Urban Rooftop Farming

Urban Rooftop Farming

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Hydroponics is a method of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions, in water, without soil. Plants may be grown with their roots in the mineral nutrient solution only or in an inert medium, such as perlite, gravel, biochar, mineral wool, expanded clay pebbles or coconut husks.

Hydroponic growing on urban rooftops to feed the world? That's a thought anyway and we'll look into it in a minute. There have been so many articles in print suggesting that 'Vertical Farms' have a Tall Future, particularly in urban settings. To that point, a 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. But rooftop farming is a possibility."

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