The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century

Dickson Despommier

Oct 2010 · Macmillan

About this ebook

"The vertical farm is a world-changing innovation whose time has come. Dickson Despommier's visionary book provides a blueprint for securing the world's food supply and at the same time solving one of the gravest environmental crises facing us today."--Sting

Imagine a world where every town has their own local food source, grown in the safest way possible, where no drop of water or particle of light is wasted, and where a simple elevator ride can transport you to nature's grocery store - imagine the world of the vertical farm.

When Columbia professor Dickson Despommier set out to solve America's food, water, and energy crises, he didn't just think big - he thought up. Despommier's stroke of genius, the vertical farm, has excited scientists, architects, and politicians around the globe. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Despommier explains how the vertical farm will have an incredible impact on changing the face of this planet for future generations.
Despommier takes readers on an incredible journey inside the vertical farm, buildings filled with fruits and vegetables that will provide local food sources for entire cities.

Vertical farms will allow us to:
- Grow food 24 hours a day, 365 days a year
- Protect crops from unpredictable and harmful weather
- Re-use water collected from the indoor environment
- Provide jobs for residents
- Eliminate use of pesticides, fertilizers, or herbicides
- Drastically reduce dependence on fossil fuels
- Prevent crop loss due to shipping or storage
- Stop agricultural runoff

Vertical farms can be built in abandoned buildings and on deserted lots, transforming our cities into urban landscapes which will provide fresh food grown and harvested just around the corner. Possibly the most important aspect of vertical farms is that they can built by nations with little or no arable land, transforming nations which are currently unable to farm into top food producers. In the tradition of the bestselling The World Without Us, The Vertical Farm is a completely original landmark work destined to become an instant classic.

Ratings and reviews

Learn so much about the history of agriculture, where things are going terribly wrong and how the vertical farm can solve these problems. I hope to see vertical farms in cities very soon!

AAA BOSS NETWORK

About the author

DR. DICKSON DESPOMMIER spent thirty eight years as a professor of microbiology and public health in environmental health sciences at Columbia, where he has won the Best Teacher award six times, and received the national 2003 American Medical Student Association Golden Apple Award for teaching. His work on vertical farms has been featured on such top national media as BBC, French National television, CNN, The Colbert Report, and The Tonight Show, as well as in full-length articles in The New York Times, Time Magazine, Scientific American, and The Washington Post. He recently spoke at the TED Conference, Pop!Tech and the World Science Festival and has been invited by the governments of China, India, Mexico, Jordan, Brazil, Canada, and Korea to work on environmental problems. He has been invited to speak at numerous national and international professional annual meetings as a keynote speaker, and at universities, including Harvard and MIT. He is one of the visionaries featured at the Chicago Museum of Science and Technology. Despommier lives in Fort Lee, New Jersey.