1-6 IAN Rooftop Farms

 Hydroponic growing on urban rooftops to feed the world? That’s a thought anyway and we’ll look into it in a minute. The Idaho Statesman recently printed an article with the following headline: 'Vertical Farm' Envisions Tall Future for Farming. The article goes on to say: A new book by an urban agriculture visionary aims to change the way people think about farming, offering a look into a future where city skyscrapers - not rural fields - produce the world's food.

In "The Vertical Farm," Dickson Despommier challenges the notion that plants should be grown in soil, advocating for developing and investing in big projects using hydroponic greenhouses and other indoor growing technology in cities.

The goal is to provide safe, fresh food around the globe in a way Despommier says is impossible with modern farming.

I checked in with Idaho farmer, Douglas R. Jones, Executive Director, of Growers for Biotechnology to see if this concept was viable in his mind: “It’s a little out of the box but not totally crazy. I will say that you probably will not be able to feed the world with those kinds of technologies and they will be expensive.