The Idea of Vertical Farming

Dickson Despommier, a professor at Columbia, says that global climate change will require us to reconsider growing food indoors, and proposes that farming go vertical.

1 minute read

August 3, 2008, 1:00 PM PDT

By Tim Halbur


From the interview: "If you look at the Food & Agriculture organizations predictions over the next ten years with regards to world crop production, the yield, the annual yield, will drop by 20%. That's a worldwide prediction based on rapid climate change. Which is, of course, the other part of the equation that we're all worried about, but don't know what to do anything about. So you know, try teaching this to college students, and they'll start throwing a lot of tomatoes at you because they don't want to hear any more bad news! They've got so much bad news, they're trying to get a job and what's the use of working when the whole world is going to collapse around you, right? So I had to give them something positive to cling to, so this is how the concept of vertical farming arose."

Wednesday, July 30, 2008 in Big Think

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I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching. Mary G., Urban Planner

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching.

Mary G., Urban Planner

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