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With Farms Atop Malls, Singapore Gets Serious About Food Security
The farm's small size belies its big ambition: to help improve the city's food security.
January 09, 2019 5:11 PM
SINGAPORE —
Visitors to Singapore's Orchard Road, the city's main shopping belt, will find fancy malls, trendy department stores, abundant food courts — and a small farm.
Comcrop's 600-square-meter (6,450-square-foot) farm on the roof of one of the malls uses vertical racks and hydroponics to grow leafy greens and herbs such as basil and peppermint that it sells to nearby bars, restaurants and stores.
The farm's small size belies its big ambition: to help improve the city's food security.
Comcrop's Allan Lim, who set up the rooftop farm five years ago, recently opened a 4,000-square-meter farm with a greenhouse on the edge of the city.
He believes high-tech urban farms are the way ahead for the city, where more land cannot be cultivated.
"Agriculture is not seen as a key sector in Singapore. But we import most of our food, so we are very vulnerable to sudden disruptions in supply," Lim said.
"Land, natural resources and low-cost labor used to be the predominant way that countries achieved food security. But we can use technology to solve any deficiencies," he said.
Singapore last year topped the Economist Intelligence Unit's (EIU) Global Food Security Index of 113 countries for the first time, scoring high on measures such as affordability, availability and safety.
Yet, as the country imports more than 90 percent of its food, its food security is susceptible to climate change and natural resource risks, the EIU noted.
With 5.6 million people in an area three-fifths the size of New York City — and with the population estimated to grow to 6.9 million by 2030 — land is at a premium in Singapore.
The country has long reclaimed land from the sea, and plans to move more of its transport, utilities and storage underground to free up space for housing, offices and greenery.
It has also cleared dozens of cemeteries for homes and highways.
An aerial view shows Citiponics' urban farm located on the rooftop of a multi-story garage in a public housing estate in western Singapore, April 17, 2018.
Agriculture makes up only about 1 percent of its land area, so better use of space is key, said Samina Raja, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University at Buffalo in New York.
"Urban agriculture is increasingly being recognized as a legitimate land use in cities," she said. "It offers a multitude of benefits, from increased food security and improved nutrition to greening of spaces. But food is seldom a part of urban planning."
Supply shocks
Countries across the world are battling the worsening impacts of climate change, water scarcity and population growth to find better ways to feed their people.
Scientists are working on innovations — from gene editing of crops and lab-grown meat to robots and drones — to fundamentally change how food is grown, distributed and eaten.
With more than two-thirds of the world's population forecast to live in cities by 2050, urban agriculture is critical, a study published last year stated.
Urban agriculture currently produces as much as 180 million metric tons of food a year — up to 10 percent of the global output of pulses and vegetables, the study noted.
Additional benefits, such as reduction of the urban heat-island effect, avoided stormwater runoff, nitrogen fixation and energy savings could be worth $160 billion annually, it said.
Countries including China, India, Brazil and Indonesia could benefit significantly from urban agriculture, it said.
"Urban agriculture should not be expected to eliminate food insecurity, but that should not be the only metric," said study co-author Matei Georgescu, a professor of urban planning at Arizona State University.
"It can build social cohesion among residents, improve economic prospects for growers, and have nutritional benefits. In addition, greening cities can help to transition away from traditional concrete jungles," he said.
Singapore was once an agrarian economy that produced nearly all its own food. There were pig farms and durian orchards, and vegetable gardens and chickens in the kampongs, or villages.
But in its push for rapid economic growth after independence in 1965, industrialization took precedence, and most farms were phased out, said Kenny Eng, president of the Kranji Countryside Association, which represents local farmers.
Organic cilantro seedlings sprout from growing towers that are primarily made out of polyvinyl chloride pipes at Citiponics' urban farm on the rooftop of a multi-story garage in a public housing estate in western Singapore, April 17, 2018.
The global food crisis of 2007-08, when prices spiked, causing widespread economic instability and social unrest, may have led the government to rethink its food security strategy to guard against such shocks, Eng said.
"In an age of climate uncertainty and rapid urbanization, there are merits to protecting indigenous agriculture and farmers' livelihoods," he said.
Local production is a core component of the food security road map, according to the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) of Singapore, a state agency that helps farmers upgrade with technical know-how, research and overseas study tours.
Given its land constraints, AVA has also been looking to unlock more spaces, including underutilized or alternative spaces, and harness technological innovations to "grow more with less," a spokeswoman said by email.
Intrinsic value
A visit to the Kranji countryside, just a 45-minute drive from the city's bustling downtown, and where dozens of farms are located, offers a view of the old and the new.
Livestock farms and organic vegetable plots sit alongside vertical farms and climate-controlled greenhouses.
Yet many longtime farmers are fearful of the future, as the government pushes for upgrades and plans to relocate more than 60 farms by 2021 to return land to the military.
Many farms might be forced to shut down, said Chelsea Wan, a second-generation farmer who runs Jurong Frog Farm.
"It's getting tougher because leases are shorter, it's harder to hire workers, and it's expensive to invest in new technologies," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
"We support the government's effort to increase productivity through technology, but we feel sidelined," she said.
Wan is a member of the Kranji Countryside Association, which has tried to spur local interest in farming by welcoming farmers' markets, study tours, homestays and weddings.
Small peri-urban farms at the edge of the city, like those in Kranji, are not just necessary for food security, Eng said.
"The countryside is an inalienable part of our heritage and nation-building, and the farms have an intrinsic value for education, conservation, the community and tourism," he said.
At the rooftop farm on Orchard Road, Lim looks on as brisk, elderly Singaporeans, whom he has hired to get around the worker shortage, harvest, sort and pack the day's output.
"It's not a competition between urban farms and landed farms; it's a question of relevance," he said. "You have to ask: What works best in a city like Singapore?"
Green Roof Ecology Students Design Projects For NYC Urban Rooftops
The fall 2018 Green Roof class projects were especially wide ranging and ambitious-and included two different green wall design proposals, a soil stormwater absorption experiment, a printed guide to common plants found on New York City green roofs, climate data analysis of microsensors installed on green roofs at both Brooklyn Grange and The New School, and a go-to all-purpose website about green roofs in the city.
Student green wall design for Vice Media headquarters in Brooklyn
FEBRUARY 22, 2019
For the last three years. Timon McPhearson, associate professor of urban ecology and director of the Urban Systems Lab, has been teaching a Green Roof Ecology class in which students collaborate to create civic engagement projects and conduct design and ecology research.
To conduct that research the class has partnered with Brooklyn Grange, the operator of the world’s two largest rooftop soil farms-and Vice Media headquarters in New York City. The class-which includes students from and Parsons School of Design and Eugene Lang College and is supported by Lang Civic Liberal Arts program —integrates design and urban ecology to innovate green roofs as spaces for improved social and environmental benefits. This course reflects The New School’s dedication to cross-disciplinary learning, design for social good, and real-world experiences. Among other benefits green roofs have vegetation that absorb storm water, provide insulation of buildings from heat, reduce noise and improve air quality.
The fall 2018 Green Roof class projects were especially wide ranging and ambitious-and included two different green wall design proposals, a soil stormwater absorption experiment, a printed guide to common plants found on New York City green roofs, climate data analysis of microsensors installed on green roofs at both Brooklyn Grange and The New School, and a go-to all-purpose website about green roofs in the city.
Architecture students Ross Myren and Antoine Antoine Vedel created one of those green wall design proposals as a site-specific design intervention for Vice headquarters in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.
The duo dubbed their design the “gwaffle,” (Green Waffle) a waffle-shaped structure that they created after visiting the Vice rooftop, discussing with Brooklyn Grange, and studying the essential architecture and ecology issues necessary to build a design model.
“There was a big gap between the artificial controlled environment and the green roof and we wanted to blur the boundaries between those two spaces,” Vedel said. “We wanted to create social interaction in that space while providing environmental benefits and adding more vertical space. Its fluid and organic design brings continuity to the space, also while benefiting the environment.”
Vedel praised Vice as a great space because they already have green roof infrastructure. Although the Gwaffle was developed for Vice, he stressed that it is “a system whose dimensions and modules are adjustable to the customer’s wishes.”
www.greenroofsnyc.com, the website created by several Green Roof Ecology students, details the myriad benefits that green roofs have for city inhabits. The website also provides resources needed for an individual or organization planning to create its own green roof, including types of roof structure, labor commitments, and accessibility and FAQs on how to secure financing by the city.
“When we started the class the website, it was geared to the Vice rooftop and then we expanded it to all of New York City as a resource guide,” said Stephanie Kale, a student involved in the site’s creation. “It can benefit anybody who wants to improve air quality, increase energy efficiency and increase property value.”
McPhearson says that he envisions the website as a broader resource that is now being expanded as a media outlet of the NYC Green Roof Research Alliance.
Another class project was a design for an indirect green wall that would be made of stainless steel and created for the new Brooklyn Grange rooftop farm opening this summer in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn. Students created a modular bench made of pinewood for the roof’s seating area.
“It was a great assignment,” said New School junior Jasmine Yee, one of the students who designed the indirect green wall. “I would love it if we could implement it.”
McPhearson says that every semester final class project output includes booklets, physical built prototypes, media materials and research reports and analyses.
“It’s exciting to see how this class continues to evolve as unique learning space that continues to expand beyond the university as a resource for design and ecological innovation the larger community of New York,” McPhearson said.
How Convention Centers Around The World Are Getting Greener
Aramis Velazquez - February 19, 2019
Photo: Javits Center
Kelsey Ogletree of Trade Show News Network writes:
Implementing sustainable practices isn’t just good for the environment, it’s also good for business, as many convention centers have discovered. According to the 2017 Green Venue Report (the 2018 report has not yet been released), event venues are saving millions of dollars each year thanks to sustainability upgrades through energy, waste or water conservation programs. Energy tracking for events is also improving, with 88 percent of venues surveyed reporting doing so. Yet technology is constantly changing, and what was good (or good enough) a few years ago is likely behind the times now. With that in mind, here’s a look at new sustainability efforts at some of the biggest convention centers around the country.
Convention Centers are Getting Greener
Below is a list of some the Convention Centers in our Greenroofs.com Projects Database:
The Green Venue Report (GVR) is an industry-wide initiative to provide benchmarking data, catalyze best practice, and stimulate competition around global convention & exhibition center sustainability. The report aims to give insight and content to best practices, with real data showing trends across the facets of event and venue sustainability. You can download the 2017 Green Venue Report for more detailed information.
GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE, GREEN ROOFS, STORMWATER MANAGEMENT, SUSTAINABILITY
Agri-Tech Entrepreneurs Eye The Vertical Landscape For New Growth
Newest city farmers mix soilless mediums with advanced technologies to create commercial farming spaces in the city
Lufa Farms co-founders Mohamed Hage and Lauren Rathmell in one of their greenhouses.Courtesy Lufa Farms
February 20, 2019
Lufa Farms is taking to the rooftops to bring its sustainable urban farming vision to reality. The Montreal-based entrepreneurs have become recognized leaders in indoor farming innovation, steadily expanding and refining their rooftop greenhouse concept.
They’re not alone in exploring the potential of urban commercial farming.
Lufa Farms is part of a growing number of agricultural technology entrepreneurs who are finding innovative ways to combine soilless processes such as hydroponics, aquaponics and/or aeroponics with advanced growing technologies to create commercial farming operations in urban markets.
With three rooftop sites up and running, Lauren Rathmell, greenhouse director and co-founder, says they’ll soon be ready to take their concept on the road to other major cities across Canada. “It’s urban agriculture at its best. Growing in a controlled environment allows us to produce crops all year round, closer to where people live, in a sustainable way. The beauty of moving to rooftops is that no new land is required.”
Green Roofs Benefit People, Environment
A team at the University of the District of Columbia in the nation’s capital has created a garden on the top of one school building. The garden holds many kinds of plants to help absorb rainwater… and grow food at the same time.
February 17, 2019
by VOA
Water is a necessity of life. Rain, especially, helps plants grow and stay green. But too much rain -- especially in cities -- can lead to flooding. That can cause waste water systems, like sewers, to overflow and send pollutants into rivers and other waterways. To fight the problem, several cities in the United States are starting programs like rooftop gardens.
A labor of love
A team at the University of the District of Columbia in the nation’s capital has created a garden on the top of one school building. The garden holds many kinds of plants to help absorb rainwater… and grow food at the same time.
Architect David Bell has designed five “green roofs" for the university. He says he is excited about the project because “it meant doing something more than just dealing with storm water management.”
“It took advantage of a resource above the city that you see all over where you have these flat roofs that aren’t doing anything and it really made it something that was about urban agriculture.”
Rainwater is collected in large containers and sent through a system that waters the rooftop garden.
The roof is filled with green life that appeals to insects.
Urban agriculture
In cities, “you don't have that many spaces to choose from and so rooftops are just (unused) space,” says Caitlin Arlotta. She is a student in the school's Urban Agriculture program.
The project is part of a research program to see which plants do well on rooftops. The researchers are looking at plants including strawberries, tomatoes and sweet potatoes.
“We have the same experiment running with tomatoes as we do with strawberries, so we’re doing variety trials and we're trying just to see which variety grows the best in a green roof setting.”
Community involvement
The university also has other green spaces.
“We also have our own farm experiments,” Arlotta said. “Within each of those growing systems, we want to be able to tell people which sorts of these crops grow the best.”
One goal of the program is food justice; or in Arlotta’s words, “bringing fresh food into cities where you wouldn't necessarily have that access.”
And that includes produce that might be more recognizable to immigrant members of the community.
“In the U.S., it may not seem very common to use hibiscus leaves and sweet potato leaves as food, but in many places around the world it is.”
Surprisingly productive
Sandy Farber Bandier helps run UDC’s Master Gardener program. It seeks to improve cities and make them beautiful by training people to become Master Gardeners.
She says she’s been surprised by the garden’s output.
“My biggest surprise was that we produced 4,250 pounds of produce the first year and was able to disseminate that to people in need."
Spreading the wealth
She likes being able to show people who live in D.C. and others beyond the nation's capital what -- and how -- food can be grown on a rooftop.
“This is the future for food. What we have established here at this college is food hub concept of you grow it here, you prepare it in a commercial kitchen, you distributethrough farmers markets, food trucks, and then you recycle.”
I’m Susan Shand.
VOA’s Julie Taboh reported this story. Susan Shand adapted this story for Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor.
Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.
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Words in This Story
rooftop – n. the top of a building
absorb – v. to soak up liquid
management - n. the skill of organizing people and events
advantage - n. something (such as a good position or condition) that helps to make someone or something better or more likely to succeed than others
urban – adj. in a city area
access - v. a way of being able to use or get something
disseminate - v. to cause (something, such as information) to go to many people
distribute - v. to give away to people
On Rooftops And In Tunnels, City Farms Lead Food Revolution
Salad plants are already being grown in old bomb shelters but floating dairy farms and 16-storey food towers could be next
Growing Underground produces food 33 metres beneath Clapham High Street in a wartime bomb shelter. Photograph: Roca London Gallery
10 February 2019
Only the Northern line tube trains rumbling through tunnels overhead provide any clue that Growing Underground is not a standard farm.
The rows of fennel, purple radish and wasabi shoots could be in almost any polytunnel, but these plants are 100 feet below Clapham High Street and show that urban agriculture is, in some cases at least, not a fad.
The underground farm has occupied a section of the second world war air-raid shelters for nearly five years, and Richard Ballard, one of the founders, is planning to expand into the rest of the space later this year.
“The UK is the hardest market for growing salad,” he said. “We’ve got very low prices in the supermarket, so if we can make it work here we can make it work anywhere.”
The Growing Underground experience is being highlighted at two exhibitions this year: Roca London Gallery’s investigation into “agritecture”, London 2026, which opened on Saturday, and the V&A’s Food: Bigger Than the Plate in May, which will also showcase micro-farming methods such as Grocycle’s hanging mushroom bags.
Urban commercial farming – as opposed to Britain’s 330,000 allotments – is a regular topic of interest at places like the World Economic Forum in Davos, where policymakers consider whether the world’s food system, blamed for causing both obesity and malnutrition, can be fixed.
There are already plenty of urban farming projects around the world, particularly in the US, Japan and the Netherlands, ranging from aquaponics – urban fish and plant farms – to vertical farming, where plants are grown in stacked trays, a method Growing Underground also uses.
ReGen eco-villages would power and feed self-reliant families. Photograph: Roca London Gallery
“It’s definitely becoming an expanding industry,” Ballard said. “There’s several other businesses starting up in London in containers, smaller projects, and there are several around the country now, other vertical farms.”
Growing Underground supplies herb and salad mixes – pea shoots, garlic chives, coriander, rocket, red mustard, basil and parsley – to Marks & Spencer, Waitrose, Ocado, Whole Foods and Planet Organic, as well as restaurateurs including Michel Roux. Being in London creates an advantage, Ballard says, as they can harvest and deliver in an hour.
He reels off other advantages. Being underground means temperatures never go below 15C – surface greenhouses need to be heated. They can do more harvests: 60 crops a year, compared with about seven in a traditional farm or about 25 in a polytunnel. Electricity to power the lights is a major overhead, but the firm believes renewable energy will become cheaper.
Similar British ventures include the Jones Food Company in Lincolnshire, while in the US AeroFarms has several projects in New Jersey, and Edenworks in Brooklyn uses the nitrogen waste from the tilapia and striped bass in its aquaponic fish farm to feed its herb crop.
For Clare Brass of Department 22, a sustainability consultancy which curated the Roca London exhibition, projects like Growing Underground are vital pointers to the future.
“We are living in the most ridiculously wasteful system,” she said, citing research that shows about a third of the world’s food is lost. “We need to transition to a circular economy. Business and government are not going to do it. These are people who are innovating, and we need these people to show us the way.”
Some of the ideas presented include rooftop bee-keeping, an insect breeding farm for roundabouts in Stockholm, home food recycling in 24 hours, and a floating dairy farm in Rotterdam that is due to open later this year – a real-life interpretation of the children’s book The Cow Who Fell In the Canal.
Futuristic food tech companies may look like a great investment, but when venture capital runs out, many businesses fold. Paignton Zoo in Devon was one of the first to try vertical farming in 2009, using a system known as VertiCrop to grow leafy greens such as Swiss chard and pak choi for its monkeys. Five years later, the system was gone. The company behind it, Valcent, which later became Alterrus and set up rooftop greenhouses on carparks in Canada, went bankrupt in 2014.
“Vertical farming makes sense for microgreens,” Carolyn Steel, a London-based architect and author of Hungry City, said. Herbs are about 200 times as valuable per kilo as grains. “But why farm grain in a city when it can grow 20 miles away and spend three years in a grain store. Grain stores are one of the reasons cities emerged in the first place.”
For Steel, urban farming should be encouraged as an important reminder for city dwellers where their food comes from. “We have become very remote from our food,” she said, pointing out that London’s geography shows how it was built on its food supply. Grains came along the Thames to Bread Street, chicken entered from the east to Poultry, while beef went to Smithfield.
“Ultimately we need to pay more for food,” Steel said. “Ever since industrialisation we’ve been externalising the true cost of food, and now we’re seeing the true cost of that in terms of climate change, mass extinctions, water depletion, soil erosion and diet-related disease. Where does vertical farming sit in that?”
A hydroponics unit for the home provides water and light for plants. Photograph: Roca London Gallery
Green Roofs Absorb Rainwater, Grow Food
Voice of America
09 Feb 2019
WASHINGTON
Rainwater is essential for life.
It helps plants and food crops flourish, and it keeps grasslands green and lush.
But too much of it, especially in the city, can lead to flooding, causing sewers to overflow and carry pollutants and contaminants to nearby streams and waterways.
To combat the problem in urban areas of the country, a growing number of cities across the U.S. are initiating programs like rooftop gardens.
A labor of love
To help with that initiative in the nations capital, a team at the University of the District of Columbia has created a rooftop garden on campus with a wide variety of vegetation to help absorb excess rainwater and grow food at the same time.
Architect David Bell, who designed five green roofs on the campus, says hes excited about the project because it meant doing something more than just dealing with storm water management.
It took advantage of a resource above the city that you see all over where you have these flat roofs that arent doing anything and really made it into something that was about urban agriculture, he said.
Rainwater is distributed through an irrigation system and collected in cisterns for the rooftop garden. It is also used in other parts of the campus.
The result is a picturesque sea of green vegetation and patches of brightly colored plants and flowers that attract pollinating insects and other wild creatures.
Urban agriculture
In an urban environment, you dont have that many spaces to choose from, and so rooftops are just unutilized space, said Caitlin Arlotta, a graduate student in the schools Urban Agriculture program. So its a really good way to not have to restructure your city necessarily and be able to incorporate green roofs.
The project, she points out, is part of a research initiative to see which plants are best suited for rooftop environments, both for food as well as pollination. They include hibiscus, strawberries, tomatoes and sweet potatoes.
We have the same experiment running with tomatoes as we do with strawberries, so were doing variety trials and were trying to see which variety grows the best in a green roof setting, she said.
A community affair
She pointed out that plants grow in a variety of different systems on campus, not just on the rooftop.
We have a hydroponic experiment, aquaponics experiment, we have a couple of bucket experiments going on with partner rooftops, and then we also have our own farm experiments, Arlotta said. Within each of those growing systems, we want to be able to tell people which varieties of these crops grow the best.
A main goal of the program she explained, is to have food justice.
So bringing fresh food into cities where you wouldnt necessarily have that access, she said.
And that includes produce for immigrant members of the community as well.
In the U.S., it may not seem very common to use hibiscus leaves and sweet potato leaves as food, but in many places around the world it is, Arlotta said.
An excess of riches
Sandy Farber Bandier coordinates UDCs Master Gardener program, which seeks to enhance the ecological health and aesthetics of urban environments by training District of Columbia residents to become Master Gardeners.
She says shes been surprised by the gardens bountiful harvest.
We produced 4,250 pounds (about 1,928 kilos) of produce the first year and were able to disseminate that to people in need, she said.
Grateful recipients included a number of area food banks and charities.
Spreading the wealth
Another benefit, Bandier says, was being able to show D.C. residents and people beyond the nations capital what and how food can be grown on a rooftop.
Its a wonderful feeling, she said. This is the future for food. What we have established here at this college is the food hub concept: you grow it here, you prepare it in a commercial kitchen, you distribute through farmers markets, food trucks, and then you recycle, you recycle, you compost.
While D.C. is home to one of the largest numbers of green roofs in the country, not all of them are designed to grow food. Architect David Bell hopes that over time, that will change.
Id like to see this becoming more of the standard, where people design and build buildings with farming on the roof, with the ability to actually go up there and enjoy it and have a better connection to nature, but also to provide better fresh food to people in urban areas, he said.
Urban Agriculture Gives Paris Space To Breathe
In the last few decades, manmade surfaces have taken over green space, leading to urban heat islands and more pollution in the air. It’s left Paris, like many other big cities, with higher urban temperatures and a greater risk of flooding as rain can no longer be absorbed into the ground
8 February 2019 — Article by JLL Staff Reporter
Green walls, rooftop gardens and urban farms are aiming to bring nature back into central Paris as the city looks to improve its air quality and create a more sustainable future.
In the last few decades, man made surfaces have taken over green space, leading to urban heat islands and more pollution in the air. It’s left Paris, like many other big cities, with higher urban temperatures and a greater risk of flooding as rain can no longer be absorbed into the ground.
To counter these issues, local authorities are increasingly looking to incorporate more greenery into both old and new buildings as well as developing public parks and gardens.
“Within the framework of the “Objectif 100 hectares” plan signed in 2016, Paris decided to launch the new Parisculteurs initiative to encourage innovative initiatives to cover 100 hectares of buildings in vegetation by 2020, of which a third would be dedicated to urban agriculture,” says Virginie Houzé, research director at JLL.
“Schools, office blocks and residential buildings all got involved. By incorporating vegetation in buildings, particularly on roofs and facades, it has helped to bring natural spaces back to the city without the need for additional land. These allow for temperature regulation while purifying air and water and encouraging biodiversity.”
The new normal?
Growing numbers of buildings are joining the movement. Start-up Sous les Fraises has been creating urban farms across the city growing fruits and herbs while plans are afoot to transform four terraces on the Bastille Opera into a farm for fruit, vegetables and edible flowers.
Other projects, such as La Ferme de la Bourse, aim to create a hydroponic farm to grow produce that can be distributed to nearby residents, tying into the growing consumer appetite for locally sourced food. Elsewhere, Stream Building has a vertical hop garden to provide protection over the summer before the crop is harvested to brew beer on site.
“Today, consumers in developed countries are increasingly conscious of the quality of the food they eat, the use of pesticides and genetic modification as well as thinking of the distance that food must travel to reach their plates,” says Houzé.
“Urban agriculture therefore has a double impact. It both increases the amount of green space in a city, helping people retain a connection with nature while encouraging them to consumer local products and assuage some of the social and ecological concerns that people have.”
The idea is spreading beyond Paris: cities like Toulouse and Lyon are welcoming their own urban farms. And within the wider Paris metropolitan area, it’s helping to bring previously neglected spaces back into productive use. The Urban Agriculture in Morangis project in Essonne has converted 7,780 square metres of wasteland into an urban agriculture site alongside 3,670 square metres for residential development.
A step in the right direction
Even as urban farming becomes more popular, it remains a way to bring nature back into the city and improve the wellbeing of residents rather than revamp local food chains.
“We don’t have sufficient surfaces available in the Ile-de-France areas to grow enough food to feasibly feed people living in and around Paris so it still needs to be brought in from other areas,” says Houzé. “But it’s a nice touch for restaurants and hotels to offer home-grown produce on their menus.”
Not all projects are visible. “Hydroponics or aquaponics projects, for example, grow crops in enclosed spaces and sometimes deprived of natural light such as basements or car parks,” explains Houzé. “These help to meet local production expectations but do not address the issues of air pollution or urban heat that require a much broader approach.”
And while the steadily growing number of rooftop farms and living walls around the city won’t solve the urban heat island effect on their own, they are a step in the right direction at a time when many countries are upping their efforts to tackle global warming and reduce high levels of air pollution.
“More vegetation can only be a positive thing for Paris and the people who live here,” Houzé concludes. “However, it will take time and many more buildings to become visibly greener that environmental progress will
This Sustainable Apartment Complex of The Future Has Farms, Community Space, And Bike Parking Galore
In a new apartment complex that will soon rise in the Dutch city of Utrecht, instead of deliveries from an online grocer, you can get boxes of vegetables grown in an intensive greenhouse on the roof or from a smaller unit built into the facade on your own floor.
01.28.19
The 1,000-unit Mark, in the Dutch city of Utrecht, will be complete by 2023. The majority of its units will be low- and medium-income housing, or “care homes” for the elderly.
1/6 [Image: Vero Visuals]
In a new apartment complex that will soon rise in the Dutch city of Utrecht, instead of deliveries from an online grocer, you can get boxes of vegetables grown in an intensive greenhouse on the roof or from a smaller unit built into the facade on your own floor. In a courtyard downstairs, you can forage for raspberries in an urban forest. In the parking garage–which is designed to house many more bikes than cars–there’s space for aquaculture.
The new development, called the Mark, with more than 1,000 units in three towers, rethinks the sustainability of typical high-rise buildings. One part of that is the food that residents eat. “We put a lot of energy into diminishing the carbon footprint due to food production for the inhabitants there,” says Darius Reznek, a partner at the design firm Karres Brands, which worked on the project along with the firms Architekten Cie, Geurst & Schulze, and a group of developers. A team of urban farmers will manage the on-site greenhouses, which will also supply produce to a rooftop restaurant.
At the ground level, by rethinking mobility options, the designers had more space for plants. “A lot of times, when you develop high-rises, you’re stuck with a lot of parking,” says Reznek. The new apartments are next to a train station, and the city is one of the best places to bike in the world, so residents don’t really need cars most of the time, but the developer will offer an electric car-sharing service to make it even less likely to that someone feels the need to own a car. “Instead of everyone having their own car, we will have 200 car-sharing vehicles, and we provide a lot of bikes, electric bikes, and space for things like that to kind of stimulate a different kind of mobility so that not everybody is stuck to their car,” he says. The garage can fit 3,500 bicycles; the extra space will become an edible forest.
Food is also a way to bring residents together–the apartments have their own balconies, but it’s possible to visit the greenhouses or manage a plot of your own in a community garden. The buildings also nudge people to interact in other ways. “The high-rises are separated in sort of smaller neighborhoods that revolve around collective floors,” says Reznek. Along with green spaces, the buildings have shared spaces with larger kitchens, collective “living rooms” if someone needs more space for a party, shared workspaces, and other community gathering places.
To make the buildings carbon neutral, the developers partnered with nearby parking garages to use their rooftop space to produce enough solar power for all of the apartments. The buildings also use a modular design that can be adapted over time, so future construction also uses less energy.
The apartments, which will be completed in 2023, are meant for everyone: While some will be sold or rented at market rate, the majority will be low-income social housing, medium-rent housing, or “care homes” for the elderly. Older residents will live near a shared courtyard and near services like a physiotherapist’s office and a doctor, and can transition to assisted living while staying in their own apartments.
It’s a model for high-rise apartments that the architects hope becomes more common, both in terms of sustainability and in terms of social interaction that goes beyond seeing neighbors in an elevator. “We believe that in order for skyscrapers or dense urban living to become kind of relevant again, it needs to become less monofunctional,” Reznek says. “It needs to address this solitude of living isolated at the 100th floor and not knowing your neighbors.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adele Peters is a staff writer at Fast Company who focuses on solutions to some of the world's largest problems, from climate change to homelessness. Previously, she worked with GOOD, BioLite, and the Sustainable Products and Solutions program at UC Berkeley.
VIDEO: EPIC Urban Farming On Top of a Whole Foods | Gotham Greens Tour 🏙️🌿
A mythical urban farm on top of a Whole Foods in Brooklyn, NY, where they grow 13+ different types of greens and herbs.
It was called Gotham Greens, which is just about the best name for a hydroponic greenhouse you'll ever hear. They use nutrient film technique (NFT) channels to grow basil, arugula, leaf lettuce, and more. And better yet, it's all automated, down to CO2 monitoring, shade clothes, and more. They even make their own line of salad dressings, pestos, and other value-added products with the produce they grow!
Westfield Creates Urban Farm On Top Of French Shopping Mall
10th January 2019
Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield has opened the first urban farm on top of a shopping centre in France.
The 270 square metre farm is located on the roof of the So Oeust shopping centre. It produces vegetables and plants through vertical agriculture – free from herbicide, pesticide or fertiliser.
Since the opening in June, over one ton of fruits and vegetables have been harvested including tomatoes, basil, mint, strawberries, bell peppers, chilli peppers, kale and thyme.
The products are sold to customers in a dedicated popup store within the shopping centre.
The farm will be extended to 600m this year.
Jean Collet, Director of URW Link, said: “Overall, the circular and collaborative approach of Sous Les Fraises adds true value to our assets: it exploits unused space and promotes a pragmatic and positive vision of agriculture. This enriches our buildings, making them more sustainable and in tune with their environment. We are accelerating on this topic and look forward to new projects with Sous Les Fraises.”
Last year, Westfield unveiled its vision for a ‘hyper-connected micro-city’ fuelled by social interaction and community. Destination 2028 predicts the key trends in retail.
Michael Mander
I am a journalist from Essex, England. I enjoy travelling, and love exploring attractions around the world. I graduated from Lancaster University in 2018. Twitter @michael_mander.
NKDA Mulls Panel to Boost Urban Farming
The matter has been discussed in the board of NKDA and a decision in the matter will be soon taken.
Tarun Goswami Dec 2018 4:15 AM
Kolkata: New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA) is considering a proposal to form an empanelled group to assist people, particularly senior citizens, to set up rooftop urban farming. The matter has been discussed in the board of NKDA and a decision in the matter will be soon taken. A notice will be given asking interested groups to respond. It may be mentioned that at Swapno Bhor, the state's first senior citizens' park, organic farming of vegetables has recently been started in collaboration with an NGO and senior citizens, who are members of the same, are overseeing it. Senior officials of the NKDA said many people have shown keen interest to start rooftop urban farming but could not start it because of lack of expertise. For many years, people have been growing flowers on their rooftop gardens. It may be mentioned that in the annual flower show organised by Alipore Agri Horticulture Society there is a section where flowers and cactus that are grown on rooftop gardens and displayed. The best flower grower is also awarded. Now, in addition to flowers, people have shown interest to start rooftop urban farming. But a majority of them lack expertise and knowledge. For example, on rooftop garden pots made of coconut fibres are used instead of earthen pots as they cause heavy damage to the roofs. Again, from where seeds of vegetables can be procured are not known. To address these issues, the empanelled groups will assist those whose are interested to start rooftop urban farming. The group will charge for providing assistance and the rate will be fixed by the NKDA. This will keep the senior citizens socially engaged, the officers felt. To keep the senior citizens engaged and occupied who will be buying accommodation at Snehodiya, an open terrace has been made in the proposed multi-storeyed building whose construction is going on. The senior citizens can utilise the terrace to coach children from economically-challenged families. This will keep them socially busy and also motivate the children to a great extent.
Denver, Colorado: A Look Inside Rino's Rooftop Urban Farm
January 8, 2019
If you’ve recently walked down Lawrence Street in RiNo, you have probably have been stopped in your tracks by the sight of a rooftop garden. At the very least, you’ve probably wondered what was going on above Uchi. This beautiful greenhouse space is home to Altius Farms. As one of the largest vertical aeroponic rooftop gardens in the country, Altius currently grows varieties of lettuce, herbs and edible flowers galore.
Part of the new S*Park condo community, Altius landed at the RiNo location where the land historically has been farmed since the 1930s. The greenhouse itself offers 8,000 square feet to run operations, and the community garden outside will double the growing space once the spring comes. S*Park and Altius are planning to team up for great farm-to-table events and community dinners come warmer temperatures.
Sally Herbert, co-founder of Altius, is excited to open the flagship location of Altius Farms in Denver and partner with S*Park to do so. Short for Sustainability Park, the condo community is an incubator for sustainable living and community development. Centered around wellness for human bodies and the earth, Altius Farms is a great addition to the RiNo living complex.
Herbert commented that their mission is to “bring urban farming back into our communities.” They are currently focusing on their partnerships with restaurants to do so. Altius works with some of Denver’s top-rated restaurants – including Beast + Bottle, Butcher’s Bistro and Urban Farmer. The team at Avanti Food & Beverage asked Herbert to grow a mix of greens to pair well with a particular dressing the restaurant is concocting for a special event.
“There’s a real demand for produce that’s safe, nutritionally dense, that’s got good flavor, that doesn’t have 1,500 food miles on it,” Herbert explained. Most of Altius’ customers are located in the surrounding neighborhoods, so the produce is fresh when restaurants receive their orders. This cuts back on food waste both within the farm and in restaurants – however the produce that Altius can’t sell before its prime, they donate to We Don’t Waste and Denver Food Rescue.
“We are a for-profit company with a social impact mission,” Herbert commented. And in addition to engaging the community in learning more about their food, Altius operates on a sustainable business model. The aeroponic tower system uses 10 percent of the water and 10 percent of the space to produce 10 times the yield of a conventional soil farm. Herbert also gets to see an eye-level view of each plant every day – making it easy to identify the needs of particular plants throughout the greenhouse.
The greenhouse itself was designed to recognize the plants needs by pooling the environment. Sensors around the greenhouse cue the processing system to turn on fans or heaters, open up roof and side vents to adjust the humidity and temperatures to make the greenhouse the perfect environment for growing leafy greens.
The greenhouse also provides a controlled environment for their plants to grow. Altius Farms has a separate water system and a controlled environment that is not affected by the state of surrounding farms. In result, Altius was able to supply their customers with romaine when the rest of the country was having an e. coli scare.Transversely, if Altius had a scare in their own farm, it wouldn’t affect any growing site except the greenhouse location.
The horticulturalist for Altius, Don Dwyer, has been in the growing business since the 1970s. More and more he sees that people want to “establish a relationship with their food.” Altius helps facilitate a positive relationship with food by providing fresh produce with interesting flavor profiles to Denver residents. Dwyer also understands that so many Denverites want to support local farms and Altius gives residents a way to learn about growing food in an urban location.
As Altius approaches full growing capacity, they are looking forward to living into their mission and engaging the community in their work. “Food is important in [illness] recovery and in education and just having nutritious meals for our kids,” Herbert explained. Once they have the capacity, Altius hopes to serve the community beyond restaurants – including schools and medical centers.
For the time being, Altius takes great care of their restaurants. Herbert enjoys offering tours and tasting to their chef partners and helping them to design a menu around Altius greens. With flavors like wasabi arugula to mustard greens and a number of edible flowers, Altius Farms caters to many chefs and their various dish innovations.
These partnerships excite Herbert, who has never worked with chefs in this way. “What’s been interesting,” Herbert commented, “is that they are – pun intended – hungry for this kind of food. They want to have the conversation with us.” In the future, Altius wants to expand their produce and grow specific plants for restaurants – working with chefs from the inception of a dish idea to the culmination.
Altius Farms is located at 2500 Lawrence Street #200, Denver. Their restaurant customers in RiNo and LoDo are Urban Farmer, Uchi, Crema, HiTide Poke, Port Side, Stowaway, Famous Original J’s Pizza, Butcher’s Bistro, Goed Zuur, Beast + Bottle and Dio Mio. Altius greens are available in both Marczyk’s Fine Foods.
All photography by Evans Ousley.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
When not working one of her three jobs, Evans walks the streets of Denver to discover more about the city's food scene. On the weekends, Evans loves to stroll around Denver's many parks – mostly to obsess over all the dogs she can't have.
Playing "Happy Families" To Understand Urban Agriculture In France
We hear a lot about urban agriculture, but what is it exactly? How is it different from traditional agriculture? What is the difference between rural farms and urban farms?
11 December 2018
Agnès Lelièvre, lecturer in agronomy at AgroParisTech, Baptiste Grard, postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratory of Functional Ecology and Ecotoxicology of Agroecosystems (AgroParisTech/INRA), Christine Aubry, head of the Urban Agriculture research team at AgroParisTech, and Véronique Saint-Ges, economist at INRA, tell us about the different forms of urban agriculture.
We hear a lot about urban agriculture, but what is it exactly? How is it different from traditional agriculture? What is the difference between rural farms and urban farms?
New definitions of that concept have emerged in the past few years—including that of Canadian expert Luc J.A. Mougeot (2000) and French experts Paula Nahmias et Yvon Le Caro (2012)—, along with new typologies such as those of Cerema, Exp’AU and IAU. In the present case we will use Mougeot’s definition of urban agriculture:
“A production unit located within a city or metropolis (urban) or in its direct vicinity (peri-urban) that produces, raises, processes and distributes a diversity of food or non-food products by massively (re)using human and material resources, products and services from that urban area and its surroundings, and providing human and material resources, products and services to that same area.”
To depict the different forms of urban farming, we have chosen to use the analogy of “Happy Families”, where each category of urban agriculture is a family. For each family, we will relate the story of its ancestors and parents (the ancient forms) as well as that of its children (the current forms).
Without further ado, let’s get to know all these happy families.
1. The “Feet in the soil” family
This family has historically lived in an urban environment, while staying deeply connected to the soil. In today’s context, this category suffers from two recurring issues: access to land and pollution.
The ancestors of that category were the vegetable gardens of aristocrats, such as the well-known “King’s garden”, established in Versailles during the 17th century to provide fruit and vegetables to Louis XIV’s court.
In this family, the parents are a popular and commercial version of their ancestors. They are, for example, the marais ("swamps") at the heart of Paris, which have led to the French word maraîchage (“market gardening”). These farmers were great initiators and inventors of agricultural techniques that are still being used today. They practiced intensive agriculture on small areas using frames or glass domes to cultivate earlier in the season. Horse manure (which at that time was abundant in the city) and urban mud were some of the resources commonly used. This shows how helpful market gardeners were to city dwellers.
They have a large, varied descent that includes peri-urban farms, often pushed outside of the cities due to urban densification and hygienization. These farmers continue to sell their products to city dwellers, i.e. mainly vegetable produce and small animals (chickens, eggs, etc.). Over the past fifteen years, these farms have become increasingly popular through the development of short, local distribution networks such as AMAPs. These farms usually cover a few hectares each. In 2010, almost half of French farms producing vegetables and honey sold their produce through short distribution networks.
However, some farmers have managed to establish themselves within cities—or to maintain ancestral farms, although this is less common—by diversifying their activities. Some of them do community work, for instance for individuals that have been disconnected from the job market (such as the gardens of association Aurore), others do educational work (Veni Verdi for vegetable production, Bergers urbains for urban pastoralism) or organize cultural events (La ferme du bonheur).
The closest descendants of market gardeners work in production farms (such as Perma G’Rennes), located on former agricultural plots, or in schools or parks with plots from a few hundred m2 to 1 or 2 hectares.
The garden of the Pierre Mendès France college in Paris, overseen by the Veni Verdi association. (Michèle Foin/Vimeo, 2016).
2. The “Rooftop” family
This family has been around for centuries, as plants were already found on rooftop terraces in ancient Egypt, as shown in certain images of the book Palais et Maisons du Caire ("Palaces and houses of Cairo"), on the architecture of the 13th-16th centuries. Today urban honey is harvested from beehives installed on the roof of many public and private buildings.
There has been a growing interest in "green roofs" (i.e. not producing food) since the 1980s. Now the “agricultural descent” of this family includes farm that are community-oriented—to foster social interactions (Culticimes), for educational or experimental purposes (AgroParisTech‘s rooftop) or for event planning (Jardins suspendus). Some roofs also host farms for productive purposes (Aéromate, AgriPolis).
Interview of Louise Doulliet, co-founder of startup Aéromate. (Supbiotech/YouTube, 2017).
These “rooftop farms” have specific requirements as they have limited space compared to regular land farms. Today, rooftop vegetable gardens can be seen as a solution to issues related to land access and soil pollution, to the point that in a growing number of cities, new constructions anticipate their presence. Yet many questions remain unanswered, including about their design and the growing medium used.
3. The “Vertical” family
Growing produce on walls may seem risky... Yet Montreuil’s peach walls were renowned worldwide during the 19th century for the quality of their production: the fruits were exported as far as the Russian Tsar’s court. Vines have also been climbing on small walls and all kinds of arbors since antiquity.
Whether in museums, hospitals or malls, living walls designed for decorative purposes have become increasingly popular since the 90’s and 2000’s. Today living walls producing vegetables or hop are also found next to urban microbreweries. Farms specializing in event planning also use walls on rooftops. This family is less common than the two previous ones.
Paris hops will grow on the walls https://t.co/6XSGvftnTJ — Le Parisien | Paris (@LeParisien_75) 18 février 2018
4. The “Greenhouse” family
Greenhouse farming extends the production period of fruit and vegetables. The aristocracy was the first to reap its benefits through orangeries and winter gardens. During the 19th century, greenhouses were built in Auteuil and Paris’s Jardin des plantes to ensure the conservation of varieties and species constituting plant collections.
Today, greenhouses are extensively used in agriculture—including in the well-known Dutch production units—but also in cities for productive purposes (Skygreen) or on rooftops (Les Fermes Lufa, The New Farm). They can also be used to educate or experiment on social reinsertion and food therapy (such as in the Cité maraîchère in Romainville).
Greenhouse kale crops in Montreal’s Loufa farms. Les Fermes Lufa Facebook page
Aquaponics is another form of greenhouse farming that combines raising fish and growing vegetables. Although this type of production can be done in tanks based on a living substrate (with fertilizing power for the plants), it is usually based on a neutral substrate in hydroponic systems where the necessary elements for plants—and fish, if any—are provided through water. This type of production is currently being studied as part of a national research project.
5. The “Shade” family
The ancestors of this family developed underground, in mushroom and endive farms. They are known as produits de cave (“basement products”) and are commonly found in the greater Paris area. The parents haven’t diversified their products, yet they have developed new production systems. The children took over the family business by diversifying the offer, through micro-sprouts in particular, and by reusing new types of waste generated by the city, such as coffee grounds. It is mostly production-oriented (Boîte à champignons, La Caverne).
The Boîte à champignons (mushroom box). Agnès Lelièvre
A high tech “parent” has appeared in the last few years with growth in a controlled environment (light, atmosphere, etc.) thanks to recent progress in spatial research. Its children are using existing buildings or recycled containers (Agricool, Farmbox). This family is strongly developing in some countries with high population density or facing intense climatic stress. In France, it has been used as an opportunity to reuse areas such as abandoned parking lots, and in certain cases, to establish mobile farms.
6. The “Sunday gardening” family
The ancestor of the individual garden has led to private gardens, but also to group gardening with allotment gardens, which emerged at the end of the 19th century.
The children of this family continue to maintain private gardens on balconies, terraces and actual gardens, which can be produce high yields. They also practice collective gardening which covers shared gardens, family gardens and multiple hybrid experiments. While private gardening is aimed at growing vegetables, collective gardening also has a social and educational purpose.
This family has grown a lot since the 20th century and it has become increasingly popular, especially in the case of collective gardening. There are over 1,000 collective gardens in Île-de-France, covering at least 900 hectares, in a context where professional vegetable production covers 5,000 hectares. It is a great success, even though obtaining a plot to cultivate in the city or its surroundings remains difficult, as evidenced by the long waiting lists to access a family or collective garden.
Family gardens in the Lilas public park in Vitry-sur-Seine (94). Agnès Lelièvre.
7. The “Self-service” family
Inspired my movements such as Guerrilla gardening, which, in the 70s, started reclaiming land that had been built and abandoned, this is a family of creative, conquering activists.
It has given birth to active offspring seeking to establish plant production in public spaces for everyone to enjoy. It includes international initiatives such as the Incredible edibles, as well as initiatives launched by cities themselves such as permis de végétaliser ("license to plant") and the reintroduction of fruit trees in public parks. Although still discreet, this family has a bright future, as it is an inspiration to local communities.
The original version of this article was published on The Conversation.
France Agriculture: Here Rooftop Farms Give You Vodka And The Fish Grow Plants
December 05, 2018
By OLIVER MATHENGE @olivermathenge
Sous les fraises' Marie Dehaene explains their operations on the rooftop of Galeries Lafayette in Paris on November 26, 2018 / OLIVER MATHENGE
On a chilly Wednesday afternoon, our driver slows down and parks along Haussmann Boulevard in the 9th arrondissement of Paris.
As the door slides open, the warmth inside the van is replaced with some gashing cold air as we prepare to once again fight the freezing weather.
We are outside Galeries Lafayette, one of the many shopping malls in the City of Paris where according to our program; we would be meeting some urban farmers.
It is warm again inside the mall as we await our hosts as well as get our passports entered into the visitor's system.
What we do not know is that this warmth is short-lived as our elevator journey lands us on the roof of the mall.
Our tour is on the roof where temperatures have dropped to six degrees with darkness set to engulf the Paris skies within the hour.
Unlike other rooftops that we can see from here, this particular one has a lot of greenery and you can smell the various flavours of edible plants here.
Our host, 31-year old Marie Dehaene, kicks off the tour by asking us why a mall such as Galeries Lafayette has allowed her team to put up what looks like hanging plants on their roof.
We make several guesses before she explains that they approached the mall with the idea of putting up a rooftop farm as part of giving Paris some green spaces.
“In 2013, we worked together to design and think about how it would work because it was the first time in France that there was a commercial rooftop farm,” Marie says.
She added; “They were concerned about things like; Are you going to bring dirt into the department store? Are you going to flood the roof? Are you sure these things will not fly away? Real technical things.”
Marie is an agronomist engineer and a founding member of sous les fraises (under the strawberries) startup that has not only moved farming into the city but is greening the rooftops of Paris high rise buildings.
We learn that the start up has dressed Galeries Lafayette Haussmann, where we are standing, with a green roof that houses more than 150 varieties of edible plants.
On the more than 1,200 m² of this surface, they grow more than 18,000 plants, including strawberries, raspberries, edible flowers, aromatic plants, cabbage and even produce honey.
“Here for instance when we put the tomato plants they each give at least five kilos of tomatoes. This means five tonnes of tomatoes per year for just this garden,” Marie says adding that they have a total of 14 gardens.
She promises to take us to one of the other farms on Friday, a day before we finalise our France trip.
As we walk around the rooftop, Marie explains the use of the different plants that we can see and how they are grown without the use of too much soil.
She explains that they use sheep and hemp wool membrane, with a little soil, compost and water.
We do not see a lot of produce as the last harvest is done in October just before the cold season checks in which Marie and team use to plan for the next year.
Nonetheless, we get to learn about some of the plants we can see which they pick and sell to various restaurants around Paris.
"Most of these are used for salad dressing. Some of these we distil and make gin and vodka (which some members of our entourage got to taste later) with it," Marie says.
She adds; "We meet the distiller and agree on the recipe and then deliver the plants and three months we get the gin and vodka. The alcohol captures all the flavours."
Marie says that the projects are important to them because they have a low carbon footprint and create local jobs now having a workforce of 15 full-time employees.
"When we started, we were just three people," Marie says.
Galeries Lafayette Corporate Communication Officer Eva Perret told the Star that they allowed the project because of the unique opportunity it gives to empowering customers.
"For us, it is a first step towards talking to our customers about sustainable consumption," Perret said.
Before we leave, we sample some of the products that are produced from the plants grown on this rooftop farm as we agree on the Friday trip.
So on Friday afternoon, which is a bit warmer than the previous days, we set out to Farmhouse Aubervilliers nestled in the heart of the business park ICADE Porte de Paris.
While the plants are set up in a similar fashion as those we saw on the rooftop of Galeries Lafayette, here sous les fraises use techniques of urban agriculture Aquaponics - breeding fish in symbiosis with growing plants.
This particular farm accommodates some 6,000 fish, which are sold to various restaurants, and more than 8,000 plants.
"Here we grow fish basically because the fish poop feeds the plants that we have while the plants clean the water for the fishponds," Marie explains.
For irrigation, the farms use a closed robotic water circuit can feed all plants according to their needs and the weather by analyzing data via sensors on the plants.
Marie says that the system sends an SMS alert to them in case there is a problem.
New Seven Storey Sustainable Residential Project Approved For Brunswick
Sustainable features include a solar PV system for power generation, rainwater harvesting, rooftop composting, vegetable gardens, electric vehicle charging stations and bicycle amenities.
A new multi-storeyed medium density residential project has been launched by Melbourne-based boutique developer Antipodean Land in Brunswick.
The sustainable project, which won approval earlier this year, will offer a total of 77 units comprising of apartments and townhouses across seven storeys.
Balfe Park Lane is designed by Kerstin Thompson Architects and sits on a 2250sqm site with a 66-metre park frontage. Located at 77-83 Nicholson Street, Brunswick, the property was acquired by Antipodean in 2016 for $7 million.
The project will offer nine townhouses and a collection of two, three and four bedroom apartments. The ground level will be allocated for retail and hospitality, along with a public laneway linking directly through to Balfe Park. A communal courtyard and rooftop garden are the other highlights of the project.
Sustainable features include a solar PV system for power generation, rainwater harvesting, rooftop composting, vegetable gardens, electric vehicle charging stations and bicycle amenities.
Elaborating on the design concept, architect Kerstin Thompson says Balfe Park was designed as an ensemble of buildings of varying shape and orientation rather than a large, singular building.
This would help achieve a stronger sense of neighbourhood. Each dwelling also benefits from windows that welcome in light, ventilation and views, Thompson added.
Rooftop And Vertical Farms In Cities, The Most Advanced Projects Around The World
Some of the best rooftop and vertical farms in cities around the world. Where farm-to-table agriculture is becoming a key component of urban growth.
The phenomenon of urban farms took root after the Second World War to feed a population that was exhausted by years of poverty. In the last few years it has been growing exponentially, so much so that “locally sourced” no longer refers to products that come from the surrounding countryside, but in the very place where urban consumers live. The element of verticality was added to the equation, the opportunity and necessity to grow crops on rooftops and inside tall building allows for an efficient use of the limited space found in cities.
In some cases initiatives sprout from local communities, in others, prestigious architecture firms design innovative projects that use technology to incentivise local self-sufficiency from a nutritional standpoint as well as reduce the impact of urban demands on rural areas. Growing crops on terraces and rooftops is convenient not only because of greater solar exposure, but also because particulate matter tends to deposit at lower levels. Here are some of the most advanced rooftop and vertical farms from around the world.
The Sunqiao agricultural district in Shanghai
Whilst large-scale hydroponic cultivation systems and urban farms are still struggling to catch on in the United States, they represent a solution to the problem of a growing population and the consequent need to increase food production in China. Nearly 24 million people live in Shanghai alone and the business capital’s rapid economic growth is threatening an agricultural system that is more limited in scale compared to the Western model, just like in other Chinese metropolises.
Leggi anche: Urban forests, cities’ answer to climate change (and much more)
Sunqiao represents a new urban approach to agriculture pioneered by international architecture firm Sasaki. The objective is to show that urban agriculture can grow vertically, just like skyscrapers. The plan for this district (whose construction began at the end of 2017) focuses on integrating vertical farms and research. Over half (56 per cent) of the diet of Shanghai’s inhabitants consists of leaf vegetables, making hydroponic and aquaponic systems particularly appropriate to satisfy their needs. Spinach, lettuce, kale and watercress don’t require specific care, they grow quickly and weigh very little, making them a cheap and efficient option.
The Sunqiao district in Shanghai is a perfect example of the union between architecture and sustainability © Sasaki
The district features floating greenhouses, green walls and vertical facades for seed collection. This is an even more sustainable approach towards supporting the local food network, which perfectly fits the plan adopted by Shanghai that aims to safeguard food and farmers by taking control of local production and distribution whilst maintaining cultivations within the city.
Gotham Greens, in the United States
Gotham Greens is a New York-based farming company that has been supplying the inhabitants of New York and Chicago with fruits and vegetables grown without using pesticides and with an irrigation system based on reusing water. It manages various rooftop farms on a number buildings (some of which are decommissioned, like a former wood warehouse in Brooklyn). The company was the first to design a commercial hydroponic urban farm in the country.
Gotham Greens, a farming company that brings urban farming to Chicago and New York, grows crops on the roofs of buildings © Gotham Greens
The largest and most advanced greenhouse as well as the most productive rooftop farm were opened in Chicago in 2015. Gotham Greens’ model incentivises local production, therefore sustainable development, whilst also cutting transport costs and using renewable energy for production. The founder of Gotham Greens, Viraj Puri, was invited as a speaker the Seeds and Chips summit in Milan in 2017, one of the most important food innovation events in the world.
DakAkker, Rotterdam
DakAkker is the largest rooftop farm in Europe, in the centre of the Dutch city Rotterdam. It was created by Binder Groenprojecten in 2012 and the project was undertaken by ZUS society, in collaboration with the Rotterdam Environmental Centre. The building is fitted with a smartroof that works as a sensor with a water storage capacity that is superior to that of a typical rooftop garden, supplying all the water needed for growing crops.
DakAkker crops seen from above, together with the pedestrian bridge constructed thanks to a neighbourhood fundraiser and built to comfortably cross over the railway tracks © Ossip van Duivenbode
DakAkker is also an area used to experiment new vertical farming methods in the city, not only by growing fruits and vegetables, but also by safeguarding urban biodiversity thanks to the presence of a botanical garden where various aromatic herbs are grown. Furthermore, considering the great importance of bees to the ecosystem (approximately 30 per cent of food derives from the pollination carried out by these insects), six beehives are present on the rooftop.
Can Cities Produce Enough Food To Feed Their Citizens?
By Dan Nosowitz | October 11, 2018
An urban rooftop garden. YuRi Photolife on Shutterstock
The areas in and around American cities may not scream “farming powerhouse.”
As cries for local food ring louder and louder, many have begun looking to flashy new urban farming missions: rooftop gardens, vertical farms inside abandoned factories or warehouses, that kind of thing. But a new study from the University of Minnesota finds that urban areas already produce a lot of food—the challenge is matching local producers with local consumers.
The study looked at “metropolitan statistical areas,” or MSAs, and compared both their production and their demands for milk, eggs, fruits, and vegetables. MSAs are a sort of confusing metric, but essentially they refer to a county with a population of at least 50,000, plus any surrounding areas that depend in large part or can be considered part of that urban county area. New York City, for example, includes both Newark and Jersey City as part of its MSA. Los Angeles includes Long Beach and Anaheim, and Miami includes Ft. Lauderdale and West Palm Beach.
Food production in these areas is a lot more robust than you might think. Much of the country most associated with farming—the bread basket, for example—is not, primarily, growing crops for direct human consumption. Corn and soy are processed into animal feed or oil or various other products. Near cities, in places without the vast quantities of land required to make a living growing monocrop grain, farmers are more likely to produce eggs, milk, fruits, and vegetables.
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The study found that 20 percent of MSAs already produce enough milk and eggs to feed their individual populations. For fruits and vegetables, that number drops to 10 percent, which is still pretty significant, considering that the vast, vast majority of the American population lives within an MSA.
Those findings vary, of course, by location. Upstate New York, the Philadelphia area, and parts of Wisconsin and Michigan are capable of being fully self-sufficient in dairy. South Florida is already self-sufficient in oranges, and the Seattle area is taken care of for apples.
The authors of the study hope that it can be used to more carefully measure what a community needs and what it has, or could easily have, and try to balance those supplies and demands. Understanding the food needs of a given area can help reduce transportation fees and pollution as well as encouraging local farmers to grow what their community really wants.
Company Working To Bring Fresh Produce To U.Va. Dining Halls, Charlottesville Businesses And Homes
Babylon Micro-Farms has developed a system using hydroponic farming to make growing fresh produce more sustainable
By Rupa Nallamothu | 10/10/2018
In hydroponic farming, plants are grown in nutrient-rich, water solvent mineral solutions rather than in soil. Courtesy Babylon Micro-Farms
Babylon Micro-Farms, founded by University alumnus Alexander Olesen during his undergraduate years, has developed a system using hydroponic farming to make growing fresh produce sustainable for the urban consumer. The Babylon team has recently installed more apparatuses in the University dining halls, Charlottesville businesses and consumers’ homes.
Olesen developed Babylon Micro-Farms, a hydroponic farming system, to create an urban farming system easily accessible by consumers. During the spring semester of 2016, in the early stages of the company’s development, Olesen utilized several entrepreneurship resources available through the University.
“We started with the social entrepreneurship class, but then the founders went through the HackCville Alpha program, which was very helpful for them,” said Will Graham, the director of sales and marketing at Babylon. “From there, they went through the Darden iLab.”
In hydroponic farming, plants are grown in nutrient-rich, water solvent mineral solutions rather than in soil. This farming method removes environmental limitations to maximize respiration and absorption of nutrients in plants, which contribute to a greater harvest yield. Genetically modified organisms, pesticides or inorganic fertilizers cannot be used in a hydroponic culture.
Moreover, hydroponic farming can help reduce the distance between where a food item is grown and where it is sold by allowing plants to grow in normally inhospitable environments, such as inside urban buildings. This system could potentially allow restaurants and homes to grow plants inside their own spaces.
Since hydroponic systems are generally used in mass production due to their high cost, they are not readily available for urban consumers performing small-scale farming. Hydroponic systems also usually have restrictions on the types of plants that can grow in them.
However, Babylon Micro-Farms seeks to make hydroponics available for personal use and has developed technology that allows consumers to grow several different types of plants in their systems.
According to Graham, the Babylon team has several types of systems with varying degrees of technology. Some of the systems have two different reservoirs to allow different types of plants that require different types of nutrients or stratified sections of the same crop to grow on the same system.
The farming system has several versions which were developed throughout the growth of the company. Initially, the systems could not monitor the growth of the plants on each rack and were not stratified enough to grow multiple different types of produce on the same apparatus. Now, racks are divided based on the type of plant and can also be scanned into an app, which displays available information and data from the hydroponic system.
“You should able to scan a farm and tell it where you're putting plants, and it can adjust the lights and nutrients to grow something,” Graham said.
The Babylon team began testing prototypes around Grounds in 2017 after building an early model through HackCville, and received funding by winning $6,500 from the Green Initiatives Funding Tomorrow grant. After earning the GIFT grant, the company utilized the resources of Darden’s iLab, or the W.L. Lyons Brown III Innovation Laboratory — which supports the growth and development of business at an early stage by providing them resources, such as funding opportunities, legal services and faculty support.
According to Patrick Mahan, an electrical engineer at Babylon, the resources at the iLab helped the Babylon founders navigate the process of establishing a business.
After obtaining a financial basis for the project, the Babylon team installed their micro-farms in dining halls at the University. At Newcomb and O’Hill, these systems are utilized to grow produce used to prepare meals. On Sept. 12, the Babylon team installed two new systems in O’Hill and Runk.
"We mostly got positive reception,” Mahan said regarding the placement of systems in dining halls. “Part of it was almost confusion because they had never seen anything like it before, so they weren't sure what it was doing. But once they saw the plants start growing and saw the workers harvest the plants, I think they came around to it.”
Although Babylon is still installing systems in O’Hill and Runk, the team is also working on creating new technologies. Currently, they are developing a solar powered farm at the Morven Farm with the Morven Kitchen Garden.
The Morven Kitchen Garden, similar to Babylon Micro-Farms, is part of a student-run undergraduate sustainability initiative, according to Morven Kitchen Garden manager Stephanie Meyers. Students manage a community-supported agriculture program on a one-acre sustainable garden, donated by philanthropist John W. Kluge.
In addition to the project with Morven, the company is expanding their work outside the University. The Babylon team has implemented their hydroponic systems in Boar’s Head Resort and Three Notch'd Craft Kitchen & Brewery, two local businesses a few miles away from Grounds.
Babylon has also provided prototypes for personal use in the home, which are being used to further develop a hydroponics system available for purchase by local consumers.
From Roof to Table, This Farm is Bringing Organic Vegetables to Brooklyn Residents
Part of the Food Policy Community Spotlight Series
Name: Eagle Street Rooftop Farm
What they do: Eagle Street Rooftop Farm is a 6,000-square-foot organic vegetable farm located on a warehouse rooftop in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The Farm is a product of the collaborative effort between the green roof design and installation firm Goode Green and the Brooklyn-based sound stage company Broadway Stages, which financed the installation of the Farm.
The Farm realizes the economic, ecological and societal benefits of green roofing while also bringing local produce to the North Brooklyn community. According to Michigan State University, green roofs can “improve stormwater management by reducing runoff and improving water quality.” In addition, they help to “conserve energy, reduce noise and air pollution, sequester carbon, increase urban biodiversity by creating a habitat for wildlife, increase the space available for urban agriculture, provide a more aesthetically pleasing and healthy environment for surrounding residents, and improve return on investment compared to traditional roofs.”
Eagle Street Rooftop Farm operates a weekly farm market and caters to area restaurants. Between 2010-2011, it became the first rooftop farm to host its own site-based Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. In 2010, the Farm also launched an Apprenticeship Program, which instructs seasonal apprentices (spring, summer, fall) in organic farming based on the Farm’s planting and growing practices. Additionally, with support from Growing Chefs, a nonprofit field-to-fork education program that is also under the aegis of Annie Novak (the co-founder and farmer of Eagle Street Rooftop Farms), the rooftop farm’s education staff operates a range of other educational programs.
How they do it:
In its first season, the Eagle Street Rooftop Farm grew over thirty types of produce, from watermelon to cabbage, in order to see which would thrive in a green roof growing environment. The most botanically successful crops for health and high yield included hot peppers, cherry tomatoes, and sage.
Since the 2012 growing season, the Farm has focused on a selection of hot peppers to begin development of a Brooklyn-based hot sauce. Currently you can find their hot sauce – “Awesome Sauce” – at Archestratus Books + Food as well as at Littleneck Outpost, both located in Greenpoint.
The Farm sells its harvest through its site-based Sunday farm market and delivers fresh produce by bicycle to local restaurants including Williamsburg’s Marlow & Sons and Greenpoint’s Paulie Gee’s, Brooklyn Brine, Eastern District, Anella’s, Spritzenhaus, Ovenly, Sea Bean Soups, and Champion Coffee.
On Sundays in the growing season, the Farm is open to the public and welcomes volunteers of all skill levels during its market hours, which are listed on the events calendar. Growing Chefs curates the farm’s Free Lecture series, which are held at two o’clock on Sundays and have covered topics ranging from urban chicken-keeping to pickle making.
Mission: to provide fresh, organic, locally produced fruits and vegetables to Brooklyn residents and restaurants
Latest project/campaign: The publication of their book, The Rooftop Growing Guide: How to Transform Your Roof into a Garden or Farm, in February 2016.
Major Funding: Broadway Stages, Gina Argento & family
Profit/nonprofit: Profit
Interesting fact about how it is working to positively affect the food system: The Eagle Street Rooftop Farm’s education staff, working with Growing Chefs’ curriculum, hosts a range of workshops for children and adults. Topics include growing food in New York City, seed-saving, the art of cooking locally, city composting, the benefits of green roofs, beekeeping, and guest lecturers.
FACT SHEET:
Location:
44 Eagle Street
Brooklyn NY 11222
Core Programs:
-Community Supported Agriculture program (CSA)
-Community Outreach/Education (urban farming education, Growing Chefs workshops)
-Farmers’ Markets
-Apprenticeship Program
Number of staff: 4
Areas served: Brooklyn
Year Started: 2009
Director, Manager or CEO: Annie Novak
Contact Information: info@Rooftopfarms.org
Owned by Broadway Stages and built by Goode Green, the farm was made possible by the generous support of Gina Argento and family. Learn more about Broadway Stages’ green work in Greenpoint here!
Tags: Eagle Street Rooftop Farm Farmers markets Garden Education Organic Farming Rooftop Farm Urban agriculture