Sustainable Urban Vertical Sky Farms

Urban farming or Victory farms as they were once called is not an new concept on the American scene, but in the evolving age of renewable energy technologies such as solar, wind power and innovative rain capture systems there a growing interest in the issue. Dickson Despommier, a Columbia University professor is becoming a recognizable face in the concept of vertical farm or sky farms.

As Despommier points out a group of cities around the globe are exploring options on how to incorporate these technologies into their urban growth plans.

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Loop Current Drawing The BP Oil Disaster To Florida Keys

by Brad Johnson

Even as some government and BP officials downplay the extent of the growing oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, a terrible threshold has been crossed: the slick has been captured by the Loop Current, which draws water from the Gulf through the Florida Keys and into the Gulf Stream along the Atlantic coast. SkyTruth president John Amos, one of the first independent experts to warn the official estimates of the leak were radically too small, calls Monday’s satellite imagery “disturbing“:

Today’s MODIS / Terra satellite image is the most cloud-free we’ve seen in many days, and what it reveals is disturbing: part of the still-massive Gulf oil slick has apparently been entrained in the strong Loop Current, and is rapidly being transported to the southeast toward Florida. The total area covered by slick and sheen, at 10,170 square miles (26,341 km2), is nearly double what it appeared to be on the May 14 radar satellite image, and is bigger than the state of Maryland.

See the satellite image overlaid with a model of the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico:

Composite image of MODIS satellite image and National Weather Service HYCOM ocean current model. Constructed by Brad Johnson, ThinkProgress Wonk Room.

The Loop Current Jeff Hoffmeyer, a marine scientist with the University of Southern Mississippi Center for Fisheries Research and Development, told the Wonk Room two weeks ago of the frightening consequences of the slick getting caught in the Loop Current:

If it gets entrained into the Loop [Current], it’s up into the Atlantic. And who knows where it’s going to go from there. As it moves around Florida, the next or another critical area would be the Florida Keys and the coral reefs we have down there. I don’t even want to think about that area being covered in oil. Once it works its way up the East Coast and potentially crossing the Atlantic, it could be far-reaching.

Over 625,000 gallons of toxic dispersants have been sprayed on the oil slick, including 45,000 gallons of dispersants injected directly at the wellhead — creating an invisible toxic cloud of unknown size a mile below the sea surface.

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Lewis Griggs on HUMAN SPIRIT AT WORK

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In San Francisco the value of recycling is now becoming as common place as knowing that human industrialization effects climate change. Now through the city’s recycling and composting program businesses, apartment buildings and homeowners receive incentives for actively managing their waste removal. That’s why you’re now seeing even more of those large blue, green and black containers throughout the city.

But recycling a 70 year old national government program in a new way is what San Francisco’s Victory Gardens has done. Suzi Palladino of San Francisco’s Victory Gardens recently spoke at Green Zebra, highlighted the fact that during World War Two 40% of San Franciscans were growing their own vegetables and fruit – through a national incentive program called Victory Farms. That’s 40% in land limited San Francisco! The national program was designed to ease demand for food, at a time when the country was re-directing massive food supplies to American military fighting around the world. It’s interesting to note some of the campaign material used during that time which showed how we could support our troops abroad. But none the less the idea that individuals are again being empowered to create and maintain their own backyard, rooftop and community eco farms is taking root particularly during these trying economic times.

New York City

In 2008 Victory Gardens in partnership with the city of San Francisco planted a functioning test pilot edible garden in front of City Hall which they managed for 3 months. The Victory Gardens program is where the ideas of natural living or “sustainability” as we now call it has real time application. With their help you can learn how to become an Urban Farmer and really learn how to get your green on. They can be reached at:wwwsfvictorygardens.org. You can also contact Garden for the Environment which is San Francisco’s Organic Demonstration Garden, offering weekly workshops on Organic Gardening, Sustainable Landscaping and Urban Composting, School Year and Summer Programs for Youth, and the Gardening and Composting Educator Training Program. Founded in 1990, the Garden for the Environment is a half-acre organic garden in San Francisco demonstrating small-scale urban organic food production, organic gardening, low water-use landscaping and urban compost systems.Contact at: info@gardenfortheenvironment.org.

But what about the future of urban farming? Is verticle farming in our future? It’s predicted that by the year 2050, 80% of the world’s population will live in urban centers. As the global population swells and urban centers lose what little green space they once had, more countries are looking to urban farming to feed their people. The urban environment doesn’t have unlimited horizontal farming space, so the natural solution is to build up. Vertical farms can fit easily into the cityscape while providing a local source of food for inhabitants. Even better, they can be placed nearly anywhere that a building can go.