Self-Sufficient City part1

Self-Sufficient City:

vertical farming project

Goldsmiths UNIVERSITY OF LONDON MA Design and Environment jung hyun, Park

RESEARCH PART relationship between food and city what is the story in London the desity of cities depends on the food vertical farming

DESIGN PART purpose the site the requisites for vertical farming design of vertical farm

REFERENCES

Self-Sufficient City

For years, environmentalists and international organizations has been trying to spread awareness about the importance of urban agriculture. Consequently, social concern with urban agriculture has been growing for the last several years, and it is being increasingly practiced in major cities and other densely populated areas.

The recently released book ‘My Empire of Dirt’ explains how the author of the book, Manny Howard (2010), grew his own food in his backyard in New York. The New York Magazine commissioned a self-sufficiency project to explore his lifestyle.

The project required him to farm his own food and rear his own domestic animals for six months, and for one more month he would only be allowed to provide his food from those resources. This project aimed to experiment with the possibilities and limits of urban agriculture in a major city. Moreover, Todmorden, a small town in the United Kingdom, has been conducting a local campaign which is called ‘Incredible Edible Todmorden’. As part of this campaign, the townsfolk plant and grow a variety of plants and trees around the town.

These urban methods of agriculture have a number of advantages not only in supplying fresh and healthy foods, but also in cutting carbon dioxide emissions by not having to transport food over long distances. Food in most of the grocery stores in the United States travel an average of 1500 miles from farm to table. For example, Chilean grapes travel 4200 miles by ship and truck before they reach California (Starrs, 2005). There is a direct correlation between the distance food travels and carbon emissions. Carbon dioxide emissions are highest when the foods are transported by plane. A large amount of fruit and vegetables are transported by plane for their freshness. This results in 177 times more greenhouse gas emissions than transportation by ship (Barclay, 2010). It is clear that we are emitting a lot of carbon dioxide to eat fresh food.

There is another important reason to develop urban agriculture. The current world population is over 6.5 billion people.

According to World Population Prospects (United Nations, 2008) by 2050 this number could rise to more than 9 billion.

The increase in population has many factors, but can be related to the development of industry and medical treatment.

However, there will also be several unexpected outcomes of this situation, with many experts predicting that there will be increasing food shortages. In his essay, Despommier (2009) – a professor of Environmental Health Science at Columbia University – mentions that a rise in the world’s population will mean an increased need for food. He states that over the next 50 years the world population will increase to over 9.2 billion, and will need an additional 109 hectares of land to produce enough food. Furthermore, the food problem will become more severe due to a lack of fertile land.

SELF-SUFFICIENT CITY 5

4.7% 28% 5.7% 5.6%

5.1%

3.1% 2.8% 3.3%

13.1% 31.6%

3.8% 2.6%

others 31.2% 21.3% 4.6%

imports of

9.1% 5.5%

fresh fruits fresh vegetables

in U.K

4.9%

10.4%

3.9%

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Relationship between food and city Let’s look back at the major cities of the past. The cities of the past required feeding just as much as we do today.

However, the agricultural methods were different from now as there was extensive urban agriculture. They daily food was supplied by milk cows and chickens in great and small farms in the city. It greatly influenced the formation and development of the city. Carolyn Steel (2009), author of Hungry City, explores how agriculture moved out of urban environments because of improvements in transportation. In effect, the improvement of railways made long distance food transport possible. Therefore, the city did not need urban agriculture any more.

The urban farm moved into the countryside for the improved environment and space.

Nowadays, we can easily buy all kinds of food produced by foreign producers, wherever we want, such as vegetables, fruit, raw meat and so on. This situation was difficult to imagine in the past. Moreover, food transportation has made new giant cities, such as Las Vegas and Dubai, possible. Especially, Dubai is an interesting case and the city should be examined more detail. A census taken in the year 1833 counted only 1,500 people in the city, however by 1967 the population had grown to 50,000 and then to 370,000 by 1985. Since then, the population of Dubai has continued increasing rapidly. According to the Statistical Centre of Dubai, the population of Dubai was 1.77 million as of 2008. Dubai became a world class city in the year 2000 and other Middle Eastern cities are under construction to become megalopolis, as Dubai. As we know, these cities depend heavily on imports for all ingredients. The Gulf News reported, “the UAE imports over 3 billion Euros worth of food annually, making it the second biggest food and beverage market after Saudi Arabia, and the food prices in the UAE are estimated to have risen 30 per cent last year (Saleem, 2008).”

What is the story in London?

The situation is very much the same in the United Kingdom. We can easily find imported foods at the market. The United Kingdom produces only 58% of its food. The figure is down from the 75% that was produced in 1994 (Griffith, 2009). Significantly, half of the vegetables and 95 percent of the fruit comes from other countries (Stacey, 2009). According to a report from the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA, 2008), the UK imported 2184.3 thousand tonnes of vegetables and 1953.5 thousand tonnes of fruit in 2007. Garnett (2003) points out in her book, that the movement of fruit and vegetables into the United Kingdom is not sustainable because of carbon dioxide emissions.

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City depends on the food.

Disproportionate development of cities can bring great problems in terms of food supply. Moreover, the world’s food prices change continuously due to the price of fossil fuels, the economy, and the weather. A constant about global food prices is that they are constantly rising. According to 2010 report from the OECD and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), they are expecting crop prices to rise by 15%~ 40% within the next decade. They also expect that most food prices will rise by 40%. If this trend continues cities around the world are at risk. Cities suffering food shortages will face increasing difficulties in maintaining current provisions and risk losing their function altogether (Steel, 2009). In order to prevent the bankruptcy of cities, they need to increasingly practice self-sufficiency in their food supplies.

FOOD price follows OIL price.

Simon Fairlie (2008) investigated how Britain can feed itself. In his words, “about 160,000 hectares are devoted to horticulture in the UK at the moment, but we import about 60 per cent of all our fruit and vegetable, so we consume over 400,000 hectares worth (Fairlie, 2008, p18).” To use his figures, Britain needs an additional 240,000 hectares of arable land to become self-sufficient in vegetable and fruit. Moreover, because London’s population is 1/8 of Britain’s population, 30,000 hectares of land are needed in order for Londoners to be self-sufficient with fruit and vegetables. The 30,000 hectares of land are more than 1/6 of London (170,680 Ha). This means that it is impossible to adopt traditional methods of agriculture.

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Vertical Faming Relying on traditional agricultural methods, there would be serious food shortage problems caused by population growth, pollution and exhaustion of natural resources. Therefore, what would be the best way to be self-sufficient in food? There is no clear-cut answer to this issue. Genetically modified crops and advanced technologies are one possible solution to this problem. I attempted to explore the answer with reference to Vertical Farming, which is one of the urban agriculture methods. Professor Despommier created the concept of the Vertical Farm in 1999. This idea is quite simple - it is to cultivate crops on each floor of urban buildings. The produced crops of a Vertical Farm are not damaged by disease or insects because the building creates the optimum conditions for farming. Despommie’s essay states that Vertical Farming can produce food of high quality to urban people, without pesticides or chemical fertilisers. Furthermore, it also protects crops from natural conditions. Every year, agricultural produce is damaged by unpreventable natural disasters such as drought, flood and storms.

Summarised benefits of Vertical Farming 1. An 80% reduction in land used compared to traditional agriculture 2. It avoids crop failures caused by weather-related disasters 3. Production is free of herbicides, pesticides and fertilisers 4. It provides fresh and nutritious food to customers 5. It avoids further pollution of land and water as a result of agriculture activity 6. No need for agricultural machinery or shipping, reducing fossil fuel use 7. It minimises carbon dioxide emissions 8. It creates new employment opportunities This idea is suited for major cities and densely populated cities. The Vertical Farms will not only cut carbon dioxide emissions for transportation, but it will offer various advantages to cities, especially nutritious and fresh food. Furthermore, the Vertical Farm enables cities, where they were difficult to grow food such as desert area, to become self sufficient. For this reason, many Middle Eastern cities are interested in the system (Fischetti, 2008). I will expand this idea into architectural design in the next chapter.

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