovative vision of creating a pesticide-free future, a group of three people — Caesar Rana, Prakash Dahal and Biplove Singh —established Aeroroots Pvt Ltd to introduce Aeroponic farming. This kind of farming is being practiced for the first time in the history of Nepal. Aeroponic farming is a process of growing farm vegetables and herbs with less than one tenth of water and no more than nine percent of the farmland required by traditional agriculture to grow the same quantity of produce.
Aeroroots Pvt Ltd employs a new system of growing plants called Aeroponics with the use of a drum containing 60 holes called bends. Each hole contains sponge to hold the roots and water nutrients, while an automatic machine sprays water through a nozzle. CEO of Aeroroots Pvt Ltd Singh said aeroponic farming was the perfect kind of rooftop farming as the process involves less use of soil, resulting in fewer loads.
This kind of farming also prevents different parasitic diseases like ascaris and hookworm that transmit through soil. Singh said, “Vegetables and fruits produced through this method are highly nutritious in comparison to those produced through traditional farming.”
Aeroroots Pvt Ltd currently offers aeroponic vegetables like cauliflower, bitter gourd, cucumber and garlic among others. The aeroroof consumes only 10 to 20 liters of water per week and electricity below 20 watts. Each aeroroof comes along with a manual and costs Rs 75,000, but the cost will be recovered within six to seven months, said Singh.
The CEO-trio is an example of how innovation and out of the box entrepreneurship skills can solve even the most pressing problems. Aeroroots Pvt Ltd has two labs at Kalanki and Baneshwar and one farm at Godawari at present. With people migrating to bigger cities like Kathmandu in search of better facilities and opportunities, rooftop farming can be the only option to become self-sufficient in cities that offer negligible cultivable lands as well as expensive vegetables.
Locally Grown Produce Could Reach New Heights
Jennifer Adams, who began serving as Okaloosa County’s tourist development department director last September, is thinking of starting a produce garden at the Emerald Coast Convention Center.
Jennifer Adams, who began serving as Okaloosa County’s tourist development department director last September, is thinking of starting a produce garden at the Emerald Coast Convention Center.
OKALOOSA ISLAND — Jennifer Adams is pondering a green “What if?” type of question.
Adams, who began serving as Okaloosa County’s tourist development department director last September, is thinking of starting a produce garden at the Emerald Coast Convention Center.
If this idea blooms into reality, organic food might be grown in either a rooftop garden or a traditional garden in the ground.
“We already get fresh, local seafood” for convention guests dining at the center, Adams said Thursday. “It would be great to get fresh, local produce as well.”
She said she has recently been talking about the possible garden with staff from Aramark, which handles food services at the 70,000-square-foot, 15-year-old convention center.
In early 2015, Philadelphia-based Aramark helped establish a 5,000-square-foot rooftop farm at Fenway Park, the home of the Boston Red Sox. Green City Growers in Boston maintains Fenway Farms, which produces more than 6,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables each season to be used in on-site restaurants and concessions.
“At Fenway, the executive chef uses the food in his meals” for diners at the ballpark, said Adams, who is a Boston-area native. “Aramark brought this to our attention, and I thought, ‘Cool!’ Once the weather warms up, we’ll see if we can get a garden so our chef (at the convention center) can use organically grown produce.
“If our building is not conducive to that, we would do a garden outside somewhere.”
The local area obviously has a much longer growing season than Boston, Adams noted. She said the possible garden at the convention center could, depending on the season, feature produce such as potatoes, squash, corn, watermelons, tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, and eggplants.
In addition to working with Aramark on establishing the garden, she said the TDD could partner with the Okaloosa County Extension Office to provide gardening programs to the community.
“This is really preliminary,” Adams said. “We’re only in the idea stage.”
But she added that she expects the convention center’s new general manager to help the possible garden take shape. Former GM Bill Leaman retired last October. His replacement might be on board in February, Adams said.
“We’re going to be very visionary because we are the only convention center between Tallahassee and Pensacola,” she said. “But even if this (proposed garden) doesn’t work out, we have to start thinking beyond the ways we have been thinking for the past 15 years at the convention center. I’m charging my staff to come up with new ideas. Some of them may work, some might not. Why not do the ‘What ifs?’”
Jennifer Bearden, agriculture agent at the County Extension Office in Crestview, said she and other staff have been learning about the possible convention center garden from Extension Director Pam Allen.
“There are just so many ways to grow things these days,” said Bearden, who then noted a vertical garden she saw growing on the side of a building in Pittsburgh.
A raised garden bed, such as the ones that extension officials have set up at several local schools, or a soilless, hydroponic garden are among the options for growing produce on the convention center roof, she said.
“I’m excited to see this whole urban gardening thing take off” at the center, Bearden said. Rooftop gardening stems from “a little out-of-the-box thinking, but it’s a neat way to grow produce.”
Farming Gains Ground In The City
City Farm marketing director Looi Choon Beng demonstrates how little space is needed for an urban garden. – The Malaysian Insight pic by Kamal Ariffin, November 26, 2017.
Farming Gains Ground In The City
Asila Jalil | 26 Nov 2017
THE notion that farming is an activity that requires a huge land area has been clearly debunked as urban farming gains ground among Malaysian city dwellers.
In the heart of Kuala Lumpur, Wong Min Lik has co-founded Moutou Art Space on the rooftop of a building at Lorong Panggong.
The 35-year-old Wong said the rooftop was empty space before they took over in December last year. Today, it has a bar and a garden which brimming with fresh vegetables and herbs such as lemongrass, ginger, mint, lemon, passionfruit, and bitter gourd.
"This is the first time we tried (growing a garden). This is a new experience, growing an edible garden in this city area," said Wong, who didn’t have any prior farming experience.
The full-time artist said the idea to grow their own garden was prompted by concerns about pesticide contamination.
Wong said the produce they gain from the garden is currently used for their own consumption, but they are eventually planning to distribute to communities around their area.
"We hope to influence others to do this, because the more people joining the initiative, the better for the environment," she said.
Growing interest
CityFarm Malaysia, a company specialising in indoor and vertical farming using the hydroponics method, said that demand for their hydroponic kits has increased almost tenfold since the company launched last year.
Run by engineering graduates Looi Choon Beng, Johanson Chew, and Jayden Koay, CityFarm was borne out of a hobby for the trio, who whose gardening kits are priced from RM13.90 for a beginner’s kit to a few thousand ringgit.
City Farm marketing director Looi Choon Beng, an engineering graduate, says the rising interest in urban farming may be due to greater health awareness as well as concerns over food shortages. – The Malaysian Insight pic by Kamal Ariffin, November 26, 2017.
Looi, 28, said the public’s rising interest in urban farming could be due to greater health awareness as well as growing concerns over food shortages as the world population increases.
"All these factors will contribute to need for urban farming. Indoor farming promotes high utilisation of land.
"This will help to sustain the world in the future. Somebody needs to do this thing now, or else we will not be ready for a possible crisis in the future," he said, adding that the company also holds urban farming courses.
To address the lack of space and soil in the city, Plant Cartridge has come up with an ingenious method for city folk to grow their own vegetables without the need for any land.
The company has come up with a cartridge that acts as the growing medium for seeds. Essentially, growers need only to water the cartridge which contains nutrients and seeds, and watch their “farm” grow.
"Soil has three functions which are to hold the root so the plant doesnt fall, to retain water, and to house bacteria that will provide nutrients to the plant,” said company CEO Channing Liang.
"If you can replace these three functions, you don't need soil," Liang told The Malaysian Insight.
Food sustainability
Environmental consultant Eats, Shoots and Roots believe that urban farming is a trend that is here to stay.
The key to sustaining the interest is education and support, and the group does not only provide gardening courses and workshops, it also helps to design gardens for city dwellers with with limited land space.
Strategy director Beatrice Yong said they have built 30 to 35 gardens since they started in 2012.
"I think food plays a very big part of taking care of your family so naturally you see people turning lawns into gardens," said Yong.
Yong, who grows spinach, sweet potato, chilli, and brinjal in her own garden, said having a personal garden at home does not only ensure the plants are safe to be consumed but also reduces one's spending.
"I think it's (urban farming) a trend but it's not going to die anytime soon.
“It will become a need in the future due to increasing prices of produce and other factors such as general health scares. People will prefer to grow their own food." – November 26, 2017.
Hong Kong Urban Farmers Find Bliss In Rooftop Gardens
Hong Kong Urban Farmers Find Bliss In Rooftop Gardens
Nov. 27, 2017
iStock photo
Rooftops in densely populated Hong Kong are fast turning greener and more fertile as urban farmers seek to grow crops from their homes and offices and create a more liveable community.
Kale, cherry tomatoes, radishes and all kinds of herbs are blossoming atop commercial and residential buildings, with farmers believing that they can surmount space restrictions and make the city a more pleasant home for its urban dwellers, reports South China Morning Post.
Some 60 rooftop farms and 1,400 farmers have emerged locally over the past decade, and a handful of farms are added each year, said Mathew Pryor, an associate professor and head of the landscape architecture division at the University of Hong Kong.
More than 7.38 million people now live in just 2,754 square kilometers in the city, and only 24 percent of the land is developable urban area. Hong Kong is likely to stay the world’s most densely populated city in 2025, according to a Bloomberg study.
Sustainable living group Rooftop Republic is one of the city’s most active farming groups. It now manages 33 farms spanning 30,000 square feet.
“Growing up in high-rise, high-density cities such as Hong Kong naturally disconnects us from nature,” said Andrew Tsui, co-founder of the two-year-old start-up.
“So I started thinking, as ordinary working city dwellers, how we could incorporate nature into our lifestyle.”
Working at a private equity fund until five years ago, Tsui has always been interested in sustainability in his projects. He grew curious to see whether it could take root in Hong Kong.
“[Urban farming] was still mainly in the U.S. and Europe at that time, where people have bigger pieces of land and can build community farms around neighbourhoods,” he said.
Tsui then started a part-time interest group and tested rooftop farming. In 2015, he co-founded Rooftop Republic with Pol Fabrega, who had worked in the non-profit and education sectors, and Michelle Hong, whose expertise included marketing, communications and project management.
Now the social enterprise serves corporate clients by turning their rooftop space into farms. The group also provides workshops and organizes community activities.
All the city’s rooftop farming groups are formed spontaneously from the bottom up, Pryor claims.
His research shows that the farmers are usually either young professionals or early retirees concerned about the environment.
To them, rooftop farming is much more than just about producing food, Pryor says. In fact, none of the farms produces much food or even intends to.
“The key product of urban farming is really happiness,” he said. “It’s the social cohesion and the community interaction.
“They grow a few tomatoes that you wouldn’t buy in the shops, and they are really, really happy, spending weeks posting images on Facebook of their two tomatoes.”
Pryor describes the potential for urban farming as enormous. He estimates that Hong Kong has more than 600 hectares of farmable rooftop area.
Demand for farming in the city is also high. Some 1,500 people, for example, have entered a lucky draw for 55 planting plots in the community garden at Sun Yat Sen Memorial Park in Sai Ying Pun this year, according to the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, which operates the space. The planting plots can be rented for four months at a time.
But Tsui and other urban farmers face significant regulatory hurdles.
To transform an idle rooftop into a farm or set up a garden for a new building, one must secure several approvals from the buildings department and other government offices.
Hong Kong Urban Farmers Find Bliss In Rooftop Gardens
Hong Kong Urban Farmers Find Bliss In Rooftop Gardens
Sustainable living proponents praise benefits but lament regulatory hurdles
PUBLISHED: Saturday, 25, 2017
Rooftops in densely populated Hong Kong are fast turning greener and more fertile as urban farmers seek to grow crops from their homes and offices and create a more livable community.
Kale, cherry tomatoes, radishes, and all kinds of herbs are blossoming atop commercial and residential buildings, with farmers believing that they can surmount space restrictions and make the city a more pleasant home for its urban dwellers.
Some 60 rooftop farms and 1,400 farmers have emerged locally over the past decade, and a handful of farms are added each year, according to Mathew Pryor, an associate professor and head of the landscape architecture division at the University of Hong Kong.
More than 7.38 million people now live in just 2,754 square km in the city, and only 24 per cent of the land is developable urban area. Hong Kong is likely to stay the world’s most densely populated city in 2025, according to a Bloomberg study.
Will a lack of open space damage generations of Hongkongers?
Sustainable living group Rooftop Republic is one of the city’s most active farming groups. It now manages 33 farms spanning 30,000 sq ft.
“Growing up in high-rise, high-density cities such as Hong Kong naturally disconnects us from nature,” says Andrew Tsui, co-founder of the two-year-old start-up.
“So I started thinking, as ordinary working city dwellers, how we could incorporate nature into our lifestyle.”
Working at a private equity fund until five years ago, Tsui has always been interested in sustainability in his projects. He grew curious to see whether it could take root in Hong Kong.
“[Urban farming] was still mainly in the US and Europe at that time, where people have bigger pieces of land and can build community farms around neighbourhoods,” he says.
The key product of urban farming is really happiness
MATHEW PRYOR, HKU
Tsui then started a part-time interest group and tested out rooftop farming. In 2015, he co-founded Rooftop Republic with Pol Fabrega, who had worked in the non-profit and education sectors, and Michelle Hong, whose expertise included marketing, communications and project management.
Now the social enterprise serves corporate clients such as local developer Swire Properties by turning their rooftop space into farms. The group also provides workshops and organises community activities.
All the city’s rooftop farming groups are formed spontaneously from the bottom up, Pryor claims.
His research shows that the farmers are usually either young professionals or early retirees concerned about the environment.
To them, rooftop farming is much more than just about producing food, Pryor says. In fact, none of the farms produces much food or even intends to.
“The key product of urban farming is really happiness,” he says.
“It’s the social cohesion and the community interaction.”
“Everybody I met in a rooftop farm, community farm, or weekend farm – they are blissfully happy,” he says.
“They grow a few tomatoes that you wouldn’t buy in the shops, and they are really, really happy, spending weeks posting images on Facebook of their two tomatoes.”
Pryor describes the potential for urban farming as enormous. He estimates that Hong Kong has more than 600 hectares of farmable rooftop area.
Demand for farming in the city is also high.
Some 1,500 people, for example, have entered a lucky draw for 55 planting plots in the community garden at Sun Yat Sen Memorial Park in Sai Ying Pun this year, according to the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, which operates the space. The planting plots can be rented for four months at a time.
But Tsui and other urban farmers face significant regulatory hurdles.
To transform an idle rooftop into a farm or set up a garden for a new building, one must secure several approvals from the Buildings Department and other government offices.
Officials should recognise the positive impact of rooftop farming, Pryor contends, and clarify how to navigate regulatory issues, as many building owners are reluctant to transform their rooftops due to legal uncertainties.
“Once you do that, I think everybody will be doing it,” he says. “Hong Kong could be a huge model for citywide farming as a social activity.”
Planned Community On Boston South Shore Will Be Laboratory For Sustainable Cities
Planned Community On Boston South Shore Will Be Laboratory For Sustainable Cities
November 12th, 2017 by Steve Hanley
Sustainable cities are a hot topic among government leaders and policymakers worldwide. Cities everywhere are struggling with exploding populations as more and more people move to urban settings. The United States has 10 cities with populations of more than one million. China has 116 and that number is growing fast. Many world cities were built long before the automobile and the computer and are woefully unprepared for the challenge of supporting more people.
Graphic credit: LStar Ventures
Urban planners are faced with a welter of challenges from traffic management to air pollution. Where will the water come from for all those people? How will their waste products be disposed of? What about quality of life considerations and healthy living standards? Somewhere on that list, urban planners have to consider the impact their cities will have on the environment, as nations strive to meet the carbon reduction goals agreed to at the Paris climate accords in 2015.
What Makes Sustainable Cities?
Part of creating sustainable cities involves using the internet of things to help smooth the flow of people, goods, and services. Sensors embedded into water distribution systems can help manage how water is used, minimize the energy needed to run pumping stations, and detect where leaks are occurring. Other sensors inside trash containers can notify managers which need emptying and which do not, making trash collection more efficient. Traffic flow monitors can help manage traffic lights to keep cars and trucks flowing smoothly. Computers could reroute traffic around obstructions automatically.
Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Google/Alphabet, is working with 16 cities in North America to help them integrate computer technology into their infrastructure. The idea is to promote efficiency and thus lower the total amount of power needed to keep the cities humming. It also will prepare the way for the autonomous taxis and ride-hailing services that will be arriving shortly.
From Abandoned Navy Base To Sustainability Laboratory
An abandoned naval air station south of Boston, Massachusetts, is the site of an experiment in how to build the sustainable cities of the future. Known as Union Point, it is a 1,400 acre parcel of land that overlaps three nearby towns. LStar Ventures is the developer, creating a new city from the ground up with help from global engineering and design firm Arup.
“While cities are having to retrofit themselves to accommodate things like electric vehicles, the cool thing about building a city from the ground up is that we can think about this stuff now,” says Cameron Thompson of Arup, which is focusing on sustainability issues.
Energy efficiency is baked into all new buildings planned for Union Point. All commercial structures will meet LEED Gold or Platinum standards. Internet of things technology will be included to monitor and control all mechanical and electrical systems for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning equipment. LED lighting will be used exclusively inside and out. The buildings themselves will be networked together to minimize the total electrical needs of the commercial part of the city.
By focusing on sustainability, Union Point hopes to become a magnet for businesses looking for new home for new corporate homes — a place where their employees can live and work in a healthy environment. LStar also hopes to draw high-tech companies whose leaders are enticed by its focus on sustainable living. For those who need to commute to Boston, a rail line is already in place that provide access to the city in as little as 20 minutes.
A Focus On Renewable Energy
Renewable energy will play a big role in providing electrical energy to the new city. Rooftop solar will be installed on most of Union Point’s downtown buildings and a solar farm will be constructed nearby. Grid-scale battery storage technology will be utilized as the costs decrease over time. “The project has come at a perfect time because a lot of the necessary technologies are becoming affordable and readily available,” Thomson says. The goal is to make Union Point a zero-emissions city by 2050, with solar and wind power being predominant in the energy mix.
Meanwhile, LStar Ventures is working with National Grid to make the electricity available from the local grid cleaner. Massachusetts, like many other jurisdictions, is looking at transitioning to 100% renewable energy by mid-century, something researchers told the COP 23 climate summit in Bonn this week is achievable worldwide.
Plans call for 4,000 residential units and 10 million square feet of commercial space. Rooftop farms will provide local restaurants with some of their produce. Beside green public spaces within the community, Union Point will be surrounded by 1,000 acres of green habitat with 50 miles of hiking and bike trails. Although the first commercial buildings will be finished by the end of 2018, the entire project is expected to cost $5 billion and take 15 years to complete. There are already 500 homes in the Union Point community that were built by the prior developer, which exited the project in 2015 and sold its holdings to LStar.
Sustainable Cities Are Coming, But Slowly
Sustainable cities are a work in progress. The lessons learned from the Union Point project will help other communities meet their sustainable cities goals faster and more economically. Ngai Yin Yip, assistant professor at Columbia University’s Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, tells The Huffington Post that weaning ourselves from fossil fuels will be a long and often painful process. “It’s a huge gap we’re probably not going to be able to close in one leap,” he says.
He adds that Union Point’s gradual approach makes the most sense. “We still have a lot of lessons to learn about how we build our cities so that they are truly sustainable, so that they can achieve a near zero carbon footprint. And these lessons a lot of times might need to be learned the hard way.”
Political considerations can help or hinder that effort. In the three towns surrounding Union Point — Weymouth, Abington, and Rockland — local officials have agreed to work cooperatively with LStar Ventures to accomplish the goals it has set. All three have agreed to expedite the approval process for new buildings within the planned community, in part because of the promise of new jobs in the area. Amazon is considering Union Point for its new US headquarters as is Dutch robotics manufacturer ProDrive. “We all know this could be an economic dynamo for the region,” said Allan Chiocca, the town administrator for Rockland.
Johannesburg Launches First Rooftop Farm Plan
Johannesburg Launches First Rooftop Farm Plan
The Star / 12 October 2017, 2:50pm / Anna Cox
IN BUSINESS: Nhlanhla Mpati is a small-scale entrepreneurial farmer who started a roof-top farm on top of the Chamber of Mines building in the Joburg CBD. Picture: Dimpho Maja / ANA
The first commercial, rooftop small-scale farm has been launched in the Joburg CBD on the top floor of the 93-year-old Chamber of Mines building.
This urban farm has already supplied almost 15kg of basil to the Johannesburg Fresh Produce Market and to surrounding cafés and coffee shops during the past 45 days.
The project, called the Urban Agriculture Initiative, was launched by Wouldn’t It Be Cool (WIBC), an incubation and mentorship organisation which helps entrepreneurs get started.
The project has been such a success thus far that the Department of Small Business Development has provided funding for another 100 small-scale farms to be rolled out in the inner city.
The Chamber of Mines intends giving these farmers more space as it still has 400m² of unused space in its heritage building.
Michael Magondo, chief idea sherpa for the WIBC, said they were not competing with residential space, but would be happy to make use of any unutilised space, indoors or outdoors.
The organisation identified and trained Nhlanhla Mpati as one of the first roof-top farmers, as he had some farming experience.
“We want to see all 100 farms rolled out now that we have government funding. We want to create entrepreneurs, jobs, skills and food security.
“There are many vacant government and provincial buildings, plus privately owned ones, as well as deserted parking garages and spaces in which farms can be set up.
“Although the donation of premises is welcome, and some property companies have donated their rooftops to us, we will try to pay market-related rents. All our entrepreneurs are fully trained in business and backed by us,” he said, adding that the aim was to turn Joburg into one big, sustainable ecosystem.
Mpati, who started farming in the CBD in August, said he already had orders for the next six months for basil, as it was out of season.
He proudly shows off his crop, saying the plants were farmed hydroponically, meaning that they don’t require soil and, therefore, use very little water.
He doesn’t use pesticides or insecticides.
He intends expanding to farming spinach, potatoes and carrots, among others.
Mpati, who says his basil grows in 21 days, has been interested in gardening since he helped his granny in Kagiso on the West Rand with the planting of flowers and vegetables, which she loved.
He studied plants and agriculture by himself and is particularly interested in growing specialised plants which are not easily available.
“I do a lot of my own research and I am learning all the time,” he said, adding that he had done several entrepreneurial courses.
“I am very happy so far with this business. Many restaurants are already ordering from me, and the Produce Market is impressed with the quality of my plants. They have already increased their prices because of the high quality of my basil,” he said.
He has preliminary orders for the next six months, but would welcome more.
WIBC has several partners and backers, including the City of Joburg, FNB, the Affordable Housing Company, the Inner City Partnership, Thebe, Botha Roodt, Bizcre8 and Stay City.
Contact Mpati at 081 3141972 for produce or Magondo on 0828577636 for available space.
Johannesburg's New "Agripreneurs" Dig For Green Gold On Skyscraper Rooftops
Johannesburg's New "Agripreneurs" Dig For Green Gold On Skyscraper Rooftops
by Inna Lazareva | @InnaLaz | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Friday, 1 December 2017 07:00 GMT
Growing vegetables on roofs in the inner city could help feed poor families healthily and create much-needed jobs
By Inna Lazareva
JOHANNESBURG, Dec 1, 2017 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) -
The soaring "Chamber of Mines" building in central Johannesburg, a hub for South Africa's mining industry, is a symbol of a bygone era when pioneers began flocking here in the late 19th century to dig for gold.
Today, it is also the site of a new venture aiming to entice the city's unemployed youth into green entrepreneurship.
The action this time is happening not underground but sprouting from the rooftops of the inner city's iconic skyscrapers.
The initiative to create urban gardening businesses on vacant roofs was launched more than a year and a half ago by the public-private Johannesburg Inner City Partnership.
Farming is hardly the first thing that comes to mind as a source of job creation and entrepreneurship, said Brendon Martens of Wouldn't It Be Cool (WIBC), an innovation incubator leading the effort.
"Agriculture is generally seen as a low-tech, bottom of the pyramid-type activity when it's at the small scale. It's what a single mom does just to make ends meet," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
But Martens and his team are striving to turn the concept on its head by bringing market needs together with cutting-edge farming methods and hands-on business training.
HI-TECH VEGGIES
The initiative uses hydroponics technology, which allows basil, lettuces, spring onions and other crops to be grown in special water solutions without requiring soil or large open spaces.
Here plants grow faster and use up to 80 percent less water than in traditional farming. The technique also eliminates problems like soil erosion.
Another advantage is that crops are grown locally, cutting down on transportation time and costs, and delivering the freshest-possible products to the consumer.
That is a big shift given as much as 80 percent of what is on offer at the Johannesburg fresh produce market, Africa's largest, is imported from outside Gauteng province, said Martens.
"We pull that value into the communities in the inner city that really need it," he said.
The farm atop the Chamber of Mines, where neat rows of plants bloom under plastic high above the traffic buzzing below, began operating in September.
Agripreneur Nhlanhla Mpati tends to his plants in the garden he set up on top of Johannesburg's iconic "Chamber of Mines" building in the city's central business district, South Africa, Nov. 15 2017. Thomson Reuters Foundation/Inna Lazareva
It is already generating a profit, said Nhlanhla Mpati, 29, the "agripreneur" - agricultural entrepreneur - in charge.
Skills learned here can be applied in other places too, he said, inspecting a small pot of lush green basil.
"With hydro-technology, you're not just employing people, you're giving them a specific trade and a specific skill. They take that and use it somewhere else," he said.
In the next three years, about 100 more farms will be set up in the city besides the two now running, and the scheme is already attracting many applications from would-be young entrepreneurs.
Those shortlisted will receive business and technology training.
Ten of the best performers will each be allocated a rooftop farm of at least 100 square metres (1,076 square feet) with about 3,600 plants.
The farmer will pay back a percentage of the total turnover, which will be used to fund the next farm.
Building owners are asked not to charge rent for the first year, but after that they can earn an income from their roof.
"You're creating a perpetual cycle of sustainability. The farmer's sustainable, the project is sustainable - until we run out of buildings," said Martens.
View from the top of the "Chamber of Mines" building in the central business district of Johannesburg, South Africa, Nov. 15, 2017. Thomson Reuters Foundation/Inna Lazareva
"TICKING TIME BOMB"
One of the initiative's main aims is to address the problem of mass youth unemployment in the city and beyond.
South Africa's jobless rate is close to 30 percent, but that rises to nearly 40 percent for those aged between 15 and 34, one of the highest percentages in the world.
In Johannesburg, young people beg for money as they weave between cars in traffic jams. Unemployment is also fuelling high crime rates, with some zones virtual no-go areas after dark.
"It's a ticking time bomb," said Martens. "We need to address that issue in a sustainable way."
Rising poverty in South Africa is also a major concern, said Moroka Mokgoko who works in business development for Rooftop Roots, an urban eco-farming enterprise setting up rooftop gardens in inner-city Johannesburg.
"Hunger is a real issue here," he said. "The legacy of apartheid and its effects are still felt today... You have kids struggling to afford school."
Mokgoko seeks to sell rooftop produce at affordable rates to locals who might otherwise not be able to buy fresh food.
City roof gardening "kills two birds with one stone - you provide food security and you provide jobs for people", he said.
MORE THAN FOOD?
Some experts, however, doubt the potential of urban farming beyond meeting immediate hand-to-mouth needs.
Most farmers do not have enough support, land, technology or capital to reduce poverty on a large scale, said Naudé Malan, an expert on urban agriculture at the University of Johannesburg.
But urban gardens using hydroponics and aquaponics, and run with entrepreneurial vision do very well, generating an income that beats the median wage, he added.
The key to success lies in the shorter and more efficient production and distribution process, he said.
Growing crops in the city cuts down on food miles - the distance food is transported from producer to consumer - and fosters a new retail approach, linking farmers and shoppers directly, Malan said.
Being close to market avoids planet-warming emissions from long transportation, WIBC's Martens added.
And hydroponics requires far less water than normal irrigation - important in a country that suffers from chronic water shortages.
Tending his plants on the Chamber of Mines, Mpati said the rooftop business is ripe for expansion - from using urban gardens for fashion shows and art exhibitions, to tourist trails.
"It's about being innovative and disruptive in the space," he said. "That's why I say that within five years (the farmers) should be millionaires."
(Reporting by Inna Lazareva, editing by Megan Rowling; Please credit Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)
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