Vertical Farms

If we continue to live vertically, we should begin to grow vertically. Vertical Farming shares this idea at the core of it's philosophy, it occupies less space than horizontal farming and has the potential to be as beneficial if not more, than traditional forms of farming.


If we look at the tags indicating where our food is grown, we would realize that a lot of what we eat is either shipped or flown to us from different states and many different countries. The amount of energy that these modes of transportation use and the number of trips needed to deliver our food grows as our population grows. The increasing development of urban centers leaves less and less room for the growth of vegetation in our cities. This begs for a solution like the one brought forth by professor Dickson Despommier at Columbia University with his concept of vertical farming.

Until now there are several proposed projects for vertical farming in the U.S., in places like Seattle, Las Vegas (of all places), New York, and cities outside the U.S. like Toronto in Canada.




























What about Boston?
Thankfully a lot of people in Boston are conscientious about where they buy their food. There are shopping centers like Harvest Co-op which buys products from local farmers and is a drop-off for CSA's. We can't forget Re-Vision Urban Farm in Dorchester, which we highlighted in our previous blog. Then of course, you have the Farmers Markets scattered around greater Boston which take place from May to November. Our local market is in Copley Square, but there are plenty in other neighborhoods. There are also websites like Boston Community Change which promote local small businesses.

Boston is a city that would welcome and benefit greatly from one of these projects. Having a self sustaining vertical farm to feed the urban population is something that more cities will be looking into as populations increase, and the cost of food rises. Although there are no set proposals for vertical farming in the city of Boston yet, we believe its only a matter of time before Boston has it's first self sustaining vertical farm!