A food garden at UN headquarters in New York City. Credit: Phillip Kaeding / IPS.

By Aruna Dutt
NEW YORK, Jul 11 2016 (IPS)

Habitat III, the UN’s conference on cities this coming October will explore urban agriculture as a solution to food security, but here in New York City, it has shown potential for much more.

Record-high levels of inequality are being felt most prominently in the world’s cities. Even In New York City, the heart of the developed world, many urban communities have food security issues.

Since the year 2000, New York City food costs have increased by 59 percent, while the average income of working adults has only increased by 17 percent.

Forty two percent of households in the city lack the income needed to cover necessities like food, shelter, clothing, transportation, and healthcare but still earn too much to qualify for government assistance.

Last year, OneNYC was introduced, a plan specifically aligned with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, aiming to lift 800,000 people out of poverty in a decade.

“OneNYC has high expectations and they are working hard in terms of addressing equity in the food systems, waste, and making sure that more and more of its citizens have access to good, healthy food.” Michael Hurwitz, director of GrowNYC’s Greenmarket, which has been working on OneNYC, told IPS.

“In a city like New York City, urban agriculture can play a number of roles on top of feeding people, from education to safe spaces, and helping off-set food budgets.” Hurwitz told IPS.

Urban agriculture plays a significant role in feeding urban populations around the globe. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reports that 800 million people worldwide grow vegetables or fruits or raise animals in cities, producing what the Worldwatch Institute reports to be an astonishing 15 to 20 percent of the world’s food.

There are parts of the world where urban and peri-urban agriculture account for 50-75% of vegetable consumption within that city.

In Africa, it is estimated that 40 percent of the urban population is engaged in agriculture. Long-time residents and newcomers farm because they are hungry, they know how to grow food, land values are low, and fertilizers are cheap.

In the U.S., though, urban farming is likely to have its biggest impact on food security in places that, in some ways, resemble the global south —  that is, in cities or neighborhoods where median incomes are low and the need for affordable food is high.

Hurwitz saw this transformative power of agriculture when he was a social worker in Redhook, Brooklyn, a community where 40 percent of households were making less than $10,000 a year. He was working in community gardens with 16-17 year-olds in a court diversion program. The food that the kids grew, they took home or sold at farmer’s markets, local restaurants and stores.

“Our youth became leaders of change in their communities. A lot of the kids we worked with were kids that nobody else wanted to work with, but when they became the main source of healthy food in their neighbourhood at the organic farmers market, peers and adults would see that they were the ones actually bringing change to the community.”

This system is now significantly scaled up through GrowNYC, a non-profit that operates from NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office. GrowNYC works with 6,000 kids a year through tours, providing materials for teachers to use in their classrooms. Its sister program Grow to Learn manages all of the school gardens in NYC. It also runs a “Mini-grant program” and technical assistance and training for teachers to run the gardens.

As a specific case of development, the South Bronx, ranked the poorest of 435 congressional districts in the U.S.A. in 2010.  Home to 52,000 low-income New Yorkers, with nearly half (42%) below the poverty line, this NYC district has been called a “food desert”.

When GrowNYC went into one section in the Bronx, a police officer warned them: “You don’t want to come here, it’s just not safe,” Hurwitz remembers. “But within two months, a tough corner had become a corner of great, wonderful activity and it was because there were young people from the neighbourhood selling food to their neighbours.”

For years, GrowNYC’s “Learn it, Grow it, Eat it” Program has been working with schools in the South Bronx, helping people become environmental leaders, Hurwitz says. That program operated one of GrowNYC’s youth-run farm stands, training youth in entrepreneurial, business and agriculture to run their own farm stands.

“We’ve seen kids who started in our youth market go on to be managers within the program,” Hurwitz said.

In New York, it’s not just about producing a standardized bulk amount of food for communities in need, but reflecting the diverse cultures. “We have farmers in our program that are growing $150, 000 worth of food on an acre and a half in Staten Island,” according to Hurwitz. On this farm, Mexican growers are growing Mexican-specialty crops, to feed to the Mexican community in Staten Island who otherwise would not have access to traditional foods that they are accustomed to.

The big greenhouse operators are now moving in and have become all the rage. But growing a limited variety of high-end greens is not going to feed the urban population alone. “I would rather see the $2 million being spent preserving rural farms with the goal of feeding the urban population. That can play a crucial role in getting food into cities, ensuring everybody has access to that food, and making sure that farmland remains viable and affordable”, Hurwitz contends.

The number of people living in cities is expected to double in the next thirty years according to the Atlas of Urban Expansion.

The Habitat III, the UN’s conference on cities this October will be the first time in 20 years that the international community has collectively paid attention to the impacts of urbanization, and will form a new global urbanization strategy — the “New Urban Agenda.”.

“Food security is one of the big issues that is going to be dealt with in Habitat III in relation to urbanization” said Juan Close, director of UN Habitat said here last week.

Nelson Pérez monitors the water temperature in the trays where lettuce grows in a controlled-environment farm in the town of Rio Hato, Panama. Vertical farms are beginning to catch on around the world, as a technique that boosts food security, in the face of the impacts of climate change. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
RÍO HATO, Panama, Dec 5 2015 (IPS)

Infrared thermometer in hand, Nelson Pérez checks the water temperature in the trays where dozens of small lettuce plants are growing in a nutrient-rich liquid in this vertical farm in Panama.

The water, which contains calcium, phosphorus, magnesium and vitamins, must be kept at a steady 21 degrees Celsius, to obtain the best growth.

Pérez is the watchful carekeeper of the lettuce growing in trays in the controlled environment created by the Urban Farms company in the town of Río Hato, population 15,700, in the province of Coclé, some 125 km north of Panama City.

The vertical farm, the only one of its kind in Latin America, is an example of controlled-environment agriculture, a technology-based approach toward food production which often uses hydroponic methods. This kind of farming helps combat the effects of climate change on agriculture.

“Climate change has affected agricultural production,” said David Proenza, founder of Urban Farms. “So we saw a need to see what changes we could bring about, using technology.”

In 2010, Proenza heard about experiments with vertical farming in Asia and travelled to Japan, where he contacted researchers and members of the business community.

He brought the technique back to Panama, and he and his new partners decided to send an agronomist to be trained in Japan.

Until then, he was a conventional producer of watermelon and other crops.

“The farmer controls everything, from the seeds to the harvest,” he explained to IPS. “The idea is to produce and consume locally.”

Proenza set up a partnership with two other people, and receives guidance from an outside group. He employs two full-time and two temporary workers.

On his four-hectare property, Proenza dedicated a 12 by 17-square-metre space to setting up 60 hydroponic trays with a capacity for growing 30 to 36 plants each.

Hydroponics is a method of growing plants without soil, using mineral nutrient solutions in water.

After three days, the seeds are transplanted from the germination tray to the growing trays. Three weeks later the lettuce is picked, processed and packed for distribution to supermarkets.

The vertical farm produces some 2,000 heads of five different kinds of lettuce a month, without pesticides, preservatives or large extensions of land.

A computer programme controlled from a smartphone regulates the temperature of the room and the water, as well as the lighting and irrigation.

The low voltage grow lights, which stay on for 18 hours a day and cost 120 dollars each, produce red, yellow or blue light, each of which has a particular effect. The trays hold between 25 and 100 litres of water, depending on the size.

Controlled-environment agriculture encompasses vertical farms, urban gardens, and hydroponics.

Panama is highly vulnerable to climate change, exposed to intense storms, flooding, landslides and drought. The climate of this tropical Central American nation of four million people was previously divided into wet and dry seasons, but now the difference is less marked.

Río Hato is at one end of the Arco Seco or “dry arch”, an important area of food production for both export and domestic consumption.

Panama’s main crops are corn, rice, beans, melons, watermelons, oranges, bananas and coffee. Stockbreeding is also a key driver of the economy.

Agriculture accounts for around four percent of the country’s GDP.

Official statistics show that grain harvests have shrunk in 2014 and 2015, with the exception of corn, due to factors that experts blame on climate change.

The 2010 report “Panama: Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture”, produced by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and other international bodies, stated that climate change would cause this country agricultural losses amounting to between four and seven percent of GDP by 2050 and between eight and nine percent by 2100.

Gustavo Ramírez, a professor with the Cuautitlán Higher Studies Faculty at the Autonomous National University of Mexico, said vertical farming is viable in Latin America, but policies to stimulate it are lacking.

“With this system you can make better use of space,” he told IPS. “In urban areas, there are abandoned buildings that could be put to use, and there is much more space in rural areas.”

In Río Hato, Proenza, who has invested over 70,000 dollars in the farm, has tried growing strawberries, cucumbers, chili peppers, melons and watermelons, with positive results.

Vertical farming is in vogue in the United States, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. An Association for Vertical Farming has been created, and groups companies, universities and individuals. It has offices in Canada, China, India and several European countries.

This farming method offers an alternative in cities around the world, and in impoverished rural areas where people still go hungry.

In cities like Buenos Aires, Mexico City or Santiago, rooftop gardens where people grow their own fresh produce are now common.

To foment the sharing of knowledge, Proenza created the Foundation for the Development of Controlled Environment Agriculture, which organised the International Congress on Controlled Environment Agriculture here in May, which drew more than 350 researchers, academics and farmers from around the world. The next edition is slated for 2017.

“Farmers earn three times more than in the countryside,” said Proenza. “Vertical farms are 30 percent less expensive than traditional farming, and 15 percent cheaper than greenhouses. The risk is minimal,” added the entrepreneur, whose initiative won the second National Prize for Business Innovation, granted by the National Secretariat on Science and Technology, in 2014.

His plan is to expand the vertical farm by 400 square metres, adding varieties of parsley, basil, coriander, arugula and strawberries.

Ramírez recommended that governments refocus their agricultural policies and rethink priorities. “Governments must show an interest, and should focus policies on exploring this technique. We need better planning for production, distribution and logistics,” he said.

The local and regional markets that would be developed through vertical farming would have “an enormous impact,” he said, but “seed capital and technological packages would be needed, based on our own model.”

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Residents in Bulawayo's high density urban suburbs have taken to farming vacant plots of land after last year’s unexpected rains, thereby combatting food insecurity. However, in Zimbabwe, urban farming in illegal. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Apr 10 2014 (IPS)

It is harvest season in Zimbabwe and Janet Zondo is pressed to find space on the piece of land she is farming to erect a makeshift granary. Zando says she could very well build a miniature silo, judging by the size of the maize crop that she is preparing to harvest.

But Zondo is not a communal farmer somewhere deep in the rural areas. She is one of the many residents in Bulawayo’s high-density urban suburbs who have taken to farming vacant plots of land here after last year’s unexpected rains filled rivers, destroyed dams and claimed lives.

In the residential suburbs of Tshabalala, Sizinda and Nkulumane, here in Zimbabwe’s second-largest city, vacant plots of land are flourishing with maize. "It's a self-regulating mechanism, and for the sake of sustainability, trying to feed yourself must not be illegal." -- Japhet Mlilo, a development researcher

Like many here, Zondo had always dabbled in farming. But her maize crop always failed because of successive poor rains. Last year’s heavy, unexpected rains provided the right conditions for planting.

“I have never harvested this much maize crop,” Zondo, who is from Nkulumane, told IPS.

“I expect to produce more than 100 kilograms of mealie meal [course flour made from maize] from my maize field,” Zondo estimated.

Other residents farming on vacant plots also expect to harvest a bountiful crop this season. But there are no guarantees that Zondo, or any of the other residents who have taken to farming, will be tilling the same piece of land next season.

This is because the land is owned by the local municipality. And Zimbabwe’s bylaws prohibit farming on vacant municipal land.

“We are aware people are farming on undesignated areas but we also must make humanitarian considerations. People need food and we know not everyone can afford mealie meal,” a Bulawayo city councillor, who himself planted maize on a vacant municipal plot, told IPS.

“Most of the land is reserved for residential homes, which means these farming activities are not permanent,” he said.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), while acknowledging that urban agriculture is illegal in many countries, estimates that more than 800 million people around the world practice urban agriculture and it has helped cushion them against rising food costs and insecurity.

FAO says the number of hungry people has risen to over one billion, with the “urban poor particularly being vulnerable.”

Under its Urban and Peri-urban Horticulture Growing Greener Cities project, FAO is working with governments in developing countries on “integrating horticulture into urban master development plans,” and this is what residents like Zondo could benefit from.

“We are always in constant fear of our crop being chopped down by the municipality. I am in a rush to harvest before anything like that happens,” Zondo said.

Regina Pritchett, global organiser for land and housing, and community resilience at the U.S.-based Huairou Commission, a global coalition of women in development and policy advocacy, says that while women are at the forefront of sustainable development, they are still bogged down by bureaucracy in accessing land.

“You need local solutions for women and access to land,” Pritchett told IPS.

However, experts note that this lack of formal ownership of small pieces of land could threaten livelihoods and food security in the long term in developing countries.

As increasing numbers of urban residents grow their own food, it could help cushion them against food shortages in Zimbabwe’s cities, says Japhet Mlilo, a development researcher at the University of Zimbabwe.

This southern African nation is already facing a food crisis. Last year it imported 150,000 tonnes of maize from Zambia in what experts say is a sign that local farmers are once again not going to meet demand.

According to the agriculture ministry, the country requires 2.2 million tonnes to meet its annual maize requirements.

“At the end of the day it’s simple arithmetic. Make urban farming totally illegal and people fail to plant their maize, which means [they will] starve. Or you can let them plant their own crop and you help reduce the number of people who need food assistance,” Mlilo told IPS.

“Residents already know which piece of land is theirs even without having titles to it. I am yet to hear residents fighting over land they allocated to themselves without municipality approval. It’s a self-regulating mechanism. For the sake of sustainability, trying to feed yourself must not be illegal,” he explained.

If globally women were given title deeds to land, it will help contribute to the sustainability of farming projects as owning resources provides some “incentive” for  women to continue farming, said Karol Boudreaux, a land expert with the Cloudburst Group, a U.S.-based think tank.

“Securing land rights can help deal with issues that range from food security and women’s economic empowerment,” Boudreaux told IPS.

For Zondo, however, the assurance that the her crop will not be destroyed by municipality’s police is enough.

“I have worked hard for this, imagine losing it,” Zondo said.

Of the 195 workers at Vivero Alamar, 46 are women. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
HAVANA, May 21 2013 (IPS)

“The people are the only thing that matters,” says agronomist Miguel Ángel Salcines, who then goes on to list a series of other “secondary” factors that have turned Vivero Alamar, an urban farm on the outskirts of the Cuban capital, into a rare success story in the country’s depressed agricultural sector.

“We offer flexible hours, relatively high wages, and professional upgrading, among other benefits that make the cooperative an attractive option. This is how we attract high quality human resources, who are crucial today in order to produce more organic food,” said Salcines, the president of Vivero Alamar, where production has been chemical-free since 2000.

The cooperative’s recipe for success also includes transparent accounting, equitable profit sharing, interest-free loans for the workers, free lunches, and support for women workers with young children or others in their care: they are allowed to arrive up to an hour later than the official beginning of the work day, at seven in the morning, Salcines told Tierramérica*.

Human capital played a decisive role in raising production at this urban agriculture venture, founded in 1997 on an initial 800 square metres of land in the community of Alamar, around 15 kilometres east of downtown Havana. This is why Salcines believes that the key to achieving food security in Cuba lies in agricultural workers with a “vocation” for farming, as well as training.

In 2012, world food prices skyrocketed as a result of poor crop yields in various centres of agricultural production, such as the United States. The Caribbean countries, which are net food importers, suffered the greatest impact in the region, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

Less than five percent of the population of Cuba suffers from malnutrition, but the country was forced to spend over 1.633 billion dollars on food imports last year, an unsustainable expenditure for an economy in crisis for more than 20 years, specialists say.

Reducing this massive expenditure by raising domestic food production remains a challenge for the government of President Raúl Castro. In fact, in the first quarter of this year, the National Office of Statistics and Information reported a 7.8 percent decrease in agricultural production other than sugar cane.

“There is a big demand that needs to be met, which is why we are able to sell everything we grow,” said Salcines, one of the founders of the cooperative, which now covers a total of 10.14 hectares and produces more than 230 different crop varieties (primarily garden vegetables, as well as some fruits, grains and tubers) in greenhouses and open fields.

In the midst of a generally inefficient agricultural sector, Vivero Alamar has achieved consistent growth for more than 15 years, thanks to the constant upgrading of its organic farming methods, which have even earned the praise of the director-general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), José Graziano da Silva, who visited the cooperative earlier this month.

In 2012, they produced 400 tons of vegetables, 5.5 tons of medicinal and “spiritual” plants (used in religious rituals), 2.6 tons of dried herbs and spices, and 350 tons of worm manure.

They also produced 30,000 ornamental plant and fruit tree seedlings and three million vegetable seedlings, some for their own planting needs, others for sale to other farmers, reported Salcines.

Fresh vegetables, especially lettuce, are the products most sought after by the local residents in Alamar, who have begun to learn in recent years – like people in the rest of the country – about the benefits of including more greens in the traditional Cuban diet of rice, beans, “viandas” (starchy tubers and plantain) and pork.

“The first time we planted cauliflower, in 2000, it all got left in the fields, because nobody knew what it was,” plant health engineer Norma Romero told Tierramérica. In her view, one of the most important contributions made by the more than 33,000 urban and suburban farms in Cuba has been the expansion of access to and consumption of vegetables.

Thanks to a new initiative at Vivero Alamar, recipes for the preparation of different vegetables and mushrooms accompany the lists of products available at the cooperative’s sales outlet, as part of its business and educational strategy. The shelves also stock pickled vegetables, fruit preserves and garlic paste, produced through its own small industry sideline.

Although organic produce can be prohibitively costly in other countries, the organic fruits and vegetables sold by Vivero Alamar are actually priced lower than those produced with agrochemicals and sold in private farmers markets, where the prices are set in accordance with supply and demand.

“The affordable prices are the biggest attraction. A head of lettuce costs four Cuban pesos (five cents of a dollar) here, and everywhere else they charge 10 pesos,” regular customer Sonia Ricardo told Tierramérica. “The vegetables here are fresh, they have no pesticides, and the service is really fast,” she added.

Despite these low prices, the cooperative is able to earn good profits, production chief Gonzálo González assured Tierramérica. Eighty-five percent of its products are sold directly to the population, and the rest go to restaurants like La Bodeguita del Medio, a major tourist attraction in Havana.

Since it first started out with just five people, Vivero Alamar has progressively moved towards a closed-loop farming system that reduces waste and environmental damage.

“We try to buy as few inputs from outside as possible,” explained González, which is what led to “the idea of producing our own manure and various bio-pesticides and fertilisers.”

Vivero Alamar raises bulls to obtain manure, has set up “worm bins” to produce earthworm castings, another organic fertiliser, and breeds mycorrhizal fungi (which attach themselves to the roots of plants and promote their growth) as well as insects and microorganisms that can boost crop yields naturally. The cooperative has also established links with 17 scientific centres for the incorporation of new organic farming techniques and products.

Today, the 195 people who work here are striving to raise production by 40 percent to reach the farm’s full potential output, and have also expanded into raising rabbits and sheep, in order to include meat in its sales to the public and improve protein consumption among the neighbouring population, some 30,000 people.

The staff is made up of 175 cooperative members and 20 employees, and boasts a high overall level of education, with 92 university graduates and 42 technical college graduates. Women currently account for only 46 of the 195 workers.

“A farm can do much more than produce food,” commented Salcines, as he watched a group of foreign tourists who had booked a guided tour and organic lunch at Vivero Alamar.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Excerpt:

Patrick Arathe, leader of an urban youth agricultural initiative in the Solomon Islands, stands beside the small farm’s new piggery. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
MUNDA, Solomon Islands, Apr 10 2013 (IPS)

With little more than a bush knife and an axe between them, a group of young boys between the ages of nine and 18 years have taken food security into their own hands. In Kindu, a community of 5,000 people in the coastal urban area of Munda in the Solomon Islands, these boys, who have been abandoned by their parents, have transformed their lives by establishing a cooperatively run farm.

They now have the largest urban agricultural enterprise in the Munda area on New Georgia Island, Western Province, which is providing them a sustainable livelihood and boosting wider food and nutritional security.

Youth unemployment stands at 45 percent in the Solomon Islands, a developing South Pacific island state east of Papua New Guinea. Securing an occupation and nutrition here is not easy, but with a vision and wisdom beyond his years, 23-year-old Patrick Arathe has managed to do just that.

Arathe’s parents abandoned him when he was just nine years old, and he was sent to live with extended family members, as is the custom here. After completing secondary school, he became deeply concerned about the many children in the area in a similar situation.

With no one to fully support their needs, they suffered from poor nutrition and a lack of clothing, emotional support and guidance. Few could afford to attend school.

“I saw the kids and I knew they were the same as me, fatherless,” Arathe told IPS. Strongly convinced that “kids are the future”, he was keen to find a way to support them, so in July 2012, he gathered a group of 16 youths and embarked on a small farming project.

Under the laws of customary land-ownership, Arathe managed to obtain a plot of land owned by his grandfather, where his youth group now grows cabbage, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, pumpkins, potatoes, cassava, corn, watermelons, pawpaws and bananas.

“I thought that farming was the best idea because there are not enough vegetables at the market and there is a big need to grow more,” he explained.

Though some of the youths were initially sceptical about the project, their doubts have quickly been replaced by a genuine enthusiasm for agriculture, with some members aiming to become full-time farmers once they finish school.

As the group’s leader, Patrick ensures the boys have time to do their homework after school.  Then in the late afternoon, when the heat of the sun dissipates, they spread out over the farm to plant, weed, water and harvest some of the crops for the next day’s market.

But the going is not always smooth. “The soil is not very good here,” Arathe pointed out, adding that environmental and climate challenges often plague their cultivation efforts.

The Kastom Garden Association (KGA), a national NGO, is doing its part to help this youth initiative thrive. The NGO believes that rising sea levels caused by climate change coupled with years of “slash and burn” land clearing practices have degraded the soil and compromised food security in Munda.

The KGA, which prioritises smallholder farmers and focuses on enabling village communities to develop their own practical ways of achieving household food security, has helped Arathe and his group implement a composting system and create an organic pest spray, made from locally grown chillies.

According to Arathe, “The cabbages are now growing faster and bigger.”

“We have given the group advice on vegetable nurseries, organic farming methods like composting and mulching, methods to improve their soil and different planting materials to improve crop diversity,” KGA’s Project Officer Mary Timothy told IPS, adding that the NGO mentors youths involved in farming initiatives in other provinces as well.

Despite challenges along the way, there is no doubting the success of this unique agricultural initiative.

In addition to selling their fresh produce directly to the community, the youth take bulk orders twice a week from the local hospital and from four major businesses on the island.  In a week, they can produce and sell between 500 to 1,000 “lots” – a local measurement arrived at by eyeballing the produce — of fruit and vegetables, earning an approximate income of between 600 and 1,300 dollars.

Local households also support the initiative, with some purchasing produce directly from the farm.

By December 2012, the boys had earned enough money to pay for their needs and enrol as full-time students. Their levels of nutrition have also improved in leaps and bounds.

“We eat vegetables for a balanced diet, sometimes for lunch or in the evening,” said Arathe. “The children are starting to grow healthy.”

Leslie Kiadapite, principal field officer at the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock in Munda, told IPS, “It is very important to engage young people to become involved in agriculture. Even with an education, not everyone here will be employed in the formal sector. So we encourage young people to cultivate the land.

“This is important for food security, income generation and sustainable livelihoods,” she added.

Eighty percent of this nation’s population of 552,000 reap a livelihood from subsistence agriculture, cash crops and fishing. Yet food production still falls short of meeting the demands of a population growing at an annual rate of 2.3 percent, while the legacy of a five-year civil conflict (1999-2003), which erupted following disputes between communities about access to land and resources on the main island of Guadalcanal, heavily impacted infrastructure and services throughout the country.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 14 percent of children below five years of age, or approximately 5,000 in the Solomon Islands are underweight, and 33 percent suffer from stunting due to malnutrition.

Arathe’s project seems to point the way towards achieving national goals. Beyond attaining nutritional self-sufficiency, farm labour is teaching boys skills pertaining to livelihood generation, food security and better eating habits, which will benefit them throughout their lifetime.

“They now have experience,” Arathe told IPS. “They know how to plant and harvest…They can work at the nursery and do transplanting (of crops). They are much happier, too,” he added.

(END)

By Shari Nijman
NEW YORK, May 16 2012 (IPS)

In the coming decades, the world’s population is expected to grow by at least another two billion people, 80 percent of whom will live in cities by the year 2050.

Courtesy of Dickson Despommier

Feeding those people will stretch our current agricultural system to the limit, and take a substantial toll upon the world’s ecosystems.

IPS correspondent Shari Nijman interviews Dickson Despommier, professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University and director of the Vertical Farm Project.

By combining agriculture with architecture, Despommier hopes to see multi-story high-tech greenhouses become integrated into urban skylines in the near future.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: What is a vertical farm?

A: The concept of vertical farming is really quite simple. You simply take a greenhouse that’s high-tech, and stack (another) on top. So you have multiple greenhouses on top of each other.

Q: Where does the idea come from?

A: The modern concept had its origins in the late 1960s with Dr. (R. Buckminster) Fuller, John Todd and a few other futurists who actually suggested we should be growing food in tall buildings. But the idea never caught on because the timing wasn’t right.

The current concept of vertical farming started in a classroom that I taught – at least I think that’s where it started for me – back in 1999. And then we put our projects on the Internet in 2004 and next thing you know, we have some vertical farms to talk about.

Q: Where are those vertical farms located?

A: Three years ago there were none. But today, there are seven vertical farms. We can begin in Korea, which is a government-run project. It’s only three stories, but it’s modern, high-tech. Move to Japan… it takes place in a 747-sized hangar building. It looks like there’s an airplane inside but actually there are crops in there.

(The Japanese) are building another one near Fukushima, just to prove to the world that they can grow food anywhere, even in a damaged area. Because it’s all self-contained.

They’re building a 17-story vertical farm in Sweden. I can’t wait to see what that building is going to look like. They want this to be the gold standard for vertical farming. There also is one planned for Holland called Plant Lab. They want to build it underground, so it’s basically an up-side-down three story vertical farm, with no visible light. They are going to provide all the light via grow lights.

There are two vertical farms in the United States. There is one in Chicago, which is a retrofitted meat packing plant. And then there’s one in Seattle, it’s a brand new company with only two stories. But I understand they’re going to scale this up in the near future.

Finally, I understand there is one vertical farm in Singapore also. It’s sort of similar to the one in Korea, it’s about a three-story vertical farm as well.

Q: Those farms seem to be in very diverse geographical locations. Does climate or pollution has any effect on vertical farming?

A: My opinion about the feasibility of vertical farming is that there’s no place on earth where you could not do it. And I can name some places on earth – if they would vertically farm – that would be much better off than they are today.

Let’s take the country of Iceland, as an example. They have six months of winter and six months of summer. But they have all the geothermal energy they could possibly use, and more.

A vertical farm would be a great example of how to integrate this to an energy-rich country with a great need for fresh vegetables. I look at all the Scandinavian countries in the same way.

Q: How much does a vertical farm produce? Is it financially attractive?

A: If you take a one-acre greenhouse and grow leafy green vegetables only, per square foot you can grow 64 heads of lettuce per year. If you compare that to the outdoor farmers that can get maybe seven or eight heads of lettuce per square foot per year, that’s 10 times more.

Q: What are the economic benefits of vertical farming?

A: One is no food miles (transportation from farm to plate). Two, no agricultural runoff. A flood takes all the agricultural pesticides and herbicides and moves them from the lands to the river to the ocean. When you get it into the ocean it spoils everything. Vertical farming doesn’t do that.

Three: new jobs, lots of new jobs. Four: the use of abandoned city properties. A warehouse, for instance, just sits there, with nothing to do. You can fill that with agricultural initiatives that use grow lights.

Because agriculture indoors uses 70 percent less fresh water than outdoor agriculture, you save a lot of water too.

Other advantages: you can make a profit doing this of course, because you are growing year-round you can exclude insect pests if you build your buildings correctly. You can even take an old building and make it insect-proof. You can keep out rodents, for instance, you can recycle your energy through recovery by green high-tech incineration.

Plus, you can grow anything indoors you want.

Q: And the quality of the crops? How does that compare?

A: The history of indoor farming is fraught with improper nutrients for the plants, which makes them nutritionally less desirable than outdoor plans. This is in the past now. The biggest improvements have been nutritional because we now know all of the elements that plants need in order to grow. And we need seven more (nutrients).

So if you make a solution in water of those 18 (nutrients) plus the seven that we need and then you expose the root system to that solution, the plants would not only contain their nutrients for them, but also what we need.

I think today’s hydroponically grown tomatoes and lettuce and cucumbers and zucchini and green beans have the same or better nutritional value as the outdoor crops. The outdoor crops can’t control the uptake of heavy metals which come from things like leaded gasoline.

We stopped using leaded gasoline in the 1970s, but the lead from it is still around and still in the soil. They also take up pesticides; they will also take up herbicides. Those are things we don’t want in our diet, and we can exclude them by growing under controlled conditions where we don’t use them at all.

Q: What are the places that really need this the most?

A: The concept of vertical farming will emerge in most people’s perception as an elitist activity. Because only people with the most money and a high desire for local produced vegetables and fruits will support this concept. As with all other ideas that have application to the general population, the idea will be manipulated by technology, so that it becomes economic, efficient, mobile and modular.

Imagine vertical farming as a LEGO-like structure, in which all the (components) that fit together are already growing food. If you walk into this warehouse, it’s enormous, and the order is for a vertical farm eight stories tall that manufactures lettuce and some really exotic crops. And you click them all together and ship them out. You can situate these on a base anywhere in the world.

It is not an elitist activity at this point. Suddenly it becomes a way of intervening in natural disaster, to prevent unnecessary deaths. To prevent high rates of infant mortality, to supply food on a continuous basis for places that have no soil, like Sub-Saharan Africa, most of South Asia, and a lot of places in Southeast Asia. Places that are people-rich and food-poor.

Vertical farming will eventually morph into a strategy to supply clean drinking water and abundant safe to eat food to whoever needs it. Not (just) whoever wants it.

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