Growing Food Locally:  Integrating Agriculture Into the Built Environment, via BuildingGreen.com

The spike in energy prices in 2008 forced a lot of people to rethink the 1,500-mile journey that, according to author Bill McKibben, an average bite of food travels in the U.S. from where it is grown to where it is eaten. Shipping a head of lettuce from California’s Salinas Valley to New York takes 36 times as many calories as that lettuce contains. According to Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute, we consume two-thirds as much energy to transport food as we use to grow it.

Beyond energy cost, there are additional vulnerabilities in our conventional food-production system. Prolonged drought in California, the start of a new La Niña climate pattern that may exacerbate drought, and inadequate long-term flows in the Colorado River all point to a future with possible water shortages in California’s primary vegetable-producing regions. These vulnerabilities are reviving interest in growing food locally.

Please keep reading… it is really important to know about our current food crisis

Hydroponic Farm

That is why I found it interesting when I read today that CalTech is studying methods of urban hydroponic gardening and roof top farms. I suppose one reason why is because I tend to think if a scientist is really researching something, then there is enough support to think we really need it.

Supporters point to the environmental cost of trucking produce from farms to cities, the loss of wilderness for farmland to feed a growing world population, and the risk of bacteria along extensive, insecure food chains as reasons for establishing urban hydroponic farms.

And, so far there seems to be some great data:

Cornell agriculturist Philson Warner, who designed the program’s hydroponics system, said his students harvest hundreds of heads of lettuce a week from an area smaller than five standard parking spaces by using a special nutrient-rich solution instead of water.

The numbers have some researchers imagining a future when enough produce to feed entire cities is grown in multistory buildings sandwiched between office towers and other structures.

You can find the whole article HERE, via Huffington Post