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Belgian Supermarket Starts Serving Homegrown Produce From Rooftop Garden
Belgian Supermarket Starts Serving Homegrown Produce From Rooftop Garden
July 5, 2018
Shoppers in the Brussels neighbourhood of Ixelles are going green and eating clean as the Boondael Delhaize supermarket sells produce grown on its own roof, without the use of pesticides or preservatives.
Called the "Urban Farm", the garden contains rows of vegetables and a greenhouse for the colder months. The first salads reached the store's shelves in October last year, but production really picked up at the beginning of the summer.
The rooftop garden is the first of its kind in Belgium's Delhaize stores and is serving as a test run, a Delhaize employee said, adding that other stores could build their own gardens in the future.
Urban Bee Colony Arrives Atop Restaurant In Downtown Appleton, WI
While Appleton has allowed beekeeping inside the city limits since 2015, it took additional permitting to allow bees in the business district. Appleton’s first downtown apiary is on the roof of the CopperLeaf Hotel, which is attached to the restaurant.
Urban Bee Colony Arrives Atop Restaurant In Downtown Appleton, WI
Maureen Wallenfang, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin
June 4, 2018
APPLETON - Rye Restaurant's rooftop beehives buzz with activity today, but it took some persistence to get everything humming along smoothly.
It started out as head chef Nick Morse's simple idea: Put a few honeybee hives on the roof and harvest honey for Rye, the chic restaurant at 308 W. College Ave.
He decided to add in some raised garden beds to provide both the bees and the restaurant with fresh herbs, lavender, tomatoes, lettuces, vegetables and edible flowers.
While Appleton has allowed beekeeping inside the city limits since 2015, it took additional permitting to allow bees in the business district.
Appleton’s first downtown apiary is on the roof of the CopperLeaf Hotel, which is attached to the restaurant.
By the time permits were prepared, hives ready, bees ordered by the pound from California and everything was a go, Wisconsin weather was far from bee-friendly.
The bees arrived in the middle of the April storm that dumped two feet of snow on Appleton.
“We had to shovel our way to the hives,” said Morse. “Some of the bees hit the snow and we instantly lost them. We had a good amount of loss. Then one of the queens died, or flew the coop.”
Morse and his chief beekeeping assistant, Sami Hansen, were not daunted.
They ordered a new queen, who arrived in her own caged box.
The two hives in their roof-top apiary are now both buzzing with bees building honeycomb and queens laying eggs.
“By late summer we’ll be able to harvest the honey,” said Hansen.
The bees are already collecting pollen from sources like flowering trees, and can travel up to a mile, they said.
"What does Appleton taste like? We'll find out when they create their honey," said Morse, who is dreaming up recipes for desserts and meat glazes using honey and honeycomb.
Alicia Griebenow is a beekeeper who mentored Morse and Hansen, and works seasonally at Honey Bee Ware, a Greenville store and beekeeping resource.
She said she isn’t aware of any other Fox Cities businesses doing beekeeping outside of commercial honey producers.
“They’re pioneers,” Griebenow said. “The farm-to-table movement is part of it. They’re growing it and they know where it came from. They’ve done their research and want to do it correctly.”
Rye Restaurant has the only permit for a beehive in the central business district in Appleton, said Tim Mirkes, environmental health supervisor for the city's health department. He said that besides Rye, there are three residential beehive permits in the city, an institutional permit for Lawrence University and an urban farm permit for Riverview Gardens.
Morse built a protective shelter for the rooftop hives. He built six raised garden beds using donated materials, and a water collection system.
The rooftop project is something different and fun, and has become a collective hobby for restaurant employees, he said.
“Everyone has gotten involved in it, from the front of the house to the kitchen. It’s become everyone’s project,” he said.
He figures it might eventually break even after the investment of about $1,800 in honeybees, protective jackets and netted hats, equipment and garden materials.
“The goal isn’t to make money. It’s to set us apart and give us a fun activity. It’s to keep things interesting,” Morse said.
Ultimately, Morse and Hansen hope to keep learning and to sustain their colonies.
Nationally, U.S. beekeepers lost 40 percent of their colonies during the year ending March 31, according to a survey released May 23 by Auburn University and University of Maryland researchers. Losses are said to be from parasitic varroa mites, pesticides and environmental factors tied to climate change, like abnormal temperatures, storms and hurricanes.
Here, Hansen said the local losses are double that, about 80 percent, based on statistics from Honey Be Ware.
Managing pests and harsh winters are a part of the challenge.
She said they’ll buy organic treatments and insulate the hives over the next winter to keep as many bees as possible.
New York: From A Convention Center’s Roof, ‘Walk-Off Vegetables’
From A Convention Center’s Roof, ‘Walk-Off Vegetables’
Alan Steel, the president and chief executive at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan, and Gwen Schantz, the chief operating officer of Brooklyn Grange. Mr. Steel is planning to build a farm atop an addition to the convention center.CreditEmma Howells/The New York Times
By James Barron
- June 24, 2018
Alan Steel dreams of “walk-off vegetables” the way the beleaguered subspecies known as Mets fans dreams of walk-off homers. At this moment in another season of disappointment, Mr. Steel’s dream seems more likely, although patience is required, just as it is required with the Mets. The first crop won’t be planted until 2021.
Mr. Steel is planning a farm in the sky, on the roof of the extension being built at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center on the Far West Side of Manhattan, where he is not only the principal proselytizer for urban agriculture but also the president and chief executive.
“It gives us a story,” he said, and not just a story that could lead to bookings downstairs, because these days, as he quickly pointed out, “a lot of conventions are about sustainability.”
The story of rooftop farms is one that says something meaningful can be done with the last batch of unused real estate in an increasingly crowded city. Something useful.
That could have important consequences for the cityscape, but seeing “farm” and “city” in the same sentence derailed thoughts of how local locally grown produce could be — in other words, how short the trip from farm to table could be, how much fresher the produce would be when it reached the kitchen, how much less energy would be consumed than when fruits and vegetables are trucked long distances and what other benefits there might be. What came to mind was, admittedly, totally silly: “Green Acres,” the 1960s sitcom that opened with Eddie Albert singing about “land spreadin’ out so far and wide.”
By Manhattan standards, the new farm will do just that. It will run along West 40th Street, at the northern end of the convention center complex, between 11th Avenue and 12th Avenue.
But green acres, plural, it will not be. At 43,000 square feet, the Javits Center farm will not quite cover a single acre, only nine-tenths of one — 0.9871441689623508, with all the decimal places possible in an online conversion program. It will be a tiny fraction of the size of the average farm in the United States, which in 2017 was 444 acres.
It will have something rural farms do not: stunning views that might have pleased the character played by Mr. Albert’s co-star, Eva Gabor. “I just adore a penthouse view,” she sang. “Dah-ling, I love you, but give me Park Avenue.” The rooftop farm will not be far from Park Avenue, with its prewar buildings, all brick, and old-fashioned masonry. What she would see closest to the farm, however, are the tall, shiny and mostly linear towers that have remade the industrial barrens of the Far West Side.
The rooftop will be the largest farm in Manhattan, but that is not saying much — Manhattan has not been farm country for generations. And, as far as rankings go, the rooftop farm at the Brooklyn Navy Yard will still be larger at 65,000 square feet. The one at the Javits Center will be about the same size as a rooftop farm in Long Island City, Queens (the borough that had the city’s last family-run farm, in Fresh Meadows, until it was sold to a real-estate developer in 2004).
The rooftop farm will have something rural farms do not: stunning views.CreditEmma Howells/The New York Times
But the Javits Center farm will have the city’s only rooftop orchard, with apples, pears, peaches and maybe cherries, some grown in a 3,200-square-foot greenhouse. And then there will be the vegetables — cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, herbs, carrots, arugula and mesclun greens.
The farmers will not wear suits and ties, and they will not have to worry about exploding tractors, as Mr. Albert did on “Green Acres.” “Mostly, we’re all people who ditched office jobs, so we hung up the suits and ties,” said Gwen Schantz, the chief operating officer of Brooklyn Grange, the ambitious company that will do the harvesting — this will not be a you-pick-it operation, though Brooklyn Grange hopes for teachable moments when school groups visit. “It’s easy as New Yorkers not to think about where our food was before it appeared on the supermarket shelf,” Ms. Schantz said.
The crop will be bound for a close-by destination — extremely close by. Specifically, downstairs at the Javits Center. And that will drive the growing plans. Mr. Steel said the chef would forecast the menu and Brooklyn Grange would grow to order. “Any produce that we grow would be used locally, in the building, or nearby,” he said.
Anastasia Cole Plakias, a founding partner and the vice president of Brooklyn Grange, said that was an ideal scenario. “It epitomizes the efficiencies in urban agriculture,” she said. Brooklyn Grange, which already grows over 50,000 pounds of produce a year on roofs around the city, has been selling produce to restaurants consumed within five miles of the other rooftop farms. The food from the Javits Center — which already harvests honey from beehives on the roof of its original section — could be consumed within 200 feet of where it was grown.
Mr. Steel said that when it came to planning the Javits Center expansion, a $1.2 billion item in the Cuomo administration’s $100 billion statewide infrastructure plan, he wanted the roof to be “something more productive, instead of just a place where people could stroll.”
“It’s relatively easy if you’re building a new building, to build it strong enough to hold the weight.”
And so the Javits Center extension is being built to hold at least a million pounds of soil, in a bed 18 inches deep — deeper than those at the Navy Yard or the Queens building. The soil, specially mixed for rooftop farming, will retain more water than ordinary soil. There will also be a water recycling system that will recirculate the runoff.
“It will go into a ginormous cistern” in the basement before being pumped back up, Ms. Schantz said.
Mr. Steel, who has run the Javits Center since 2014, has learned about rooftop agriculture off the job. He said his weekend house has a flat roof.
“He has his own rooftop vegetables,” Ms. Schantz said, “so he’s a bit of a sucker.”
Rethinking Rooftops
Rethinking Rooftops
Departments - Urban Agriculture
Urban agriculture has been gradually moving to rooftops, a previously underutilized space with a lot of growing potential.
May 29, 2018
Yoshiki Harada, Tom Whitlow, and Neil S. Mattson
The Brooklyn Grange Navy Yard Farm, NYC - Photo courtesy of Neil Mattson
Rooftop farming is intensive agriculture using engineered soil and irrigation on building roofs. Commercial rooftop farming is an emerging practice at the intersection of agriculture and urban planning, where economic and environmental returns are equally important. Rooftop farms can take many forms, including gardens, high tunnels or climate-controlled greenhouses. Rooftop farming enables the production of hyper-local food and its associated social and educational benefits in urban areas where land is unavailable or prohibitively expensive for farming.
The basics of rooftop farms
Municipal zoning laws and building height restrictions are barriers to rooftop farms, but some cities are beginning to revise their codes to accommodate urban agriculture and rooftop farms. In New York City, for example, it became easier for property owners to obtain the city’s approvals for constructing rooftop farms in 2012 when a citywide planning initiative known as “Zone Green” removed the zoning impediments for incorporating ornamental and agricultural uses on rooftops.
In this new context, the Brooklyn Grange, a 1.5-acre commercial rooftop farm, was constructed atop an 11-story building of the former Brooklyn Navy Yard. For this construction, $592,730 was funded by the Community-Based Green Infrastructure Program of the NYC Department of Environmental Protection based on the expectation that the farm could reduce drainage volume and nutrient load to the East River while producing fresh vegetables for local consumption. While commercial rooftop farming is still in its early stages, New York City alone has 0.9 billion square feet (about 21,000 acres) of flat roof surface, 14 percent of which is considered suitable for large-scale (>10,000 ft2) commercial farms (Ackerman et al. 2013; Acks 2006).
Rooftop farms can increase revenue through diverse social and cultural programs, not just vegetable production. For example, the Brooklyn Grange became a popular destination for environmental and agricultural tourism and is used for exercise classes, weddings, photo shoots, music events and organic food tasting. Also, the Grange offers farming internships as well as environmental education programs that have engaged approximately 40,000 K-1 students. These programs emphasize the participation of immigrants, refugees and other under-represented groups, which are subsidized by the municipal programs for green-job training and diversity.
Growing media in rooftop farms
Potting soil used at the Brooklyn Grange (Ithaca Blend, GreenTree Garden Supply, Ithaca, N.Y.)
Photo courtesy of Yoshiki Harada, PhD
The load-bearing capacity of the building is among the constraints specific to the design of rooftop farms. In comparison to using field soil, it is relatively easy to specify engineered soil within the weight limitation. These engineered soils can be categorized into the following two types: expanded shale, clay and slate (ESCS); or potting soil (PS). ESCS are common base materials for green roof soil products, which meets the industrial standards for rooftop landscape construction, including ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) standards (Ampim et al. 2010). ESCS soils can be useful for rooftop farming if they have sufficient water-holding capacity and nutrients (Whittinghill et al. 2013).
The second type is potting soil, i.e. container media. If peat, coconut coir and other organic materials are used as base material, potting soils can be lighter and have greater water holding capacity than ESCS soils (Harada et al. 2017). Whether ESCS or potting soils are used, the precise management of organic amendments becomes challenging because organic matter lost to decomposition must be replenished. Also, lightweight materials must be self-knitting (ex. peat, coconut coir) because lightweight granules (ex. vermiculite, perlite) can easily be lost by wind erosion.
ESCS-base soil used at the Brooklyn Grange (Rooflite Intensive Ag, Skyland USA LLC, Landenberg, Penn.)
Photo courtesy of Yoshiki Harada, PhD
Production in rooftop farms
Precise management of irrigation and fertilizer inputs can reduce the drainage loss of water and nutrients, which enhances both environmental and economic returns of rooftop farming. Unlike in-ground agriculture, for example, rooftops do not have immediate access to water in the ground level. Thus far, irrigation has used municipal water, which is both expensive and competes directly with human consumption.
The economics of rooftop farms
The economic viability of urban agriculture relies on the sales of quick-turn/high-yielding leafy greens and fruit-bearing vegetables with high market value. These crops also have high demands of water and nutrients, which can make rooftop farming prone to drainage loss of water and nutrients. While the yield of rooftop farms can exceed in-ground agriculture, efficiency of water and nutrients use can be lower. Optimizing these inputs is an exciting area for research at the junction of science and practice (Harada et al. 2017; Sanyé-Mengual et al. 2015). The development of soil mixes with enhanced water-holding capacity combined with drainage recycling systems are central to this effort.
Sky Vegetables in Bronx, N.Y.
Photo courtesy of Neil Mattson, Cornell University
Rooftop greenhouse considerations
The use of climate-controlled greenhouses allows for more intensive year-round vegetable production on rooftops. Design of such facilities involves a complex process of navigating zoning laws, load-bearing capacity of buildings and rooftop access. Rooftop greenhouse design also takes into account the potential for beneficial heat from the underlying building as well as greater wind speed than similarly sited ground-based greenhouses. Because of the challenges in site selection and design, some rooftop greenhouses have found it easier to incorporate rooftop farms into new construction projects rather than retrofit existing buildings. Once constructed, operating a rooftop greenhouse is remarkably similar to traditional greenhouses other than getting loads up and down through the building.
Because greenhouses allow for control of temperature, light and relative humidity, rooftop greenhouse operations usually focus on producing one particular class of vegetables to optimize production efficiency and output. Two examples of rooftop greenhouses include Sky Vegetables based in the Bronx and Gotham Greens with four locations including Queens, two in Brooklyn, and Chicago. Both Sky Vegetables and Gotham Greens focus on leafy greens and herbs using NFT (nutrient film technique). In a rooftop setting, NFT is favored over deep water culture (DWC, raft/pond hydroponics) because DWC uses a large volume/weight of water. Both operations sell to local restaurants and supermarkets.
While rooftop agriculture has its challenges, we may be seeing a lot more of it as the human population becomes increasingly urban. By 2050, 70 percent of the global population is projected to live in urban areas.
Acknowledgments Financial support was received from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Multistate Research Project NE-1335: Resource Management in Commercial Greenhouse Production. Yoshiki Harada (yh535@cornell.edu) is a recent Ph.D. graduate, Tom Whitlow (thw2@cornell.edu) is an associate professor, and Neil Mattson (nsm47@cornell.edu) is an associate professor and extension specialist within the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell University.
References Ackerman K, Dahlgren E, Xu X (2013) Sustainable Urban Agriculture: Confirming Viable Scenarios for Production, Final Report No.13-07 vol NYSERDA No. 13-07 [Online] (Accessed on April 01, 2016).
Acks K (2006) A framework for the cost-benefit analysis of green roofs: initial estimates Green Roofs in the Metropolitan Region: Research Report Columbia University Center for Climate Systems Research
Ampim PA, Sloan JJ, Cabrera RI, Harp DA, Jaber FH (2010) Green roof growing substrates: types, ingredients, composition and properties Journal of Environmental Horticulture 28:244 Harada Y, Whitlow TH, Bassuk NL, Russell-Anelli J (2017) Biogeochemistry of Rooftop Farm Soils. In: Lal R, Stewart BA (eds) Urban Soils. Advances in Soil Science Series. Taylor & Francis Group, Portland, United States, Sanyé-Mengual E, Orsini F, Oliver-Solà J, Rieradevall J, Montero JI, Gianquinto G (2015) Techniques and crops for efficient rooftop gardens in Bologna, Italy Agronomy for Sustainable Development 35:1477-1488 doi:10.1007/s13593-015-0331-0 Whittinghill LJ, Rowe DB, Cregg BM (2013) Evaluation of vegetable production on extensive green roofs Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems 37:465-484
Belgium: ECLO Produces Micro-Vegetables At Abattoir’s
Belgium: ECLO Produces Micro-Vegetables At Abattoir’s
In the Abattoir cellars, not just mushrooms are grown. Only recently micro-vegetables were added as an extra activity. In fact, a micro-vegetable is merely a tiny version of a “normal” vegetable like radishes, broccoli, red cabbage, mustard, sunflower, rucola … They are often compared to germ vegetables with such a difference that the seed is not eaten but stays in the substrate. Placed under LED-lamps they grow as nowhere else, enjoying the warmth and the CO2 that comes free during the first weeks of the mushrooms’ growth.
So from now on the Abattoir site hides two producers of microgreens or micro-vegetables: BIGH in the greenhouses on the FOODMET’s roof, and ECLO in the cellars next to the mushroom-growing company “Le Champignon de Bruxelles”. By eating them in the very first phase of their growth, they contain a very high concentration of tastes, colors and nutrients. Top-chefs are loving them, not only for decorating their dishes but also for their specific flavor.
During the last couple of months, M. Quentin Declerck, founder of ECLO, has worked himself into the mushroom growing activity in view of solidly increasing his micro vegetable production. Coincidence or not, but the Abattoir cellars do offer lots of space.
For more information:
Shepherding Vegetables From Roof to Restaurant
Shepherding Vegetables From Roof to Restaurant
Liz Dowd, 33, of Brooklyn, is a farm manager for Brooklyn Grange.CreditRick Loomis for The New York Times
By Perry Garfinkel
- June 1, 2018
Liz Dowd, 33, a rooftop farmer, is a manager for Brooklyn Grange Farm in New York.
What’s your farm like, and where is it?
We grow produce on the roofs of two buildings in New York City, one atop Building 3 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the other in Long Island City in Queens.
My workspace on top of the Standard Motor Products Building on Northern Boulevard in Long Island City has a 360-degree bird’s-eye view of all five city boroughs. You can’t say that about the farms where I grew up outside Burlington, Vermont.
Tilling the soil at the Grange’s site in Long Island City, Queens. The rooftop farm’s plant beds are just 10 to 12 inches deep. Credit Rick Loomis for The New York Times
What’s different about farming on city roofs?
We use a lightweight soil specifically made for rooftop farming — ours is called Rooflite — which retains water and drains well. We have more than a million pounds of the soil lifted to the top of our roofs.
Our beds are only 10 to 12 inches deep, which means we plant more intensely, getting more plants in one bed. With shallower soil, it also means we need to use different tools and get more creative with things like trellising tomatoes.
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How did you learn this farming technique?
I kept a strawberry patch with my mom as a kid at home in rural Essex, Vermont. I moved to New York City in 2003 to study photography but then became homesick for dirt.
Living in Brooklyn, I turned a large backyard into a garden. Then I took intensive classes for seven months in urban farming at the Youth Farm in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and eventually became a manager there. In 2016 I saw an opening at Brooklyn Grange and jumped at the chance.
How many types of vegetables and fruits do you grow?
On a total of 2.5 acres between our two farms, we have about 50 different crops — tomatoes, peppers, arugula, mustards, green beans, eggplant, cucumber, strawberry, plus several kinds of herbs. We grow about 50,000 pounds of organically cultivated produce each year.
The Queen's farm is on the roof of the Standard Motor Products building, which was built in 1919.Credit Rick Loomis for The New York Times
Aside from selling to restaurants, members of Community Supported Agriculture groups and directly to the public via weekly farm stands, what else does the Brooklyn Grange do?
We do guided tours and host workshops. We have youth programming in collaboration with an organization called City Growers. With the Queens-based Refugee and Immigrant Fund’s Urban Farm Recovery Project, we’ve trained refugees from Africa, Asia, and Central America, who get work experience and build their résumés, as well as engage in therapeutic horticultural activities.
We host a multi-course vegetarian feast called Veggiepalooza, an annual tomato dinner and what we call Butcher Paper Dinners in Long Island City. We also host beekeeping training programs. We even have yoga classes on the roof amid the garden beds.
Do you have direct contact with chefs?
I do. It’s very rewarding to find out what they want. For instance, we can grow tiny purple edible flowers to top their dishes if that’s what they want.
I have a very close relationship with Balthazar, on Manhattan’s lower West Side, where I have worked as a waitress for more than 10 years and still serve on Saturday nights. What a pleasure to see the fruits of my daytime labor cooked so well, and watch happy well-fed faces. Sometimes I get to be the delivery person at both ends of that produce’s journey — farmer to table.
Correction: June 1, 2018
An earlier version of this article misstated the title used by certain groups that buy produce from Brooklyn Grange Farm. They are Community Supported Agriculture groups, not Community Service Associations.
A version of this article appears in print on June 2, 2018, on Page BU2 of the New York edition with the headline: Garden Beds With a Skyline View. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
Urban Agriculture Startup Gotham Greens Closes $29 Million Round of Funding
Urban Agriculture Startup Gotham Greens Closes $29 Million Round of Funding
Big Data and the Future of Food
SENSEI’s Daniel Gruneberg explains the future of agriculture.
THIS CEO SAYS THAT DATA AND A.I. ARE AT THE CENTER OF THE MODERN BUSINESS
By BETH KOWITT
June 20, 2018
Gotham Greens Is Growing.
The Brooklyn-based urban agriculture startup has closed a $29 million Series C financing round, bringing its total equity funding to $45 million.
The round was comprised of existing backers, including the Silverman Group. “Our same investors have invested in every round,” Gotham Greens co-founder and CEO Viraj Puri told Fortune. “They’re sticking with the company. They like the profitability and the returns.”
In addition, the round included what the company called a “significant” new investment from Creadev, a global investment company funded by the Mulliez family—one of the wealthiest families in France.
The Brooklyn-based startup, which grows produce hydroponically in climate-controlled greenhouses, will use the funds to build out new greenhouse facilities, invest in R&D, and expand distribution and its team.
Gotham currently operates four greenhouses that make up 170,000 square feet of space in New York and Chicago. It said it has another 500,000 square feet under development across five U.S. states, including new facilities in Chicago and Baltimore that it announced earlier this year.
“Overall our strategy is to build greenhouses across the U.S,” Puri says. “The goal is to be a national company within a couple of years and have a whole network across the country.”
The company, which sells into retailers like Whole Foods under its own brand, selects greenhouse locations close to market. For example, its Chicago facility serves the upper Midwest. Gotham reuses and rebuilds post-industrial sites; take the case of Baltimore, where its greenhouse will be located in the old Bethlehem Steel plant. “We want to be near the market,” Puri says, “and have a mission of being urban farmers.”
Gotham is one of several indoor farming startups that is trying to remake the face of agriculture by improving yields and reducing the use of resources needed in food production. The majority of Gotham’s competitors are vertical farms that use artificial lights in warehouses, but Gotham’s greenhouses use natural sunlight. “The technology is robust,” Puri quips. “The sun has been here for a long time.”
Gotham says it yields up to 30 times more crops per acre than conventional agriculture. Advocates of vertical farms, which stress their use of artificial intelligence, big data, and machine learning, say they can get up to 100 times more. The costs, however, are higher.
Puri says that there is already a lot of sophisticated data used in its greenhouses, but it’s not something its industry markets or showcases. “We don’t position ourselves as a big data company,” he says. “We’re saying, we’re farmers. It’s a different approach a little bit.”
The Green Roof Revolution Spreads to Australia
The Green Roof Revolution Spreads to Australia
Jasmine O’Donoghue
May 28, 2018
Green roofs are an accepted part of modern buildings in Europe, where their use has become mandated by some city and national governments. They are commonplace in the Austrian city of Linz, where green roofs are required on all new residential and commercial buildings with rooftops larger than 100sqm.
In the United States, Denver has joined San Francisco in making green roofs compulsory on certain buildings. In November, an initiative was passed which mandated that 20 percent of rooftop space on newly constructed buildings over 25,000 square feet must be covered by gardens or solar panels.
The revolution has spread to Australia, where the eco-friendly design is being increasingly utilized to take advantage of their benefits.
Green roofs provide longer roof lifespan and minimize heating and cooling costs due to increased thermal insulation. They reduce stormwater runoff, improve air quality, provide an urban habitat for wildlife, mitigate the urban heat island effect and increase property value and amenity.
In a commercial environment, green roofs provide all these benefits and more. Research has found workers in an office with greenery were 15 percent more productive than those without. It was also found to boost employee engagement, concentration levels, workplace satisfaction and perceptions of air quality.
The benefits of green roofs were recognized by Infrastructure Australia recently, in a report recommending the Australian government maintain and enhance green infrastructure through a combination of taxation, planning incentives and policy and regulatory reforms.
Meanwhile, the NSW Government has released its Greener Places draft policy which reinforces that green roofs are not only an asset to the built environment but essential to the design and development of healthy urban environments.
Despite the myriad of benefits of green roofs, their growing popularity is fuelled by commercial interests. "The key trends for green roofs are commercially driven by increasing realty value and improving tenancy loyalty in a competitive market,” Matthew Dillon, vice president, World Green Infrastructure Network; president; Green Roofs Australasia and director, Verdant Solutions Australia says. Incorporating a green roof is a means of giving a project an edge over its competitors, particularly in an era where demand for urban living is rising and space is at a premium.
The presence of green roofs in Australia is still a long way off some cities overseas. “Unfortunately, the current national building codes, State SEPP's, local gov't DCP's and LEP's do not include requirements which promote BIV (Building Integrated Vegetative) systems such as green roofs and living walls,” Dillon says.
“In my opinion, this is a lost opportunity for the community which lacks future-proofing foresight by government.”
The answer, Dillon says, is a mandate. “I believe that all new residential developments and large-scale industrial developments need to be mandated on including green roofs and made solar ready, similar to new legislation by the City of San Francisco," he says.
Dillon has been promoting and lobbying for green roof use for 11 years, and he said their uptake comes down to economic benefits. "Due to a rapid global expansion of incorporating green roofs and living walls into the urban fabric via the built environment, we now have quantifiable and qualifiable data which substantiates the economic rationale required for investment,” he says. “Green sustainable buildings are now in demand and worth more...what's lacking is the supply."
Green roof design ranges from extensive green roofs which have a thin growing medium to intensive green roofs which have deeper soil and are much heavier.
Fytogreen Australia designer, botanist and quality manager, Erik van Zuilekom said green roofs are increasingly becoming popular for high-rise and small-scale commercial office space and large-scale industrial applications.
Van Zuilekom says the key trends in commercial green roof design include the use of shallow profiles, the utilization of green roofs for thermal and acoustic insulation and using different species to provide an aesthetic benefit to surrounding areas.
Many designers are also creating trafficable green roofs to provide an increased amenity, using the space for food production and merging roof gardens with a range of living architecture technologies and biophilic design solutions. They are also more frequently combining them with solar panels to keep the panels cool and therefore lessen exacerbated heating to increase efficiency.
As research enhances the understanding of green roofs and how they perform, many designers are branching out and utilizing a higher diversity of species to optimize the desired benefits of green roofs. They are also merging green roofs with vertical gardens and green facades to make the most of space and create a more aesthetically pleasing and functional area.
Looking forward, Van Zuilekom can see the use of green roof technology becoming more extensive and used in a wider range of exposures. He believes there will be a greater responsiveness to architecture and vice versa and species selection will improve, allowing for a wider range of applications.
The full version of this article is available in the May / June issue of INFOLINK | BPN
‘Worlds First’ Development In Melbourne’s East Has Farm On Shopping Centre Roof
‘Worlds First’ Development In Melbourne’s East Has Farm On Shopping Centre Roof
JIM MALO REPORTER JUN 12, 2018
In what used to be a brickworks in Melbourne’s east, a huge and environmentally-conscious development is springing up.
Frasers Property has created what it calls a “world first” mixed-use development in the suburb of Burwood, with a focus on lessening the impact of development and making each new building have a net positive effect on the environment.
“[The Living Building Challenge] is the most advanced measure of sustainability in the built environment,” Frasers’ head of retail Peri Macdonald said. “Whereas most measures look at how your building can be less bad, it looks at how your development gives back rather than just takes.”
Artist’s impression of the sustainable shopping centre and urban farm planned for the former Burwood Brickworks site. Photo: Frasers Property Australia
The challenge is set out by the Seattle-based International Living Future Institute, and no retail centre had achieved the award before Burwood Brickworks.
The centerpiece of the sustainable offering is a 2000-square-metre rooftop farm, which will be run by a yet-to-be-picked operator.
“At this stage, our preferred model is that [an adjacent] restaurant is linked to the urban farm. We want a paddock-to-plate model,” Mr. Macdonald said.
A CGI render of proposed open space in the Brickworks development. Photo: Frasers Property Australia
A growing preference for produce grown close to where consumers live made Mr Macdonald think more urban farms could open in Melbourne.
“I think we’re definitely seeing a community preference for hyper-local produce,” he said. “One of the challenges [will be] finding enough space to grow produce on a large enough scale to meet demand.”Frasers hoped it would also be used as a teaching tool for schools and universities.
“It’s also something we see as a major attractor for the centre,” Mr. Macdonald said. “And it’s something that doesn’t exist in any of the retail offerings in Melbourne for that matter.”
Frasers is planning to produce 105 percent of the energy needed to power the development, predominantly through the use of solar panels and batteries, and features such as glazing on windows to reduce the building’s energy demands.
Head of residential Sarah Bloom said the urban farm and other sustainable features would help to sell the project’s 700 homes that will go on the market in the next few months.
“It’s the overarching package of the development that will set it apart,” she said. “That urban farm will be a truly unique proposition. There will be nothing like it.”
Work on Burwood Brickworks began on Tuesday after a two-year approval process with the Whitehorse Council.
“Approval for the project has taken some time and that’s because of the complexity of what we want to achieve … This community will set a new benchmark for what’s possible in sustainable urban design,” Ms. Bloom said. “This project exemplifies everything we stand for: building sustainable, livable communities that promote the long-term health and well-being of our residents.”
Hong Kong: Very MK Rooftop Farm – Now Closed
Hong Kong: Very MK Rooftop Farm – Now Closed
Linked by Michael Levenston
Only 2.3% of Hong Kong’s vegetables are locally produced, this number is expected to decrease with the development plans.
By Rachel Young, Fulbright Research Scholar, Hong Kong
HK Rooftop Farming Project
Published on May 31, 2016
Excerpts:
Very MK Rooftop Farm was founded on April 2014 on the 6th-floor rooftop of an apartment building in Mong Kok. The rooftop farm is organized by a group of “students, designers, teachers, business consultants, cafe workers, young professionals, social activists, urban planners, writers, musician and journalists” from different parts of Hong HK Farm’s original location was on the rooftop of the apartment complex in the middle.
The rooftop farm still cultivates a wide range of crops. For instance, during the month of August, the farm was growing passion fruit, wild hibiscus, Thai basil, and bitter melon. At their new location in Mong Kok, the farm also started to practice vertical farming. Vertical farming allows for more crops to be grown despite the limited space.
See her paper here.
Belgian Start-Up Plans 150 Urban Roof Top Farms
Belgian Start-Up Plans 150 Urban Roof Top Farms
- 07/06/2018
- By Karin Bosteels
Peas&Love
Belgian start-up Peas&Love has secured 1.2 million euro in investments to develop 150 urban farming projects... on rooftops. Currently, the company has developed two urban rooftop farms in Brussels and two in Paris.
Times 40 in five years' time
Three years into its existence, Peas&Love accounts for 600 allotments, divided over the rooftops of shopping center Cameleon in Brussels, the World Trade Center in Brussels, a hotel in Paris and the headquarters of BNP Paribas Fortis, also in the French capital. Locals can rent a 3 sqm parcel for 38 euros per month, in which a professional gardener takes care of up to 70 kinds of fruit, vegetables or herbs according to the principles of permaculture: the only thing you have to do yourself is the harvest. "It's cheaper than buying your fruit and vegetables in the supermarket", says founder Jean-Patrick Scheepers.
With the new investment, Scheepers "hopes to finance an expansion throughout Europe: our ambition is to open 150 farms in 12 European regions in the next five years", he says in Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad. Among the new candidates are Amsterdam, Antwerp, Berlin, London and Lyon, Brussels could get up to six new urban farms, Paris might get up to thirty.
People called Scheepers crazy when he started developing his plan five years ago, but he has been proven right: "One year ago, the first Peas&Love urban farm opened in Brussels: the 275 parcels were rented out in the blink of an eye. And the same goes for Paris." Not surprisingly, according to the founder: "We are right in the money with the three biggest trends of the moment: the demand for healthy, local food; an interest for new food experiences that use all the senses; and the need to give nature more room in our cities. At the same time, we create a place where people can meet each other in a meaningful way: everyone reaps the benefits!"
BIGH Raises €4.3m For Largest Urban Rooftop Farm In Europe
BIGH Raises €4.3m For Largest Urban Rooftop Farm In Europe
MAY 16, 2018 LOUISA BURWOOD-TAYLOR
BIGH (Building Integrated Greenhouses), a startup based in Brussels, Belgium, has opened its first aquaponic farm on a site spanning 4,000 meters squared above a food hall in the center of the city.
The startup, a developer and operator of urban farms in aquaponics, raised €4.3 million ($5.1 million) from a range of investors to fund the construction of a series of aquaponic farms in the heart of major European cities. They include a group of individuals from the banking, construction and architecture sectors via LTFD, real estate company Fidentia Green Buildings, the public investment vehicle of the Brussels region Finance. Brussels, and aquaponic farm operator and builder from Berlin ECF.
The largest urban rooftop in Europe, according to BIGH, “Ferme Abbattoir” includes 2,000 meters squared of horticultural greenhouses and connected fish farm, as well as 2,000 meters squared of outdoor vegetable gardens. The farm, which was constructed on the roof of the Foodmet market hall on a historical Abattoir site in Brussels, was partially funded by BIGH’s equity financing, and partly in a debt facility from BNP Paribas Fortis bank.
BIGH’s founder, the architect Steven Beckers, is a circular economy proponent, and so the farm captures heat from the slaughterhouses below while offering refrigeration to the Foodmet’s butchers and retailers’ cold rooms. The pump is supplemented by a gas heating device providing CO2 for photosynthesis support during the day as will the main gas heater of the Foodmet, in time.
The farm also aims for minimal reliance on mains water through filtered rainwater storage and well water top-up and its electricity consumption is partially compensated by the Abattoir’s solar panels.
“BIGH is a strong demonstration of the economically profitable circular economy, whose healthy, transparent, quality and local food production is in symbiosis with the urban environment. The city becomes a solution if the search for positive impact is made at all levels: energy, water, air quality, biodiversity, material resources, etc. while creating employment. The BIGH model is also beneficial for real estate, increasing property values,” said Beckers in a statement.
BIGH expects to produce 35 tonnes of striped bass a year and uses an aquaponics system with two closed loops. This means that while 3-5% of the fish water is removed to feed the crops, that water does not circulate back to the fish section. Instead, it is replaced with groundwater or rainwater, David Norris, project manager at BIGH told AgFudnerNews. The benefits of this system include the ability to shut down one system independently of the other which is helpful for cleaning purposes as well as security. The PH levels can be different in each system and therefore optimized instead of compromising, he added.
BIGH expects to announce the site of its next farm imminently.
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Urban Farming In Bethesda Provides New Meaning For Locally Grown
Urban Farming In Bethesda
Provides New Meaning For Locally Grown
17,000 square feet of agriculture on the top of Pike & Rose residential buildings. Photo contributed
By Ashley Claire Simpson/The Almanac
Just a few years ago, Bethesda residents would find a standard strip mall at 11580 Old Georgetown Road in North Bethesda. Today, it’s the site of the Pike & Rose, a community complete with condominiums, apartments, office buildings. The residents of these buildings are a stone’s throw from restaurants, shops and just about every type of venue one could imagine.
Mixed-use communities like Pike & Rose are developed to improve both human and environmental health. The developers behind Pike & Rose are taking these eco-priorities one step beyond – literally – with a rooftop gardening initiative.
Federal Realty, in partnership with Up Top Acres, a provider of rooftop farms, is launching 17,000 square feet of agriculture on at the top of Pike & Rose residential buildings.
“Federal Realty is trying to redevelop its properties to become mixed-use,” said Chris Brown, Federal Realty’s Director of Sustainability. “We did Bethesda Row, Pentagon Row, and other local projects. One thing about mixed use and high density developments is that it helps people in those communities focus on health. It’s all about having live, work and play options together in one spot. The farm will galvanize residents to eat healthier and will add to the community that they glean from.”
Pike & Rose’s farm will thrive on urban farming roof space to date, benefiting the hundreds of residents and employees who work at businesses at Pike & Rose as well as the North Bethesda community.
“Green roofs are often installed to facilitate high performance energy, and rooftop gardens take it to a whole new level,” Brown said. “They produce crops, but they are also good for stormwater management. When you can turn an otherwise unutilized space it into something that produces food for the community, something for residents to use, that’s exciting.”
Federal Realty has already experienced success with Up Top Acres.
“A few years ago, we were introduced to the founders of Up Top Acres, and they were looking for an opportunity to convert an existing green roof into a garden,” Brown said. “Since Bethesda Row had a green roof, we partnered with them for them to build a 7,000-square-foot garden. Now it’s been a solid partnership of three years. Both Federal Realty and Up Top Acres are always looking to expand and recreate. The opportunity to do a larger scale farm, make it an interactive part of the community and offer community supported agriculture is something we are looking forward to.”
Up Top Acres was founded by three D.C. locals with a shared passion for their hometown and a collective goal to make it an even better place.
“We started working on the idea in 2014,” Up Top Acres co-founder Kristof Grina said. “Each member of the founding team has a different specialty, and I’m the one with the agricultural background. We were all captivated by the concept of rooftop farming. We got inspired and thought it would be great to bring to D.C. We opened our first, pilot rooftop in 2015 [with Bethesda Row] and since then we have grown to seven different rooftops — collectively we’re farming more than two acres.”
The 17,000-square-foot rooftop garden at Pike & Rose is Up Top Acres’ biggest project to date.
“Our mission aligned with that of Federal Realty for the garden at Pike & Rose,” Grina said. “We are opening it officially this spring to provide produce for the local community – for the residents, wholesale clients, restaurants in the Pike & Rose development, and to the greater North Bethesda community.”
Up Top Acres’ farm will ensure that Pike & Rose’s city slickers will benefit from a full spectrum of farm fresh vegetables.
“We are growing everything from lettuces, mixed greens, herbs, peppers, radishes, and so much more. There are 16 different variety vegetables,” Grina said.
For every vegetable grown above Pike & Rose, there is at least one advantage to the community at large.
“With this rooftop vegetation, we are providing hyperlocal food — as local as it gets — harvested and distributed within 24 hours,” Grina said. “We’re also cutting down on the distance the food has to travel, which in turn is supporting the local economy. Then, the people who work on the farms work in the community that the farms are in. Rooftop gardens are great, because, in urban areas, it’s difficult to find space to grow. For example, it’s not like there is anywhere on the ground to grow food on Rockville Pike. We’re really making use of space.”
As Up Top Acres looks to grow more rooftop farms, the Federal Realty team is pleased to be a part of the movement.
“Finding different ways to interact with the built environment should always be a goal of development,” Brown said. “Green roof design is constantly evolving, and we see rooftop farms as a natural progression. We are proud of our partnership with Up Top Acres. They are the drivers, and we’re proud to be a part of something so forward-thinking.”
Europe’s Largest City Farm Built On Rooftop In Brussels
Europe’s Largest City Farm Built On Rooftop In Brussels
BIGH “Ferme Abattoir” in Anderlecht
The "Ferme Abattoir", the first city farm built by Building Integrated GreenHouses (BIGH), has opened on the roof of Foodmet, the new food hall of the Abattoir site in Anderlecht, Brussels. With around 2000 m2 of greenhouses for horticulture and aquaponics, and 2000 m2 open-field vegetable cultivation, they claim to be the largest city farm in Europe situated on the roof of a building.
Aquaponics
BIGH is based on an 'aquaponics' production model, which means that fish and plant breeding are linked by a biological filter that continuously purifies the water for the fish. The waste from the fish is converted into natural fertilizers for the plants. The water is used to irrigate the plants and is replenished daily. Aquaponics is the combination of hydroponics (cultivation without soil) and aquaculture or fish farming. It’s an example of circular economic principles in which waste and water from fish are used for the cultivation of crops.
Reusing CO2
In 2015 BIGH was established to optimize urban real estate and to make the city more productive by, for example, installing greenhouses on roofs. To this end, BIGH integrates the reuse of surplus C02 and energy emissions and using rainwater in the production process to better utilize the value and space of buildings, focusing on sustainable and circular urban agriculture. This will reduce the ecological footprint and improve nutrition, urban quality of life, employment, aesthetics, climate, and biodiversity.
Together with a number of economic and social partners, BIGH's entrepreneurs play an active role in the pursuit of a sustainable food model. For them, urban agriculture is a link between urban consumers and rural production, between experts and producers and other actors in the food sector.
Short chain
Since a few years, consumers demand products that are healthy, local and traceable. In that respect, aquaponics and urban agriculture can offer high-quality, tasty and healthy products according to the short-chain principle. Urban agriculture refers to agricultural activities in an urban environment, which are based on a more ecological, social, sustainable and circular food system. With this approach the city can provide for a part of its own needs and turns it into a non-polluting production centre.
Network of urban farms
BIGH wants to create a network of urban farms in major European cities for the benefit of the inhabitants of those cities. "These are innovative examples of a circular economy that are cost-effective, transparent, high-quality and ecologically and socially driven. Their shape and content are created in symbiosis with the urban environment."
For more information:
BIGH
www.bigh.farm
contact@bigh.tech
Can We Make Green Roofs More Biodiverse?
A study of decades-old German green roofs found that they don’t support a wide range of animal and plant life. But researchers and designers are trying to change that.
A man puts a pallet of live plants on the roof of the Illinois Department of Agriculture building in Springfield, Ill. Seth Perlman/AP
Can We Make Green Roofs More Biodiverse?
A study of decades-old German green roofs found that they don’t support a wide range of animal and plant life. But researchers and designers are trying to change that.
Every time Kelly Ksiazek-Mikenas scrambled onto a new green roof, it was hard to tell exactly where she was. The city below was definitely Berlin or Neubrandenburg, but the expanse of scraggly greens ahead of her looked a lot like the green roofs in Chicago, her home.
The only difference was that the German green roofs were much older than anything found in the United States: three to nine times older. Which is why the Northwestern University Ph.D. student in plant biology spent her summer there a few years ago.
The ability of plants to absorb and evaporate stormwater, reduce a building’s energy use, and clean up some air pollution makes green roofs effective as a sustainable-building technique. They also just look nice. Germany began tinkering with green-roof technology back in the late 1800s when owners of some buildings tried fireproofing with gravel, sand, and sod.
In 1975, German construction businesses got together to document the nitty-gritty construction standards. Their 2002 manual detailed everything from the ideal roof slope to the best soil depth and waterproof barriers. By the time Americans started experimenting with green roofs, their German counterparts were already professionals.
America’s green roofs were modeled after Germany’s. In both countries, the standard design is a thin layer of lightweight, low-moisture, and low-nutrient dirt blanketed by sedum, a hardy genus of succulent. Landscapers can easily install a roof of this type and check in on it once or twice a year.
A farmer stands in front of his sedums in Montana's Bitterroot Valley. The plants spring from a geo-textile mat (foreground) topped by thin layers of soil. The mats will eventually be transported and installed on rooftops. (Laura Zuckerman/Reuters)
“We ended up just copying what the Germans did,” said Ksiazek-Mikenas. By “we,” she meant the organization that defines American construction standards, which used the German protocol as a template in the early 2000s, as the green-building movement was taking off in the U.S.
The German model was dependable and low-maintenance. Why start from scratch, Americans figured, when someone else had done the stressful experimentation and developed the final product? Besides, even in cities that offered substantial financial incentives for green roofs, you got nothing extra for keeping them lush. Developers could follow the German method, stick hardy plants in a roof, and walk away, rewarded for their environmentally friendly choice.
Ksiazek-Mikenas wanted to know if green roofs ever come to host a wide range of species. American roofs were too young for her to tell. “As an ecologist, I realized a decade is such a tiny period of time as far as a succession of a plant community goes,” she said.
So she examined the diversity of 16 German installations that were between one and 93 years old. She collaborated with Manfred Köhler, a long-time researcher in the German green roof scene, who had monitored about a third of the plots at least once a year for between 12 and 27 years. The pair also closely studied 13 other roofs of different ages for one season. That way, they could measure how individual green roofs evolve, and approximate how one might look after nearly a century.
The results, published earlier this year in Urban Naturalist, make a case for breaking with tradition and investing more resources in green roofs.
As it turns out, the German plots stayed the same. Time didn’t translate into a broader spectrum of plant and animal species, just more plants overall. Rooftops receive more sunlight and wind, so as a precaution against weeds, green roofs are commonly given soil that holds little moisture and few nutrients. Species (like chives) that proliferated the most, the researchers found, could withstand the setting’s harsh conditions. “The survivors have traits that allow adaptation,” Ksiazek-Mikenas said.
Chuck Friedrich, a horticulturist and landscape architect, learned a similar lesson. As a member of the subcommittee drafting green roof recommendations in the U.S., Friedrich saw the German style adopted around the country, and tried it himself. After a decade of battling one test installation, he gave up maintaining the right balance of plants.
The hardiest plants, Friedrich realized, dominate green roofs. In subtropical North Carolina, where he lives, sedums dry up in the sun unless watered frequently. To Friedrich, a truly hand-off roof in the South must incorporate a range of native plants. If you’re dead set on the German approach, “it is maintenance, maintenance, maintenance,” he said, “and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
Lauren Woodward Stanley, a Texas-based architect who has advised the City of Austin on green roofs, tests different species as alternatives to sedums. Not all make it—the blue grama grass died out, while red yucca thrives—but that’s part of working with plants. “If you really drill down [into] defining ‘exactly what you can expect,’ as if it’s a known quantity and not a living system, you’re discounting what it is,” she said.
A landscaper mows the grass during its annual grooming on the roof of the Vancouver Convention Centre. The six-acre green roof has a range of indigenous plants, as well as beehives. (Andy Clark/Reuters)
There is rising interest in native green roofs, and Ksiazek-Mikenas is focused on finding native species that can tough it out on Midwestern rooftops. Going with native plants means choosing unpredictability because little of this work has been done before—especially in Chicago, where the usual sedums do just fine. But it may be more ecologically rewarding than plopping down proven species.
For green-roof projects where experimentation isn’t possible, Ksiazek-Mikenas has advice on how to modify the German style for greater biodiversity. Start by planting the widest range of suitable plants possible, not just one or two kinds of sedum. Spend a little bit of time culling a species that’s taken up more than its fair share of the roof. Put up some bee nesting boxes or leave some decaying wood behind to encourage insects into a new home.
Individual green roofs are often small, but these slight changes can provide havens for species whose ground-level territories are fragmented or disappearing. “Even minimal is better than nothing,” she said.
About the Author
Leslie Nemo is a writer based in New York City. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Scientific American, and elsewhere.
Hong Kong's Rooftop Farms May Not Be Lucrative, But Are A Hit With Overworked Residents
High above downtown studding the city’s skyline. Hong Kong’s bustling, traffic-clogged streets, a group of office workers are toiling away not on a corporate acquisition or a public share offering but on harvesting a bumper crop of lettuce atop one of the skyscrapers
Hong Kong's Rooftop Farms May Not Be Lucrative, But Are A Hit With Overworked Residents
More than 100 metres above Hong Kong’s financial district, office workers are taking food safety into their own hands. But the city’s skyline farms harvest far more happiness than food
April 8, 2018
High above downtown Hong Kong’s bustling, traffic-clogged streets, a group of office workers are toiling away not on a corporate acquisition or a public share offering but on harvesting a bumper crop of lettuce atop one of the skyscrapers studding the city’s skyline. It’s rooftop farming taken to the extreme, and more about reaping happiness than providing food.
The volunteers are picking butter lettuce, Indian lettuce and Chinese mustard leaf in rows of low black plastic planters on a decommissioned helipad on the 146m (480ftt) high roof of the 38-storey Bank of America tower, the scenery: a vertiginous panorama of glass office towers framed by lush mountain peaks and Victoria Harbour.
“It’s pretty dirty but still I really enjoy it,” says Catherine Ng, one of five volunteers who work for the property company managing the tower.
The farm is run by Rooftop Republic, a three-year-old startup whose founders are tapping growing interest in organic food and taking advantage of unused roof space in the cramped, high-rent Chinese city.
Hong Kong, with its skinny office blocks and apartment towers and busy, affluent residents, might seem an unlikely place for rooftop farming to catch on. The finance and trading hub has rural suburbs, but farming only takes up 700 hectares of its land and agriculture accounts for 0.1 per cent of its economic output. Rooftop Republic’s founders say the appetite for their services is growing among Hong Kongers who are seeking a more sustainable lifestyle and concerned about where their food comes from.
“We have been getting more and more interest from people who want to grow their own food,” says Michelle Hong, one of the founders. “A lot of it is triggered by concerns about food safety and the realisation that a lot of the food they consume might be laden with pesticides. I think people want to have more control and also more trust.”
Volunteers grow crops suitable to Hong Kong’s cool winter climate, such as kale, cabbage, radishes and carrots
Hong Kong imports almost all of its food, much of it from mainland China. Public awareness about food safety in the former British colony has risen after countless food contamination scandals in the mainland.
Rooftop Republic has set up on average one farm a month since its founding and now manages 36 covering more than 30,000 square feet (about 2,800 square metres), including one in mainland China, Hong says. It also provides workshops for companies, building owners, schools and community groups.
The Bank of America farm was a milestone because it was the first in the city’s financial district. The company has since set up two more in the area and is looking at a few more sites, Hong says. Vegetables from the tower are donated to a food bank for uses in lunchboxes distributed to the needy. Some of its other farms are at hotels or restaurants, which use the herbs, eggplants and melons for dishes on their menus.
Research shows there is around 1,500 rooftop farmers in the city, cultivating a total area of around 1½ hectares
Plenty of other groups or individuals have started cultivating their own rooftop vegetable gardens, says Matthew Pryor, a Hong Kong University architecture professor who has counted at least 60 and thinks there are a lot more he doesn’t know about.
Pryor’s research found approximately 1,500 rooftop farmers in the city, cultivating a total area of about 1½ hectares. He thinks there’s potential for that to easily grow to 50,000 people working on a suitable rooftop area of 600 hectares.
He helped set up a farm on top of a university building where volunteers, mainly staff, grow tomatoes, potatoes, strawberries, lettuce, dragon fruit, papaya, beans, peas, and squash.
But the main product of the farms isn’t edible: instead, they improve the well-being and happiness of Hong Kong’s socially isolated residents
Pryor says he discovered through his research that their main product isn’t edible.
“The rooftop farms here produce virtually nothing” compared to Hong Kong’s overall consumption, Pryor says. “What they do produce, however, is happiness, and this social capital that they generate is enormous.”
The farms can help stressed out, overworked and socially isolated Hong Kongers be happier and improve their wellbeing by letting them hang out with their friends and commune with nature.
The farm on the top of the Bank of America tower’s disused helipad was a milestone as it is the first to be set up in the financial district
Those benefits were on display at another Rooftop Republic farm at airline Cathay Pacific’s headquarters near the city’s airport on rural Lantau Island.
Airline staff planted crops that thrive in Hong Kong’s cool, dry winter growing season, like kale, cabbage, radishes and carrots, which they can take home.
“We’re right by the sea, we have great views of the harbour, at the same time have got great views of the airport. We see planes every two minutes,” says volunteer Prian Chan. “So it’s awesome to be here.”
AP
Green Roofs Improve Our Lives. Why Don't We Have More of Them?
Green Roofs Improve Our Lives. Why Don't We Have More of Them?
Jenna Hammerich, Iowa City Climate Advocates Writers Group
Published April 20, 2018
Every day, it seems, a new building appears in our skyline, whether in Iowa City’s downtown or Riverfront Crossings districts, Coralville’s Iowa River Landing, or in Tiffin or North Liberty. Sometimes the new building is LEED certified — Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, the rating system used by the U.S. Green Building Council to measure a building’s sustainability and resource-efficiency. A few are even beautiful. But almost all of them have dead, black tar and asphalt roofs. Empty, heat-sink roofs. Wasted space.
Imagine seeing a magnolia tree in full bloom on top of an apartment building or prairie grass swaying in the breeze out your bedroom window. Imagine tending a vegetable garden on the roof of a school or strolling through a meadow on the roof of a hotel.
Despite our county’s recent environmental strides — e.g., Iowa City Council’s endorsing federal carbon fee-and-dividend legislation and mandating that multifamily units provide recycling — only a handful of buildings in our area have green roofs.
Green or “living” roofs — those partially or completely covered with soil and vegetation over a waterproof membrane — provide multiple benefits to individuals and communities. By absorbing rainwater, they reduce erosion, prevent flooding, and filter pollutants. They prolong roofing membranes by protecting them from ultraviolet rays. They conserve energy and lower air-conditioning costs by absorbing and reflecting heat. They reduce noise and air pollution, provide wildlife habitat and sequester carbon dioxide. Plus, research continues to show that visual and physical access to nature improves our health. (In one notable study, hospital patients with views of green space recovered faster.)
Green roofs can function as parks, urban farms, playgrounds, outdoor classrooms and peaceful retreats, even in winter. They can be public or private. They can be installed on most roofs (up to a 45-degree pitch), at various levels of cost, access, and maintenance — from shallow, lightweight, perennial grass plantings requiring little to no maintenance to deeper beds with trees and shrubs. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, simple green roofs cost about $10 per square foot to install and provide a 220 to 247 percent return on investment.
Given that green roofs improve our vistas, our air, our water, our soil, our moods, our health and our roofs; provide food; reduce community resistance to infill; create jobs; increase buildings’ marketability; pay for themselves; and, I would argue, make an area significantly more attractive to young professionals — why don’t we have more of them?
Two reasons, as I see it: lack of understanding and funding.
The U.S. as a whole lags behind the rest of the world in supporting green roofs. Germany has encouraged the industry since the 1970s via incentives and requirements at multiple levels of government, resulting in 10 million square feet of new green roofs every year. The U.S. installs 7 million.
That said, Chicago, Seattle and Washington, D.C., have robust green-roof industries, thanks to green infrastructure mandates, and San Francisco and Denver recently approved initiatives requiring all new and existing buildings meeting certain thresholds to incorporate green roofs.
I urge every jurisdiction in Iowa to develop green roof policies for all new developments. Cities and counties could also advocate for green-roof tax incentives at the state level, plus more funding for cities’ Stormwater Best Management Practices Grants, which financially assist residents who install stormwater features, including green roofs, on their properties. (Coralville, Iowa City and North Liberty currently provide these grants.)
If you’re a homeowner interested in installing a green roof on an existing building, first contact a structural engineer (most architectural firms have one on staff) to ensure that your roof can withstand the weight. While you can do the installation yourself, I recommend finding a certified contractor like West Branch Roofing, T&K Roofing or Country Landscapes, which work with Roof Top Sedums in Davenport. Visit jcgreenroofs.wordpress.com for a list of local financial resources and certified installers.
In this era of climate change, only cities that invest in green infrastructure will thrive. Iowa has embraced renewable energy. Now let’s take the next step and green up our rooftops.
Jenna Hammerich is a member of Iowa City Climate Advocates and a resident of Iowa City.
Lufa Farms: Using Montreal’s Rooftops To Feed The Growing Urban Population
Lufa Farms, a Montreal urban agriculture company, is working on revolutionizing the city’s food system, based on two key ideas: Growing food where people live and growing it more sustainability.
(Lufa Farms)
Lufa Farms: Using Montreal’s Rooftops To Feed The Growing Urban Population
March 27, 2018 Science & Technology by Zoe Doran
Lufa Farms, a Montreal urban agriculture company, is working on revolutionizing the city’s food system, based on two key ideas: Growing food where people live and growing it more sustainability. Best described as an online farmer’s market, Lufa Farms operates three rooftop greenhouses in Montreal, which produce more than 100 types of vegetables annually.
Fresh produce is delivered the same day that it’s harvested and is supplemented by the company’s partners (including Ferme La Rose des Vents, Fromagerie du Vieux St-François, Aux Vivres, and others) who provide sustainably and humanely-raised meats, as well as dairy, eggs, baked goods, pastas, vegan alternatives, and more. Lufa Farms’ unique focus on both taste and sustainability allows customers to reconnect with their food.
Customers can complete an easy sign-up online, customize their personal basket of food, and pick it up at one of the 450 pickup points scattered throughout Montreal. Vegetables are harvested overnight and delivered the following afternoon at the customer’s preferred location.
Fortunately for McGill students, Lufa Farms makes buying locally-sourced food affordable. The minimum basket order is $15, but Thibault Sorret, a Lufa Farms employee, said in an interview with the The McGill Tribune that many students may supplement their normal grocery shopping with Lufa Farms’ vegetables.
“Most students use Lufa Farms as a vegetable complement to [their] normal grocery shopping,” Sorret said. “[First they] chose a base, like quinoa or rice, then add vegetables, which are the best and cheapest pesticide-free vegetables in Montreal, and finish with protein.”
The primary goal of local agriculture is to produce good taste, not durability for transport or yield capabilities, so Lufa Farms hopes to show consumers the value difference and importance of food grown close to home.
“If you use this approach, you will eat healthier, but you will be able to adjust [shopping at Lufa Farms] to your budget,” Sorret said. “[Hopefully] the more people who develop a connection to their food, the more people will question why supermarket food [lacks the same quality of taste.]”
Lufa Farms prides itself on using no new land, meaning that their hydroponic greenhouse systems—employing agriculture that produces crops without soil—are exclusively on the rooftops of existing buildings. All greenhouses use a closed circuit water system, which collects rainwater, snowmelt, and recycles 100 per cent of gray water and waste water from the agricultural process. Lufa Farms also uses biocontrols—instead of pesticides—for their crops, and organic waste is composted on-site. Lufa Farms’ innovative technology represents a switch back to localized agriculture.
In the next two years, the company hopes to expand to the United States and gain attention internationally. Urban agriculture is a relatively new field, with the potential to revolutionize the way we think about food production. The company’s greatest expenses are the construction and maintenance of its rooftop greenhouses, but as Lufa Farms expands, they will reduce the costs of their products, making the Lufa Farms choice an even more economically-accessible option. According to Sorret, Lufa Farms’ current success demonstrates that if cities take advantage of their unused rooftop space, they have the potential to create largely self-sustainable food production systems.
“Rooftop farms on only just 19 rooftops of large malls could feed the entire city, even in cities, like Montreal, with challenging climates,” Sorret said.
The company hopes to cater to customers living on and near the island of Montreal with fresh and local foods that are sustainably produced.
Montreal might not often be considered an agricultural city, with long winters that bring bone-chilling temperatures and unsightly amounts of snow. The city’s bizarre seasonality has restricted Montrealers’ food choices to often tasteless and subpar quality produce which has traveled thousands of miles, just to be selected begrudgingly from the aisles of the local supermarket. This leaves urban agriculture, and companies like Lufa Farms, as the first stepping stone to a more sustainable future for the city.
Farms Atop Skyscrapers Gradually Taking Root In Hong Kong
Farms Atop Skyscrapers Gradually Taking Root In Hong Kong
27 Mar 2018
Volunteers pick Indian lettuce on the roof of the 38-story Bank of America tower, in Hong Kong. (AP file photo)
High above downtown Hong Kong’s bustling, traffic-clogged streets, a group of office workers was toiling away on harvesting a bumper crop of lettuce atop a skyscraper.
This is rooftop farming taken to the extreme, and more about reaping happiness than providing food.
The volunteers were picking butter lettuce, Indian lettuce and Chinese mustard leaf in rows of low black plastic planters on a decommissioned helipad on the 146-meter-high roof of the 38-story Bank of America tower.
"It’s pretty dirty but still I really enjoy it,” said Catherine Ng, one of five volunteers who works for the property company managing the tower.
he farm is run by Rooftop Republic, a three-year-old startup whose founders are tapping growing interest in organic food and taking advantage of unused roof space in the cramped, high-rent Chinese city.
Hong Kong has rural suburbs, but farming only takes up 700 hectares of its land and agriculture accounts for 0.1 percent of its economic output. Rooftop Republic’s founders say the appetite for their services is growing among Hongkongers.
"We have been getting more and more interest from people who want to grow their own food,” said Michelle Hong, one of the founders. "A lot of it is triggered by concerns about food safety and the realization that a lot of the food they consume might be laden with pesticides. I think people want to have more control and also more trust.”
Rooftop Republic has set up on average one farm a month since its founding and now manages 36 covering more than 30,000 square feet, including one in mainland China, Hong said. It also provides workshops for companies, building owners, schools, and community groups.
The Bank of America farm was a milestone because it was the first in the city’s financial district. The company has since set up two more in the area and is looking at a few more sites, Hong said. Vegetables from the tower are donated to a food bank for uses in lunch boxes distributed to the needy. Some of its other farms are at hotels or restaurants, which use the herbs, eggplants and melons for dishes on their menus.
Plenty of other groups or individuals have started cultivating their own rooftop vegetable gardens, said Matthew Pryor, a Hong Kong University architecture professor who has counted at least 60 and thinks there are a lot more he does not know about.
Pryor’s research found 1,500 rooftop farmers in the city, cultivating a total area of about 1 ½ hectares. He thinks there’s potential for that to easily grow to 50,000 people working on a suitable rooftop area of 600 hectares.
He helped set up a farm on top of a university building where volunteers, mainly staff, grow tomatoes, potatoes, strawberries, lettuce, dragonfruit, papaya, beans, peas and squash.
Pryor said he discovered through his research that their main product isn’t edible.
"The rooftop farms here produce virtually nothing” compared to Hong Kong’s overall consumption, Pryor said. "What they do produce, however, is happiness, and this social capital that they generate is enormous.”-AP
U.S.: Gotham Greens Breaks Ground On Second Chicago Greenhouse
U.S. urban agricultural company Gotham Greens has broken ground on its second Chicago greenhouse, as it continues its rapid expansion in the country.
The 140,000-square-foot facility is in the Pullman neighborhood, which is also where the company’s existing Chicago rooftop greenhouse is located.
The new facility will produce vegetables and herbs year-round for local retailers, restaurants, and institutional foodservice customers.
On Thursday Mayor Rahm Emanuel joined Gotham Greens founders Viraj Puri and Eric Haley and community leaders in Pullman to break ground on what will be the city’s largest agricultural greenhouse.
It is expected to create 60 permanent and 70 construction jobs.
“Gotham Greens’ decision to double down and build a second greenhouse is a vote of confidence in Chicago and another sign of the economic renaissance underway in the historic Pullman community,” Mayor Emanuel said.
“Pullman’s historic past is matched only by its growing economic resurgence today, thanks to partners like Gotham Greens.”
Using modern growing methods that include hydroponics, evaporative cooling systems and renewable energy resources, the US$12.6 million complex is expected to produce approximately 30 times the yield of conventional agriculture per acre while using 10% of the water.
Gotham Greens said the expansion reflects its success growing and selling premium quality produce year-round in technologically advanced indoor farms.
Besides its Pullman locations, Gotham Greens currently owns three greenhouses in New York City and has “several facilities in development in other US cities”.
The company employs over 160 people and partners with community organizations to support job training, wellness, and environmental education programs in both Chicago and New York.
“Thanks to the leadership and hard work of Mayor Emanuel, Alderman Beale, the City of Chicago, CNI, and all of our community partners, Pullman has been a great place to innovate and do business,” Puri said.
“We’re producing millions of pounds of fresh produce annually for national and local grocery stores and foodservice operators across Chicagoland, far exceeding our expectations. This is the ideal time for us to expand our presence in the Midwest, and Pullman is the ideal place for us to do so.”
In Pullman the company currently operates a 75,000-square-foot greenhouse on the roof of the nearby Method Products factory, which opened in 2015.
The 6.2-acre project site of the new greenhouse was occupied until 2008 by a Ryerson Steel plant and later acquired by Pullman Park LLC.
Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives plans to acquire and prepare the site for US$3.68 million and subsequently sell the property to Gotham Greens, which will complete the greenhouse’s vertical construction. Approximately US$3.4 million in Tax Increment Financing assistance for the site preparation work is pending City Council approval.