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Vertical Farming Puts Pigs High in the Sky

Urban planners take another look at raising animals, crops in skyscrapers

By Leela de Kretser, Newser User

Posted Sep 30, 2008 4:57 PM CDT

(Newser) – They're not the most traditional tenants, but pigs, poultry, and crops might be reared in city skyscrapers of the future, drastically reducing environmental damage caused by traditional farms, Scientific American reports. Engineering airflow inside glass towers remains tricky, but the potential for a year-round growing season in the face of a booming world population has some urban developers looking to integrate skyscraper farms.

“When it’s 98 degrees and 80% humidity outside, we humans sit inside a controlled environment that is 72 degrees and 25% humidity,” says professor Dickson Despommier, a champion of the movement. We can do the same for our crops, he says, with a 30-story farm covering one city block feeding 50,000 people annually, and locally—with no fertilizer runoff, trucking costs, and pesticides involved.

[Images (3)]

[Quotes (1)]

New York City. Pictures taken from the 69th Floor of the Rockefeller Plaza. (Magnum Photos)

A pair of pot belly pigs, at the Animal Place pet sanctuary in Vacaville, Calif., could be reared inside skyscrapers. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

Professor Dickson Despommier, a proponent of vertical farming, surveys the lush plants in a greenhouse at the New York Botanical Garden. Despommier believes indoor farms can feed growing cities. (KRT Photos)

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And they don’t all have to be big towers. You can do this on the rooftops of hospitals and schools. You can do this along the periphery but still within city limits. You can do this on open stretches of air force bases and city islands. - Dickson Despommier

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Vertical Farming Puts Pigs High in the Sky