Stratified Agriculture in a Smart State

Stratified Agriculture in a Smart State A look at the human experience in the agricultural future from an architectural perspective

By Taylor Sheppard Thesis prospectus School of the Art Institute of Chicago Master of Architecture with an Emphasis in Interior Architecture

ABSTRACT This paper will state and acknowledge the failure of current agricultural practices, identify and interrogate the current movements attempting to fix it, and introduce a new method of solving the expected food shortages and agriculture-related global warming. Through all of this research, the methodology of Stratified Agriculture in a Smart State is proposed and an architectural prose is created to investigate how the architect will be designing future farms and its experience with those inhabiting them.

DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to my grandfather, who at 80, is still out there farming and putting food on all of our tables.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

01 02 02 03 03 03 04

Environmental Crop Yield Water Population Land-Use

INTRODUCTION

06

AGRICULTURAL MOVEMENTS

06 Smart Agriculture 09 Netherlands

10 Urban Agriculture AGRICULTURAL FAILURES

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Food Focused Cities Continuous Productive Urban Landscape Smart Food Cities Urban Food Geography Chicago and Agriculture

18 Indoor Farming

Advantages 20 Disadvantages

How it works

Design Requirements Lighting 21 Planters 22 Energy Generators

24 Case Studies

Animal Kipster 26 Memphis Meats 27 Pig City

Hog Hotel 28 New Construction Spread

Sky Greens 30 Adaptive Reuse

Growing Underground 31 Square Roots

Urban Organics 32 Warehouse Stacking AeroFarms 33 Within a Context

Pansona Offices

Gotham Greens

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PROSPECTUS

34 Methodology: Stratified Agriculture in a Smart State Strata 35 Goals

Food Production

Smart Technology

Political Practices Reconnection 36 Closer Food Experiences Nutrition

Higher Education

Renatured Land

38 Connection: Urban Ag-Tech Corridor 40 Interaction: Agriculture Epicenter Design 42 Damen Silos 45 Program

47 62

APPENDIX

SOURCES

INTRODUCTION My childhood was spent jumping into a barn filled to the rafters with feed-corn. My grandfather is a farmer. We just celebrated his eightieth birthday. Of his seven children, he would let none pursue farming as an occupation because he thought it would no longer be a viable career in the future. Every year I have seen the corn in the barn get lower and lower due to weather related failures. These two things got me thinking, if people aren’t getting into farming anymore, what is happening with our food production and what is being done about this low crop yield?

The occupation “farmer” is not currently listed in the census because less than two percent of the population are farmers. Think that through. Less than two percent of the entire population is working in a field that we all require to survive. It is imperative that more people get involved in farming again, because we will forever require food. In addition to this lack of interest in the field, we are also dealing with the problem of a growing population and a lack of arable land to feed them, while dealing with the harm agriculture has done to the planet. This all led to the question, how can we re-configure urban and rural districts to accomodate for expected food shortages and global warming?

This paper will present research in a variety of agricultural and architectural topics. Beginning with addressing the agricultural failures being faced, including what farming is affecting and being affected by. Then evaluating what steps are currently being done to address these failures, including smart agriculture, urban farming, indoor farming ,and case studies of successful modern initiatives will be shown. This research concludes in the production and defense of the prospectus reached at the end of this paper. This prospectus includes the proposal of a new methodology, Stratified Agriculture in a Smart State; a way to implement this methodology, an Urban Ag-Tech Corridor; and an architectural prose to further investigate and develop what the people’s experience in the future of farming will be.

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AGRICULTURAL FAILURES Current agricultural practices are failing society. They are both contributing to and being affected by climate change, contributing to a percentage of greenhouse gas emissions and a decline in food production. It is also affecting the environment, water, health, and land use. A growing population, however, demands an increase in food.

Environmental

Due to global warming, normal agricultural challenges, and a wasteful population, a large percentage of food is wasted every year. 70% of crops planted will never reach harvest because of droughts, floods, plant disease, and insect pests. Then of the percentage remaining, 40% of food supply is wasted in America because it spoils before it can be eaten. This is partially because of wasteful purchasers and shelf life at a grocery store, but it is also because of the thousands of miles food has to travel before it can get to the people consuming it. And the farther away food production is, the larger its ecological footprint.

The seeding, weeding, plowing, fertilizing, and harvesting of crops requires a large amount of fossil fuels, but then even more is required for the transportation and refrigeration of this food across states and countries. Most states in the U.S. do not have the arable land available to lower these food miles, so this is a requirement of current agricultural process, so the fossil fuel usage and carbon output cannot decrease if farming strategies remain the same.

Soil will soon no longer be able to be farmed with current practices. Every planting, more and more fertilizers, chemicals, and pesticides are required, leaving soil incapable of supporting plants without even more chemical additives. Without these supplemental nutrients however, soil is not rich enough in most environments to support more than a few years of plantings, so farmers have decided it the necessary evil. But, these chemicals cause extensive ecological damage, seen in agricultural runoff, slash-and-burn-agriculture, and other aspects to be described in a latter section.

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Agriculture contributes to 17% of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and an additional 7-14% through land use changes, adding to global warming. It also makes up 58% of total anthropogenic nitrous oxide emissions and 47% of total anthropogenic methane emissions. These non-CO2 gases have an even higher global warming potential than CO2. The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, published in 2006, estimated that over the next 30 years, rapid climate change will cost the world’s governments around $74 trillion through expenses associated with rising ocean levels, significant crop losses, vector-borne disease transmission, and increased healthcare associated with weather-related catastrophic events.

Agricultural Emissions

Crop Yield

% crop yield lost per degree celsius increase

Greenhouse gas emissions are causing a decrease in crop yields all over the world: North America has seen a 20% drop in corn production; South America has dropped 16% in corn production; Northern Europe has seen a potato yield drop; Asia has lost arable land to grow anything; Indonesia’s corn production has declined 20%. For each degree Celsius increased there will be a 6% decrease in wheat yield, a 3.2% decrease in rice yield, a 7.4% decrease in corn yield, and a 1% decrease in soybeans accumulated across the world. These four crops are key to the survival of humanity, as they make up two-thirds of the caloric intake. To see more statistics and studies on the decline in crop yield around the world, view figures 1-11 in the appendix.

Water Water free of infectious diseases and toxins is becoming scarce. The herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers used on farms washes into rivers, lakes, and oceans- a term called agricultural runoff. Agricultural runoff is the world’s most destructive source of pollution. Climatologists predict that over the next 40 years, flooding will be more frequent and severe, because of global warming, in places where flooding has never even occurred before, causing even more toxic runoff to enter the bodies of water. The effects range from creating dead zones where fishing is no longer viable, to the sterilization of estuaries, to the deaths of hundreds of billions of water-creatures. Nitrogen fertilizers are solely responsible for killing off hundreds of billions of immature crustaceans, mollusks, and fish. This is the reason why the United States, the number one agricultural producer, needs to import 80% of its seafood. The irony of this lack of clean water, is that farming on a global scale requires 70% of it.

Population growth & necessary food increase

Population One-in-five children in America are obese. One-in-five children in America live in food-insecure-homes. In the US that is thirteen million, in Illinois that is 460,000, and in Chicago that is 197,000 children who don’t get the proper nutrition of fruits and vegetables. Whether it be the location of the proper food, as Marie Gallagher describes in “Food Deserts of Chicago”, or the large cost difference between healthy fresh food options and processed nutritional food options, something is wrong with these opposing statistics found in two of five children.

The global population is predicted to reach 9.1 billion people by 2050. If this happens, food production must increase by 70%. The world is running out of space to grow food, the key to human survival. Today crops are raised on a landmass equivalent to the size of South America, this is 80% of arable land. To fit the crops required for this growing population, farming requires a new landmass the size of Brazil, which does not exist. If traditional agricultural farming practices continue, the world will face massive starvation and conflict as it faces a scarcity of food and clean water.

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Land-Use This map shows the land-use of Illinois. Prior to 1600, when farming was invented, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa were mostly hardwood forests. Today Illinois is mostly farmland, two-thirds of which is used to feed the animals we eat. If hardwood forests were allowed to regrow in only Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, the trees would consume 10% annually of the US carbon dioxide emissions.

In tropical environments, soils are poor in essential stored micronutrients because of abundant rainfall. To accomodate farming in these conditions slash-and-burn-agriculture is used, in which a section of land is cleared of its trees and shrubs by burning it all down and using the ashes as the fertilizer. This scenario ,however, only allows for three years’ worth of crops to be harvested before the farmer has to move onto another site where the process is repeated.

This is the largest cause of deforestation in the tropics and is also the reason why malnutrition and starvation are routine due to crop failure.

concentrated farmland half farmland less concentrated farmland semi urban urban 4

“Perhaps the reason all of earth’s wildlife is fearful of us is because we have, indeed, been fruitful and multiplied, and have now filled up the earth to the point of threatening to overwhelm all the rest of the natural world.”

-Dickson Despommier, The Vertical Farm

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AGRICULTURAL MOVEMENTS There have been three responses to these agricultural failures thus far: smart agriculture, urban farming, and indoor farming. Smart agriculture is the addition of modern technology to traditional farming methods to improve crop and animal yield and environmental impact. Urban farming is the idea of putting farming back into cities through rooftop gardens, empty-lot farms, and employing the possibility of indoor farming in the city. Indoor farming is a modern idea that puts farms indoors through layered plant beds to drastically increase crop yield and bring the food closer to the majority of its consumers. Each category will be thoroughly investigated to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each, to be later referenced in the proposal of Stratified Agriculture in a Smart State.

SMART AGRICULTURE In 1900, 11 million workers were needed to farm food, today only 6.5 million are needed, which is a mere 2% of the population. Interest in the agricultural field contributes to this, but it is mainly because technology has continually improved how agriculture is done. Food production, thus far, has been able to keep up with and even out-run population growth. The United States is actually producing 50% more calories than are required from a nutritional standpoint, which plays a large factor in obese culture. If a more nutritional diet is introduced to people and the 40% of food currently wasted is taken back, that would be a 90% increase in food already being produced. So agriculture is properly working, it is society that isn’t understanding its wastefulness or gluttony, therefore requiring agriculture to work harder and harder. Until now, the main technological advances in farming have been in tractor improvement to optimize the machine. But today, smart agriculture is encompassing dozens of different farming aspects to better the crop and animal yield and decrease environmental impact. It is believed that all of these technologies could double the food supply.

From an environmental perspective, robots and drones are being used as weedkillers, spraying a targeted amount of pesticide at a weed, decreasing pesticide use by 95%. An organic alternative, is even using lasers to zap the weeds, eliminating the needs for pesticides altogether. Since a percentage of crops are lost to weeds and pesticides, this could be a game changer in not only the agricultural runoff impact, but the crop yield. Genetic modification is also being used to make crops and animals more resistant to the effects of global warming and improve yield. Drought resistant corn, turbo-boosted rice that yields 50% more, and disease-immune piglines are just a few examples of genetic improvements.

Robots are also being used to do the work in all aspects of farming. There are autonomous pickers used in indoor and outdoor farms, and also completely autonomous robot-run farms, eliminating the amount of workers required. Micro-sensors are being used to monitor crop growth, robotic soils samplers check different levels, and drone-assisted crop-monitoring all aids in increased crop yields. This technology has also been used to develop indoor farming and even lab-made meats.

Smart agriculture also includes animal technologies. As diets around the world are becoming more western, meat demand is growing more and more as the population increases. To help improve animal yields, fitbits for cows have been developed, as well as cow breath analysis, monitoring for disease and fertility. Automated thermal imaging analysis can be done on utters to analyze milk production. In pig pens, audio health monitors are being used to detect coughs for earlier disease prevention, and a similar idea of automated behavior analysis is being used on chickens to do the same.

Consumption of fish is even higher than the consumption of meat. To help this, inland saltwater fish farms were created, eliminating the need for frozen fish and severely decreasing food miles. At the University of Maryland’s Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology they have even developed zero waste fish farming inland.

All of these technologies could drastically improve the outputs of agriculture. Unfortunately, not many are employing these advances, because of cost or a traditional attitude.

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Netherlands Unlike most other countries, the Netherlands is able to implement and develop these smart agriculture strategies because it is one of the richest countries in the world and agricultural advances are supported and encouraged by the government. The Netherlands is employing all of the aforementioned technologies, developing a large amount of them, and is outputting more for its size than any other country. Two decades ago the Dutch made a commitment to produce twice as much food using half the resources. To do this, Wageningen University was created as an entire university dedicated to food, supported 50% by the government, 25% by university income, and 25% through private fundings. Farming, from a governmental standpoint, is held to the same level of importance as all other sectors of the community, allowing it to prosper. The Netherlands is a small, densely populated country with about 1,300 inhabitants per square mile, but they are the number two exporter of food, second to the United States who has 272 times the landmass (see Figure 1). More than half of the nation’s land is used for agriculture and horticulture. Wageningen University or “Food Valley” as it is known is considered the Silicon Valley of agriculture. They are continuously developing new technologies and agricultural methods.

Greenhouses cover 175 acres of land, making up 80% of the cultivated land. Each greenhouse yields ten times the amount as outdoor fields, by allowing crops to grow every day of the year. Artificial interior light used at night allows for plants to grow all night long, so crops are growing twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. These greenhouses have also cut down chemical use by 97% and water use by 90%.

The Netherlands has been able to cut back on resources and chemical additives. They have reduced water for key crops by 90% by using smart irrigation, almost completely eliminated pesticide use by instead using a technology called “biocontrol”, and cut poultry and livestock farm antibiotics by 60%. They also use hydroponics, drone-crop-monitoring, and big data technology to optimize resources. A key aspect to their methodology, has been precision farming, basically doing the right thing at the right place at the right moment. Precision farming allows them to use less water, fertilizer, and pesticides, meaning less harm on the environment.

Figure 1. a size comparison between the united states, seen on the left, and the Netherlands, seen on the right.

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URBAN AGRICULTURE The theories and proposals below each believe agriculture should makes it way back into the urban environment. Some explore the reasons why people need to be near their food, and some give definitive ideas on how to do so. These particular theories are being presented because they have the strongest arguments and proposals to do so.

Food Focused Cities Carolyn Steele, author of Hungry City, ends her book with “Man and corn - it all comes back to that.

Cultivation and civilization, city and country, paradise and hell: food has always shaped our lives, and it always will. Our legacy to those who inherit the earth will be determined by how we eat now-their future lies in our knives and forks and fingers.”

She argues that the ultimate city is a “Sitopia”, a food-city. A city with strong links to local farmlands through a lattice like food network, a strong sense of food identity, schools teaching about food, growing, and cooking, a governmental protection over food monopolies, physical and social food networks, and, most of all, a city that celebrates food and uses it to bring people together. Food is what created the original city. Life from the beginning revolved solely around food, where to get it, how to eat it, how to store it. After early ancestors had figured out this first step, they were able to get unnecessarily creative in their pursuits, thus beginning the characteristics of the urban man. Zoning began as an effort to regulate where food did and did not grow, allotting the unworkable space for other uses. Municipal work began as solution to the flooding of farmlands, so levees and irrigation systems were developed as a way to save the food. Whole political sectors were arranged with the original purpose of food production. These early moments in history set up the urban man and system we know today. Steele believes we need to get back to this initial history and bring food back into our cities and that this will improve our acknowledgement of the food, how it is prepared, and its impact on the environment, leading to a better city.

Continuous Productive Urban Landscape “Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes” (CPUL) is a case for placing farms in empty lots within cities. Andre Viljoen and Katrin Bohn developed the idea of “Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes: Essential Infrastructure and Edible Ornament” as a strategy for the integration of urban agriculture into urban space planning, as an essential part of sustainable infrastructure. They were inspired by three movements from the 1990s: the design debate on infrastructural urbanism, reducing the environmental impact on architecture, and public open space and urban landscape as a lifestyle component for a sustainable contemporary city. Viljoen and Bohn believed that urban agriculture could contribute passively to the creation of sustainable cities without compromising the urbanity and sustainable benefits of a compact city. They found the strongest benefits to CPUL to be the reduction of food miles, and therefore embodied energy and carbon dioxide emissions. And furthermore that the elimination of energy intensive artificial fertilizers would further reduce environmental impact. Filling vacant lots, rather than filling them with a building, can be seen as a win-win. Costwise, urban agriculture site cost 40 times less than other filler infrastructure. Social-wise, a neighborhood is improved when a vacant site or building is filled. Studies found within the CPUL argument found that there is the potential for urban agriculture within most situations and sites, but the only worry is soil quality, due to its preceding host. If a site once held brownfields, railway embankments, car parks, roads, etc. the soil would have to be cleaned through various methods, or raised beds could be used. The Diagram to the right references the ideal CPUL. Viljoen and Bohn cite Cuba as their main example, who introduced urban agriculture after food shortages occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. Cuba suffered a loss of 80% of its trade and access to imported fuel. Cuba currently provides 60% of their own vegetable production and supplies 30% of Havanna’s vegetable requirements. Viljoen and Bohn believe these stats could be replicable in the UK. By utilizing the available areas with the UK and its surrounding edges, urban agricultural plots could result in significant yields and an improvement to the city’s attractiveness and economic prosperity.

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Cuban Urban Agriculture was found to be a successful movement. In 2004, a survey showed that planners and architects thought 62% of urban agriculture sites were seen as permanent land use, and other respondents agreed that the urban agriculture did not detract from the city’s image and was seen as an element of sustainability. Sites were chosen as urban agriculture plots through “programmatic criteria” in which the location of the sites were determined by the most efficient growing spots and the distribution pathways of the crops. Because of this distribution, urban agricultural fields can be found in a wide variety of locations and context, allowing their spatial characteristics and relationships with the built environment and people to be unique to each site. 10 sites were chosen for the research of CPUL resulting in a pattern of physical characteristics.

1. Enclosure: All sites had some form of enclosure, impacting how the spaces read within the city. The boundaries varied in type, thickness, and transparency changing the feeling from room-like to field-lie territories, depending on location.

2. Multiple Use: Dedicated areas within the urban agriculture that further enriched the site’s contribution to the city and encouraged a sense of ownership for the community, ie. outdoor classrooms, picnic sites, sales points, health centers, etc.

3. Shared Visual Facility: the field visible from a number of surrounding windows and vantage points. This connection between residents and farmers is important because it links the public with natural systems that sustain life.

4. Linking Device: the linearity of growing beds provides physical and optical links, which assist in unifying and giving coherence to disparate parts of the urban fabric.

5. Sculptural Quality: the relationship between the eye level observer and the topography and horizontality of the growing beds creates an optical effect the reminds viewers of the earth’s surface.

6. Incremental Occupation: the possibility to use the farms as event spaces, perhaps in weddings or festivals. Aside from these physical characteristics, urban agriculture must deal with ornamentation and aesthetics. Viljoen and Bohn say that ornament was not the intention, but it is inherent in all visual patterns.

They cite Tom Phillips, author of The Nature of Ornament in saying” Such universality of (ornament) is made possible by (its) relatively small generative syntax. These syntactical elements are all paraphrases of nature; stripe, hatching, dot and the whole treasury of primal signs are all present in nature. It stores our knowledge of the principles of growth and form (forking, branching, spiral) and diagramatises our experience.” Nature has always been the original inspiration for ornamentation in architecture, and urban agriculture physically employs nature as ornamentation, the ultimate ideal.

Figure 2. the map above displays the CPUL design concept

The Urban Agriculture perception was altogether found to be positive. It raises awareness about food and provides potential for generating social activity. People were positive about being outdoors and in an open space, but did not find it similar to being in a park or manicured landscaped space. The study concludes with raising three issues to consider in thoughts on perception: Utility versus ornamental landscape, working landscape versus leisure landscape, unusable urban landscape versus usable urban landscape. Viljoen and Bohn argue that to have a successful CPUL, it must compliment both the urban farmer and the characteristics of open space that people see as desirable, thus adhering to each of those contradictions’ sides.

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Smart Food Cities Damian Maye proposes the idea of a “Smart Food City” in his article “Smart Food City: Conceptual Relations between Smart City Planning, Urban Food Systems, and Innovative Theory”. Maye develops the conceptual link between smart city planning and urban food systems through governance and innovation to solve the question of how to feed cities in a just, sustainable, and culturally appropriate manner. Through the analysis of what makes a smart city and the movement of urban food systems, Maye develops the criteria to make a smart food city, that can be a solution to city food challenges and social innovations.

A smart city uses technology and data collection to advance the infrastructures of an urban environment, giving priority to the government and development. The urban food movement consists of urban food production practices. Maye proposes combining the two so that smart data and technologies ,through government advocacy, create a smart food city. This smart food city would be made up of five key elements: 1. City regionalism includes examining and managing food systems of the functional region around the city. This requires cities to think strategically beyond their boundaries to combine both rural and urban 2. agricultural advances.

3. Connectivities refers to the role of government coordination in the design and implementation of urban food strategies. Connecting the surrounding rural area, the city, and the associated governments will allow for social and technological innovation.

4. Spatial Synergies allows food to serve as a vector of connection, by linking productive landscapes within cities. The clever redesign of urban agriculture and smart-tech solutions can reduce food and nutrition security, enhance environmental quality, create employment, and improve community cohesion.

5. Circular Metabolism employs cities to shift from a linear model to a circular model, where outputs are recycled back into the system. This is a smart city methodology, including high tech systems including 6. metropolitan food clusters and agro parks, with low-tech systems like agro-ecological production.

7. Social Practices refers to understanding the social and community factors that these smart food 8. institutions will take place in.

Urban Food Geography “Food in cities: Study on Innovation for a Sustainable and Healthy Production, Delivery, and Consumption of Food in Cities”, by Anja De Cunto, Cinzia Tegoni, Roberta Sonnino, Cecile Michel, and Feyrouz Lajili-Djalai recognize that urban citizens do not think about how or where their food comes from. They propose solutions to this problem by recognizing the potential role of local authorities to bring food production back into people’s focus.

Cities determine policies in a number of ways. The policy tools utilized by cities show a trend in focus on citizen involvement, social innovation, governance, innovative public procurement, and collaboration with research. On a smaller scale cities are focusing on sustainable diet and nutrition, social and economic equality, food production, food supply and distribution, and food waste. Mary Gallagher identifies in her food deserts research, that large populations in cities are not able to acquire the proper nutritional values necessary or fresh fruit and vegetables (see Figure 3). These food deserts show the social and economic inequality the authors are speaking of in “Food Cities”. By addressing the issues of sustainable diet, food production, supply, and waste some issues of social and economic equality can be reached as well.

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Cunto, Tegoni, Sonnino. Michel, and Djali identify the following as gaps in the development of urban food strategies: 1. Missing integration of the work across and between city departments 2. Unclear division of competencies between local authorities and the regions and national level 3. Lack of multi-level governance and policy coherence 4. Missing links between research, practice and policy 5. Difficulties in inclusion of critical actors in food policy, such as citizen associations The authors believe that adopting a multilevel approach to address all of these issues, would allow different actors to participate within the community. Cities have already taken action to allow for such engagement in methods such as food councils, inter-departmental groups of workers, and longer planning cycles to transcend political or election cycles.

Cities that are properly working on food related policy or projects are having success because of new and dynamic innovation. In these cities there is an emphasis on community buy-in, where cities recognize and embrace their role as the facilitator of change. There is also an enhanced participation in the government system, in which local empowerment is seen as a policy goal. Successful cities are also shortening their supply chains and employing systematic thinking. This means that by making the food chain more visible, it is easier to develop new, innovative solutions. Finally, the most successful food policy-focused cities are using translocalism. Translocalism is the knowledge exchange and cooperation between urban areas. By exchanging ideas, policies, and innovations from city to city, states are acknowledging that they can do better together to improve the nation as a whole, than they can do selfishly apart.

Food Desert Figure 3. above is the map of mary gallagher’s map of food deserts in the city of chicago.

Cunto, Tegoni, Sonnino, Michel, and Djali analyze a multitude of cities in this article, using each as a case study to discover their success and how they got there. Barcelona’s innovation came from strong cooperation with different actors in health issues and an incorporation of “food sovereignty”. Mexico City’s innovation came from food and nutrition-related strategies and actions that strengthened, promoted, and coordinated their efforts in different city departments. Milan’s innovation came from different stakeholders in a long engagement process of small-scale innovative projects. Overall, it was found that the most successful cities found: • Cities as project partners supports the engagement at a political level • Project priorities need to be aligned with city priorities • Research questions must be defined together with users • Projects are stronger when cities learn and exchange with each other • Coordination with other sources of funding The key to a successful food-focused city, as concluded by Cunto, Tegoni, Sonnino. Michel, and Djali, is to make the city a living laboratory. A place where different innovations and ideas can come to fruition, even with the prospect of failure, all to find the best solution.

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A Recipe for Healthy Places

Illinois Local Food, Farms, and Jobs Act Eat Local Live Healthy Agricultural Zoning

Chicago Food Policy Summit

Urabn Agricultural Reform

2000

Community Food Security Inventory of Chicago Food Desert Map Illinois Local and Organic Food and Farm Task Force Food Systems Report Chicago Go To 2040

Food Security Summits

Community Food Security Coalition

Green Net

90

NeighborSpace

80

OpenLands

American Community Gardening Association 1970 10

20 30 2040

Chicago and Agriculture While Chicago began with farming in its city centers, it was pushed out by the 20th century, with agriculture irrelevant in city or neighborhood planning after WWII. The State of Illinois says 1,500 miles is the average travel distance for food items consumed in the state. 95% of organic food sold in state is grown and processed out of state, and more than 70% of state agriculture is in corn and soy. Like many other Northern American cities, Chicago has become dependent upon imported food even with illinois being over ¾ farmland. In Howard Rosing and Daniel R. Block’s “Farming Chicago” they assembled a timeline of Chicago’s modern agriculture efforts to establish where the failure continues to occur.

1970: Chicago’s first modern agricultural effort was in 1970 when the Chicago Department of Human Services hosted a national conference on community gardening, which resulted in the American Community Gardening Association.

1990s: Openlands, as an advocate for open space and urban gardeners, starts holding workshops for gardeners in the Garfield Park Conservatory and begin school garden building program.

1995: Green Net, a network of gardeners and urban agriculture advocates, runs a foundation-funded grant program to support gardeners and create a map of Chicago community gardens.

1996: The municipal government and other public agencies created NeighborSpace, a nonprofit urban land trust charged with protecting community-organized and managing growing spaces.

1999: Chicago hosts the annual meeting of the Community Food Security Coalition, a national network of community gardeners and food security activities (this group no longer exists).

2001: Chicago Community Trust funds the Illinois Food Security Summits that energize local and organic food advocates. These built off Chicago’s local-food systems, like The Resource Center City Farm, God’s Gang, Openlands, the Development, Good Greens, Urban Habitat Chicago, Growing Home, Angelic Organics Learning Center, and Growing Power. These groups together pushed for a coordinated urban food policy agenda.

2002: The Chicago Food Policy Action Council and Advocates for Urban Agriculture reform.

2004: CFPAC publishes “Community Food Security Inventory of the City of Chicago”.

2006: CFPAC organizes annual Chicago Food Policy Summit.

2006: Food Desert Map is published by Mary Gallagher.

2007: The Illinois Local and Organic Food and Farm Task Force is created by the Illinois General Assembly, which published policy recommendations.

2009: The Illinois General Assembly passes the Illinois Local Food, Farms, and Jobs Act, stating that “20% of all food and food products purchased by state agencies and state-owned facilities, including, without limitation, facilities for persons with mental health and developmental disabilities, correctional facilities, and public universities, shall, by 2020, be local farm or food products.” A report by the ILIJA later says the policy has been difficult to implement and that results were far from forthcoming, and the 2020 goal was not reasonable.

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2009: Chicago advocates publish “Food Systems Report” funded by the Chicago Community Trust as part of a larger metropolitan urban planning effort. The first recommendation was to “include food and food waste issues in local land use, infrastructure, and comprehensive plans.”

2010: Chicago Go To 2040 is published with ambitions to: Facilitate sustainable local food production Increase access to safe, fresh, affordable, and healthy foods Increase data, research, training, and information sharing Chicago Go To 2040 faces problems though, as most municipalities in Chicago have little to no structural support for urban agriculture and Chicago lacks zoning codes to legalize land use for food production.

2010: “Eat Local, Live Healthy” puts out 5 recommendations for the city’s food system that supported local and urban food system development.

2011: Mayor Emanuel puts local food as part of his election campaign and a revised ordinance is passed for this first time making urban agriculture legal as land use. This sets up a new food-system policy for the city to organize, debate, and advocate for urban food production.

2012: The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Communities Putting Prevention to Work initiative releases A Recipe for Health Places. The key objectives are to create more public open spaces for large-scale food growing, job training, and food related education; enhance community and school gardens; ensure land is safe for growing food; encourage the use of private spaces to grow health food, ;and collect data on urban food production. They outline the following 5 goals: 1. Build healthier neighborhoods 2. Grow food 3. Expand healthy food enterprises 4. Strengthen the food safety net 5. Serve healthy food and beverages

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“Chicago was built on the transformation of nature into food commodities, first in the form of grains and later in the form of meat and processed food. The city has a deep history as a producer and processor of food for local consumption, though like most Midwestern cities, urban landscape was transformed from food production into industrial, commercial, and residential space.”

-Howard Rosing and Daniel R. Block

With all these initiatives urban agriculture in Chicago is still failing. Rosing and Block argue that higher education needs to get involved. In an analysis of the efforts of advocacy, policy making, planning, and processing, Rosing and Block believe to effectively get Chicago to become a fresh food producer, higher education needs to play the key role in creating a socially equitable, economically just, and ecologically sustainable food system.

Until very recently there was not a higher education undergraduate degree program in agricultural science within Chicago, or even the surrounding metropolitan area. In 2009, the City of Colleges of Chicago, in partnership with Windy City Harvest, a program from Chicago’s Botanic Gardens, began a certificate program in sustainable urban agriculture accredited by the Illinois Community College Board, based out of a branch of the Daley College. The educational facility and curriculum includes greenhouse production and aquaponics. Following this suit, other colleges began urban agriculture focused education. Wright College recently began offering online curricula in agroecology focused on employment in urban agriculture. Their model integrates online classes instructed by the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. This model allows community college students to consider careers in urban agriculture by completing a degree through U of I and bridges the gap between traditional land-grant institutions and agricultural science curriculum with higher education institutions situated in urban environments. Chicago State University, in a neighborhood classified as a food desert, opened an aquaponics facility in a former factory near campus, producing tilapia. The system offers an urban agricultural track for students and a resource for community groups and schools to develop and learn the technology. Chicago State expanded food access research on Chicago and Northeastern Illinois. UIC, the Center for Excellence in Elimination of Disparities developed a Food Equity Committee to discuss policy initiatives including equitable development of local food systems. Loyola University opened a new building for its Institute for Environmental Sustainability including an urban agricultural greenhouse and aquaponics system. Here the first Bachelor of Science in Food Systems and Sustainable Agriculture began. Outside Chicago, Loyola has a 98-acre retreat and ecology campus where it operates working farms for students to study sustainable agriculture. DePaul has an Environmental Science and Studies Department that opened rooftop greenhouses in 2008 and has developed a curriculum on urban agriculture and community food systems. DePaul has also established the Community Food Systems Initiatives for growers and distributors across economically distressed neighborhoods. The Harvest Study, a collaboration between DePaul University, University of Pennsylvania, and The University of Illinois, plotted more than 43 acres of community gardens on a map, estimating 517,157 pounds of produce from these gardens, $1,665,698 worth of fruits and vegetables that went directly into households, and highlighted the importance of healthy food access to the city’s residents.

As urban agriculture policy grows, almost all major Chicago universities have added curriculum focused on local and sustainable food systems. In 2012 the Illinois Institute of Technology established the Chicago Higher Education Sustainable Food Systems Network in hopes of a multi-institutional community-engaged and scholarly projects in support of sustainable food systems in Chicago. Collaboration has not been huge as of now, but the hope is that further collaboration between institutions will develop. Rosing and Block claim that the primary lesson learned by Chicago higher education is to play a supportive role in the sustainable urban food system, rather than a leadership role, a possibility if paired with the previously reference “Food in Cities” ideals, in which the government plays the leadership role.

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INDOOR FARMING Indoor planting is not a new concept. In fact, its planting bed methods began in the 1940s. However, indoor farming is new. Indoor farms are able to multiply crop yields in a fraction of the square footage a typical farm would require. Since the 2010s, a number of indoor farms have popped up across the world. These indoor farms offer both advantages and disadvantages in comparison to traditional farming. For the most part though, indoor farming is seen to be the way of the future.

There can be no reference to indoor farming without mention of Dickson Despommier’s original idea of a vertical farm. Despommier proposed in his book “The Vertical Farm” in 2011, an idyllic vision of glass skyscrapers filled with indoor farms, standing tall across all major cities. Despommier’s argument envisions an eradication of all traditional crop farms, citing the typical agricultural failures seen in any agricultural article, including this one. While his vision may be seen as a Utopian vision, his argument had many sound arguments in favor of indoor farming that can be transferred to a smaller, more achievable scale and are continuously referenced across urban agricultural initiatives.

Advantages Year Round Crop Production By moving crops indoors, they can be grown 24/7 in carefully selected and well-monitored conditions. Indoor farms would control the temperature, humidity levels, light, density, nutrients, and water ensuring optimal growth rate. This eliminates the typical weather related failures seen in typical farming, and eliminates farming seasons altogether. This would eliminate seasonal fruit and area-specific fruit because it could be grown anywhere, which would eliminate high prices caused by limited demand. For example, Florida produces 56% of oranges, 52% of grapefruit, 53% of tangerines, 53% of sugarcane, 49% of fresh-market tomatoes, 44% of bell peppers, 31% of cucumbers, and 31% of watermelons in the United States. Florida also faces drastic weather-related disasters that destroy these crops that the rest of the country depends on. Moving farming inside removes these weather related threats.

Elimination of Agricultural Runoff As mentioned earlier, agricultural runoff is a serious polluter, and traditional farming offers few ways to stop or control it. Indoor farms would not produce any agricultural runoff because the water is carefully collected within planter beds and cycled through to be reused over and over, never polluting any waterways.

Ecosystem Restoration By moving farms indoors the agricultural footprint can drastically decrease, allowing natural ecosystems to restore, which for the most part is hardwood forests. The growth of forests would eventually sequester significant amounts of carbon from the atmosphere and begin the healing process that farming and other GHG contributors have caused. There are few other systems that work to do this more than trees. Multiple studies have shown that in flattened land, it often takes only twenty years for the plants, animals, and wildlife to return to a site when left alone. The northeastern portion of the United States has been clear-cut at least three times in our history, and after it became obvious farming could not succeed, the land was left alone, and the trees came back in full force.

Elimination of Pesticides, Herbicides, and Fertilizers Indoor planting beds use pure water with balanced nutrients and minerals to satisfy the plants’ nutritional requirements, which eliminates the need for pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. This makes the food healthier for its consumers, and ends the harm that these chemicals can do and stops the diseases spread through manure.

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Drastic Decrease in Water Use Indoor planter beds require 70-95% less water than traditional practices require. By having closed-loop systems, water is continually recycled through the system. Plants do not actually require soil to survive, but rather the the physical support system and nutrients it offers. Technology has eliminated the need for it altogether through technologically advanced planter beds that will later be explained.

Vacant Property Use Indoor farms are often found in empty warehouse-like buildings that were once standing vacant. Indoor farms can easily fit into almost any building type, removing vacant properties, and thus bettering the neighborhood.

Sustainability Some indoor farms are also energy generators, using techniques such as plasma arc gasification, solar panels, wind turbines,etc. These generators often cover the energy used by the farm, and when paired with an indoor farm’s recycled water, they can be quite sustainable.

More Yield per Square Foot The planter beds in indoor farms are able to layer, allowing for acres of farmland to acre in one small footprint, meaning ten times to hundreds of times more yield in comparison to a traditional farm per square foot.

Control of Food Safety and Security Indoor farms eliminate pests and pathogens by being inside of a secure facility, allowing more food safety from pests killing them, and removing the possibilities of any pathogens for the consumer.

Reduction of Food Waste Indoor farms eliminate food waste in two ways: guaranteed harvests and food miles. No weather or pest related failures will prevent planted food from being harvested, a condition that traditional agriculture faces on a large factor. Food miles are also greatly reduced when indoor farms are urban, traveling mere blocks instead of hundreds of miles. This lengthens the food’s shelf life once it has reached the consumer.

Lower GHG Effects The greenhouse gas emissions caused by traditional farming would be eliminated and restoring the natural wildlife would begin to reverse global warming.

Social More jobs in agriculture will be a result of indoor farming in a variety of different fields, such as engineering, biochemistry, biotechnology, construction, maintenance, and research. As previous urban agricultural movements have argued, people could also benefit from being reconnected to their food and its processes.

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Disadvantages Like any new idea, indoor farming faces challenges. Land in metropolitan areas has a higher cost per square foot than rural land. However the footprint requires is significantly smaller and the output is much larger in an indoor farm. Despommier considers indoor farming to be only for urban areas, but it has just as much potential to be in rural and suburban locations, eliminating this land cost. Indoor farming can also use more energy because of the lights and continuous power to planter beds. Some farms address this through energy generation, but this can be an added cost and require fossil fuels, if not done correctly.

Despommier rebuffs any challenges though, saying “The first edition of any invention is going to cost a lot. As the invention becomes accepted and demand for it increases, the price of each one will go down.�

How It Works Design Requirements Indoor farming can fit in a multitude of building types and designs, as will be shown in later case studies. They have the opportunity to be either urban or rural, attached to restaurants, schools, hospitals, apartment complexes, or even offices. The design possibilities are endless, the only crucial element of design requirements is that there be a secure environment for the planters. It is imperative that pests and microbial pathogens be kept away from the plants to avoid any crop loss. Sky Greens, a vertical farm, learned this the hard way when they enclosed their farm with only fabric around a structure, and they then lost a large amount of crops to a bug infestation. After properly enclosing the facility, pests were eliminated and the crops thrived.

Lighting An indoor farm can receive lighting from two methods: natural or artificial. It can be a challenge because of the stacking of planters to appropriately receive natural light, but some indoor farms use this method, so that artificial light and the energy required does not need to be used. Most indoor farms though, take advantage of the ability to give light to the plants all day long and use LEDs or OLEDs to give their plants the nutrients they get from sunlight. Typical tungsten-generated and fluorescent light is mostly composed of wavelengths that are useless to plants. LEDS have been engineered to give off a narrower wavelength of light, which is a better option for plants. LEDs can be manipulated to fit the requirements of each plant, based on their needed color or wavelengths, which is why pink LEDs can be seen a lot in microgreen indoor farms. An ever better option are OLED, which are Organo Light Emitting Diodes. OLEDs reduce the wavelength to exactly what is required by plants and results in much less energy consumed by the lighting fixture. OLED is a flexible plastic film, that can be physically manipulated to configure multiple ways, even configured around individual plants. This gives the opportunity to make the lighting not only functional, but also aesthetic when the environment is more visible.

Planters There are three different soilless planting systems: hydroponics, aeroponics and aquaponics. Each relies on a nutrient enriched water to replace soil, which includes the essential elements of sodium, chromium, fluorine, cobalt, arsenic, selenium, and iodine to feed the plants. See Figures 4-6 for diagrams on each planter system.

Energy Generative Generating energy is a key element to the design of a successful indoor farm, making it a sustainable and viable alternative to traditional agriculture. Two well-known options are solar power and wind turbines. A lesser known option that offers a lot of possibility, especially for animal farms, is plasma arc gasification. See Figures 7-9 for different energy possibilities.

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hydroponics

aeroponics

aquaponics

Est. 1937

Est. 1982

Est. ancient times

Mist Nozzles

Growtray

Overflow meter

grow bed

Pump Nutrient Water Reservoir fish tank

Pump Nutrient Water Reservoir

Pump

Figure 4.

Hydroponics is a planter system developed in 1937 by Dr. William Frederick Gericke at the University of California.

In this system the plant’s roots are bathed in the nutrient water. This system uses 70% less water than typical agricultural practices require.

Figure 5.

Aeroponics was invented in 1982 by Richard Stoner. It is a more modern take on hydroponics, where small nozzles located underneath the plants spray the nutrient water onto the plants roots. By spraying, this system uses an even more conservative amount of water, using 95% less water than traditional agriculture. By restricting the amount of water the plant receives, the sugar content increases, heightening the flavor of the crop even more.

Figure 6.

Aquaponics has been used naturally since ancient times.

It is a sustainable system that symbiotically utilizes both fish and crops to give nutrients to the other. In this system, the water from the fish tank provides a natural nutrient-rich water for the plants. The plants then purify the water and it is reused to give clean water back to the fish. This system uses 1/6th of the water typically used in farming.

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wind energy

solar energy

Figure 7.

Wind turbines generate energy through wind turning the two or three propeller-blades around a rotor, the rotor is connected to the main shaft, which spins a generator to create electricity. In 2017, the American Wind Energy Association reported that seven gigawatts of energy was collected from new wind power i nstallations, making up six percent of the total power generation in the United States. Wind power is not practical everywhere though.

The Department of Energy recommends that the minimum average wind speed be over ten miles-per-hour for the wind turbine to be

economical. The average annual wind speed

in Chicago, according to Current Results,

is 10.3 miles per hour. See Appendix Figure

13 to see other cities wind speeds.

However, the immediate surrounding area

also plays a factor in whether or not a

turbine can be successful. If the area has immediate surrounding structures or

geographical features, the turbine can be

blocked of its wind. This means hilltops,

plains, and ocean fronts make great sites,

but forests, valleys, cities, and suburbs

often do not. This offers possibilities for

rural indoor farms, but probably not urban ones.

Figure 8.

Solar Energy comes from solar panels, possibly mounted to a building’s roof, which collect and convert sunlight into DC (direct current) electricity which is sent to an inverter that converts it to AC (alternating current) electricity, which can then be used as an energy source within the building. The amount of solar energy that can be collected varies across the United States. In Chicago, for example, the lowest amount of solar energy can be collected at over 2.2 kilowatt-hours per square meter per day. The further

south you go, the higher the collection is.

Reference the map in Appendix Figure 12 to

locate the amount possible in other parts of the country.

inverter

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meter

plasma arc gasification feed handling

plasma gasification

gas cooling

syngas clean up

product options

steam ethanol power

waste

plasma torches recovered material

oxygen

syngas quench particulate removal

Figure 9.

There are 19 industrial waste sectors: refineries, oil pumping, production of other oil products, waste oils recovery, fertilizers, metal industries, production of batteries, recycling of Pb accumulators, tanneries, dying industries, chemical industries, synthetic wood industries, synthetic fibers, and pesticide production. Of these, fertilizers, pesticides, and oil refineries are responsible for 90% of the hazardous waste generated. Yet another reason to eliminate the need for pesticides and fertilizers.

Plasma Arc Gasification is a technologically advanced and environmentally friendly method of disposing of waste by converting it into commercially usable by-products. It is a non-incineration process where extremely high temperatures in an oxygen-starved environment decompose the waste material input into simple molecules. The capabilities of plasma technology allow a plasma arc gasification facility to treat a large number of waste streams in a safe and reliable manner and consistently exhibits much lower environmental levels in both air emissions and slag toxicity than other thermal technologies. Landfilling and incineration is dangerous for human health and the environment as a whole, but this is where most of waste goes.

As more farms move indoors, there will be less of a need for manure as fertilizer. Animal farms often contribute to a large amount of agricultural runoff because they hold all of their animal waste in one spot that drains into waterways before it is transferred to its use as fertilizer. This animal waste can be used by Plasma Arc Gasification and become an energy generator instead.

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CASE STUDIES The standing indoor farms around the world can be sorted into five different categories: animal, new construction, adaptive reuse, warehouse-style stacking, and within a context. These indoor animal farms have found ways to place animals within urban contexts in sustainable ways that mostly focus on the welfare of the animal. New construction indoor farms often use the plants or animals as the aesthetic showcase.

Adaptive reuses projects create a social tie within the community and utilize a space that could not have many other uses, making it more sustainable. Warehouse-style can be found in utilizing factories, warehouses, or other boxy-vacant, often windowless buildings to hold the stacks of planters. While this may not be as aesthetically exciting, it is a great use for vertical farms because it helps control the environment, pests, and easily fits the programmatic needs. Indoor farms within a context are farms added to an already existing program, like offices, schools, restaurants, etc. These often cannot produce as much as other farms, but do allow more of a connection with the people and serve as a constant reminder to the inhabitants to be more environmentally conscience. Below are just a few case studies of successful indoor farms around the world.

Animal Kipster Kipster is a chicken farm that began in 2017 in the Netherlands. They claim to be “the most animal-friendly and environmentally-friendly poultry farm in the world.� In Kipster’s new-construction design, they focused on chicken health and welfare and on giving the chickens their best possible lives and focusing on their natural instincts and needs. They have made husbandry and sustainability mesh in one facility. Kipster included the Dutch Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and numerous other specialists in the design process to make this chicken oasis in a farm. The chickens are free-range with access to both indoor and outdoor spaces. The outdoor spaces are fenced off and covered with a net, reducing any danger from other animals or predators. There is a variety of plantings for the chickens to investigate and a a playground for the chickens made out of a naturally wooded environment, allowing them to climb and investigate. The chicken feed comes from residual food, therefore not competing with human food production. Eggs are packaged and processed onsite and delivered directly to consumers.

Once chickens are retired from egg-making, they are processed on-site into high-quality meat products.

Kipster has designed a highly sustainable and energy efficient building. 1,097 solar panels along the roof lines supple more than the used energy within. There is no carbon footprint, electrical facilities, or fossil fuels used.

The design is aimed to be suitable for both rural and urban farming. By creating a modular set-up, 3,000 to 96,000 chickens are possible, allowing the farm to fit in a small urban footprint or limitless rural one. This modular design and indoor and outdoor space also allows for the atrium and park to be both fully cleaned out when necessary. Excellent air quality measures are taken for both the farmers and chickens welfare.

To keep Kipster a community destination, all technical installations and silos are kept out of site to keep an aesthetic and functional design, and a visitors centre sits next to the chicken farm for education, information, and outdoor seating sits next to a playground. This allows the farm to not only be an excellent location for the chicken, but a community asset and potential gathering space.

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Memphis Meats Memphis Meats stands within a specially designed lab, where lab-grown muscle tissue creates hamburgers, instead of cows. The meat is made by sourcing high-quality cells from animals and cultivating them into meat, cutting out the current steps of raising and processing animals. The cells keep the benefits of conventional meat while making it healthier, more nutritious, and safer. The meat uses significantly less land, water, energy, and food inputs, produces dramatically less waste and fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

Memphis Meats began after identifying three big problems with today’s meat industry: The demand for meat is growing faster than can be kept up with, The looming health risks of E.Coli and antibiotic resistance could compromise the animals and meat, It is unsustainable. It takes twenty-three calories of grain to make one calorie of beef.

The meat cells are taken from the highest quality cows and pigs. The cells must then be capable of self-renewal, after which they are cultivated in a sterile environment, and harvested early for tender cuts of meat and later for textured cuts. Lab-grown meat does not require food to survive, thereby cutting down the energy input by requiring only three calories of energy input per one calorie of energy meat output. There is little risk of antibiotic contamination in the meat, because it is grown in a pathogen free, secure lab. Right now this system requires fetal bovine serum, which comes from unborn calves, to start the cell culture process. This means real animals are still required to achieve this process. The owner hopes to replace this serum with a plant-based option in the near future.

Kipster has designed a highly sustainable and energy efficient building. 1,097 solar panels along the roof lines supple more than the used energy within. There is no carbon footprint, electrical facilities, or fossil fuels used.

The design is aimed to be suitable for both rural and urban farming. By creating a modular set-up, 3,000 to 96,000 chickens are possible, allowing the farm to fit in a small urban footprint or limitless rural one. This modular design and indoor and outdoor space also allows for the atrium and park to be both fully cleaned out when necessary. Excellent air quality measures are taken for both the farmers and chickens welfare. To keep Kipster a community destination, all technical installations and silos are kept out of site to keep an aesthetic and functional design, and a visitors centre sits next to the chicken farm for education, information, and outdoor seating sits next to a playground. This allows the farm to not only be an excellent location for the chicken, but a community asset and potential gathering space.

It is predicted that this is going to be the way of the future. Lab-made meat is shown to be healthier than typical meat, and also far more environmentally friendly than a normal animal farm, which is the major factor of agricultural runoff. The cost to make lab-grown meat is high right now, but has dropped dramatically in recent years. When the first lab-grown burger was made in the Netherlands in 2013, it cost $325,000. Now the current price is $11 per burger patty. Memphis Meats hopes to have their meat products in stores within the next decade, aiming to beat the predicted thirty years to reach a commercially viable price.

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Pig City In 2000 pork was the most consumed meat at eighty-billion kilograms per year. The architecture firm MVRDV realized that there were three solutions to this: change the consumption pattern, all instantly become vegetarians, or change the production methods and demand biological farming. This led to their hypothetical design of Pig City. A skyscraper of pigs. Their design aimed to reduced the amount of pig diseases, killing them unnecessarily, to organically raise a farmed pig, and to create a self-sufficient fertilizer recycler, and central food core.

The design only went as far as these goals and the renderings shown below, but it is an idyllic vision.

Hog Hotel In 2018, Guangxi Yangxiang Company, designed Hog Hotels. Eight stories of pigs in newly constructed buildings designed for biosecurity. The building encompasses the pigs living facilities and also their finishing facilities, decreasing the spread of disease and improving biosecurity. Each floor is managed separately with separate air supplies and no movement of employees between floors during the day to further prevent disease spread. The pigs live solely within their floors, with no outdoor living space. By the end of the year, the farm will house 30,000 sows on its eleven hectare site, producing as many as 840,000 piglets annually. This farm does produce a high amount, but does not consider the welfare of the animals or its ethical impact, and does not raise them to organic standards.

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New Construction Spread Spread is a 4,400 square meter indoor farm with floor-to-ceiling shelves where produce is grown. It began in Kameoka, Kyoto in mid-2017. Spread is pesticide free, energy efficient using LED lighting, and recycles 98% of the water used. They began as a reaction to the predicted food crises with the goals of creating a sustainable, technologically advanced indoor farm. The original creators had a mission “to create a sustainable society where future generations can have peace of mind” and a vision that “by developing a system that can produce high quality food, rich in nutritional value anywhere in the world in a stable way, we will build an infrastructure that can supply food to all people equally and fairly around the globe.” It uses industrial robots to carry out almost all of the necessary tasks to grow thousands of lettuces per day. These robots do everything from replanting seedlings to watering, trimming, and harvesting crops. The only thing done by humans is the planting of the original seeds. The robots have boosted production from 21,000 lettuces a day to 50,000, with plans to raise this figure to half a million lettuces daily in five years. These robots have been able to cut the cost of labour in half. The goal of Spread farms however, is not to replace human farmers, but rather develop a system where humans and machines can work together. They aim to generate more interest in farming, particularly in the technology focused younger generations.

Spread’s facilities were built new construction to accommodate all of the room and structure necessary to accommodate their planters and robots.

Sky Greens Sky Greens is located in Singapore and began in 2013. Singapore is roughly the size of New York city, with 5.4 million citizens, importing 93% of their produce. The designers were inspired by this sad statistic of only 7% of their produce being sourced locally and wanted to change this percentage. Today they produce 200 tons of vegetables per hectare per year on their 4 hectares of land. This production yield is five to ten times more per unit area than traditional farms. Their food is marked up ten percent at their local markets where the food is stored, but Singaporeans quickly accepted this premium for the chance to have fresh food, the knowledge of where their food is coming from, and knowing it is the more environmentally friendly choice.

Sky Greens invented its own growing technology “A-Go-Grow”, a hydroponic system (see the images to the right). The system is stacked three stories high and the planters rotate on lighting schedules throughout the day to see the sun, which is their only lighting system. These planters also utilize a soil and water waste recycling system, keeping it as sustainable as possible.

Design wise, Sky Greens has a simple glass facade and visible structure surrounding their planters that are evenly spaced within the space. The original design was open to the elements, resulting in a bug infestation. This caused a severe crop loss and stop in production for six-months. Sky Greens learned from this and better secured the farm with a glass facade, limiting the bug problem.

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Adaptive Reuse Growing Underground Growing Underground is a subterranean indoor farm located 108 feet below Clapham High Street in London, in a 6,000 square foot World War II bomb shelter. They utilize hydroponically irrigated trays with beds made of recycled carpet, recycled water and colored LED lights to foster their plants. Being an underground facility means it is a pest free environment, one of the things that allow the facility to keep with organic farming standards. Though Growing Underground cannot be certified an organic farm, because regulations stipulate that the farm be at ground level for this certification, they still adhere to organic farming regulations. The plantings are economically viable with cycles between six to thirty days. It takes a mere four hours for the plants to be harvested, packaged on site, and delivered to the consumer, nearby restaurants and supermarkets, because of the central London location, making their food miles practically obsolete. While most of Northern Europe has only three months of growing season, this eliminates the amount of imported produce and gives the area year-round local vegetable production.

This adaptive reuse project was not the most aesthetically pleasing at first sight, but the 23,000 square feet of tunnels were seen as endless possibilities by the farm’s founders. These air-raid tunnels couldn’t be reused for many programmatic needs, but an indoor farm is the perfect fit. They lined the tunnels with a food-safe and firesafe white cladding and painted everything white, to achieve a lab-like look. While most viewers see the colorful LED lights as a fun aesthetic, which it is, these colors are specifically chosen. Growing Underground constantly experiments with LED lighting systems playing with different types and spectrums of colors to aid plant growth.

The farm has done so well that is continuing to expand from its current 6,000 square feet into the adjacent tunnels to expand their produce range.

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Square Roots Square Roots is an urban incubator program in Brooklyn, New York, that began in 2018. It is currently a setup of ten steel shipping container farms, where young entrepreneurs work to develop indoor farming start-ups. The goal is to get young people involved and interested by giving them a launching pad to develop from. Ultimately, Square Roots hopes this will encourage further sustainable food startups across the nation.

Urban Organics Urban Organics is an aquaponic indoor farm, where both crops and fish are produced. It is located in Saint Paul, Minnesota within the former Hamm’s Brewery. This site was chosen as an adaptive reuse project, with the hopes of keeping the community proud of what was being produced in this well-known and loved space. They utilize the existing structure, space, and height once used for beer tanks, as new room for fish tanks.

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Warehouse Stacking AeroFarms AeroFarms company currently has four different Vertical Farm locations in Newark, New Jersey, serving New York City. AeroFarms has developed a smart Vertical Farm, utilizing highly advanced technology in every step, which allows them to produce 390 times per square foot annual yield than traditional farms. They utilize a specially designed, wide bed aeroponic system with LED lighting that can be customized in shape and size to configure into various locations and arrangements. The beds of the planters are a smart substrate of a patented, reusable, cloth medium for seedling, germinating, growing, and harvesting made of a BPA-free, post-consumer recycled plastic, each one taking 350 water bottles out of the waste stream. This cloth is reused repeatedly, and is fully sanitized after being harvested and reseeded. The LED lights used are specific to each plant with varied spectrum, intensity, and frequency to match the plant’s exact needs for optimum photosynthesis and to be the most energy efficient. Smart Data monitors more than 130,000 data points every harvest, constantly reviewing, testing, and improving the growing system to reach optimum results.

All of the indoor farms by AeroFarms are secure, controlled facilities, preventing any pests. They are all located within already existing buildings, utilizing adaptive reuse making the farms even more environmentally friendly. They chose locations that already didn’t have a lot of windows that would be unnecessary to the use and that make it harder to control the temperature and humidity.The Headquarters Farm is the largest indoor vertical farm, at 70,000 square feet located inside a 75-year-old former steel mill. Here they harvest 2 million pounds per year, and only began in 2016. The Research and Development Farm, which opened in 2013, is 5,500 square feet and located in a former nightclub. The first Newark Farm began in 2011 at 30,000 square feet and utilizes a former paintball and laser tag arena, making use of graffiti art on the walls. The final farm is located with the Phillips Academy Charter School’s dining hall, at a mere 50 square feet.

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Within a Context Pansona Offices The Pansona farm is located within an office, uniquely spaced out within. Japanese Recruitment Firm, Pansona, made a new office space in a 50 year old building with a program of office areas, an auditorium, cafeterias, a rooftop garden, and urban farming. 43,000 of the 215,000 square foot building are used to grow over 200 species of plants, fruits, vegetables, and rice. All of this food is harvested, prepared, and served on-site within the cafeterias. The plants are all in hydroponic beds, some stacked, some stand-alone: Inside offices tomato vines are suspended above conference tables, lemon and passionfruit trees are used as partitions for meeting spaces, salad leaves are grown within seminar rooms, and bean sprouts grow under benches. This integration of work space and plantings makes the vertical farm an integral part of the human living environment in an architectural way usually unseen. The building has a double-skin green facade with flowers and orange trees on small balconies, giving a view of what’s to come inside. The ducts, pipes, and vertical shafts were all rerouted to the perimeter of the building to maximize ceiling heights. A climate control system is used to monitor humidity, temperature, and air flow to ensure safety for both the employees and the farm.

Gotham Greens Gotham Greens places enclosed greenhouses on the rooftops of urban buildings within New York and Chicago. They utilize hydroponics and solar panels to power the farms, and use no pesticides or herbicides.

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PROSPECTUS With all of these theories, methods, case studies, and solutions to agriculture failures, there is still something missing. These are three gaps that ,if filled, I believe could help solve agriculture’s failures.

1. Methodology: their are still gaps within all of these proposals that need to be filled 2. Connection: the current proposals segregate sectors of the state, but there needs to be a connector between rural and metropolitan food production 3. Interaction: the people’s experience with urban indoor farming As a solution to each of these gaps I propose a prospectus that ranges from large to small scale. A proper, all-encompassing methodology is missing, so the large scale piece of my prospectus is the theory of Stratified Agriculture in a Smart State, which is a new methodology that covers the gaps. A connection was missing allowing the rural and metropolitan food production to come together. To solve this I propose an Urban Ag-Tech District connecting the metropolitan center and the suburbs . Finally, I will evaluate and design the interaction of people and farms as they move their way to the cities and indoors.

METHODOLOGY: STRATIFIED AGRICULTURE IN A SMART STATE Stratified Agriculture in a Smart State is a new theory to follow for future agriculture across the state. The name of Stratified Agriculture in a Smart State comes from its division into multiple strata, that entail smart technology across the state. The ultimate goal is to allow for a reconfiguration of the state that would allow Illinois to switch from mostly farmland to more renatured land, along with farms, suburban, and urban areas.

Strata There are five strata within Stratified Agriculture: 1. Smart agriculture: used for the crops that are too large and would be impractical inside 2. Lab-made meats: As lab-made meats improve in quality and price, they are becoming the superior option for meat. As lab-made meats replace meat farms, the â…” of crops needed to feed these animals is eliminated, and the agricultural runoff and agricultural emissions meat-farms cause are drastically decreased.

3. All-Inclusive Animal farms: For animal farms not used for meat production, such as dairy, llama, sheep, goat, etc., the farm will be all-inclusive. Meaning, the feed for the animals will be grown on-site within a layered, indoor farm.

4. Indoor Farms: For all of the advantages listed previously, crops should move indoors 5. Urban Agriculture: urban farms and gardens can be placed on empty lots in the city 6. Renatured land: the land now not needed for crops or animals can be returned to nature and begin the reversal of greenhouse gas emissions

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Goals In order for a state to properly address agricultural failures its agriculture should follow along these guidelines: 1. Be composed of strata: smart agriculture, lab-made meats, indoor farms, urban agriculture, and renatured land 2. Provide more food production opportunities for impending food shortages 3. Utilize smart technology in all areas to optimize resources and decrease wastefulness 4. Be provided through political practices rather than entrepreneurial 5. Reconnect people and their food 6. Provide closer food options to those who need it 7. Create better experiences in farming for both people and animals 8. Provide better nutrition through physical and educational production 9. Incorporate higher education 10. Reinvigorate the natural wildlife, jump starting an effort to reverse global warming Food Production By stratifying the state as described above, more food production opportunities will be made available, solving the problem of the predicted food shortages. Smart agriculture does increase yield, but indoor farming is shown to drastically increase crop yield by the square foot. By having an ag-tech corridor that is devoted to urban agriculture and indoor farms, the crop yield will go up significantly. Lab-made meats will also allow for more and healthier meat to be produced to meet the increasing Western-diet-demand, and the eliminated animal feed leaves more room for human food production.

Smart Technology As previously explained, smart agriculture is so successful because of the incorporation of technology into traditional agricultural methods. Technology allows for better soil and crop monitoring to increase harvest and allows prevents diseases earlier in animals, preventing the spread, illness, and death. This means a higher quality and quantity of meat.

Indoor farms fully revolve around smart technology in their planters, environmental controls, and sometimes even harvesting. This technology has made the high yield of indoor farms possible. Stratified Agriculture in a Smart State further encourages this interest in technology with food to optimize resources and decrease wastefulness.

Political Practices The Netherlands is so successful because it is has the full support of its government. To mimic this success, future agricultural development must be provided through political practices rather than entrepreneurial.

In an effort to learn more about how different Chicago indoor farms worked, I reached out to each to schedule a private tour/meeting where I could ask thorough questions and see how their farm succeeded or failed. I was rejected by every farm, because they did not want others to see how they succeed or did what they did. The competition that self-owned farms because limits the collaborative possibilities that could result in even better solutions. Government provisions in agriculture eliminates this competition and encourages sharing, fostering a collective environment, focused on bettering the world rather than only on making money. As was argued in “Farming Chicago�, collaboration will only result in engaged support and a fruition of strong ideas that can better the world.

Reconnection As Carolyn Steel argued in Hungry City, we need to bring food back into our cities to increase our knowledge of our food, how it is prepared, and its impact on the environment. The Ag-Tech corridor within this stratified state will allow for this reconnection to occur. The ag-tech corridor will touch both the metropolitan center, the urban neighborhoods, and the suburbs, showing the different ways that food is being made across the state. This will hold the agricultural facilities accountable to high standards because it is so visible and encourage more interaction with a larger population, which will cause more interest and more ideas in future solutions.

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Closer Food This ag-tech district will provide closer food options to those who need it, both humans and animals. Having this ag-tech district will allow for food deserts in the city to have access healthy food options and nutritional education.

Experiences This theory aims to create better experiences for both people and animals in their farming interactions. People often have no interaction with farming unless they themselves are farmers. By making an attractive and exciting ag-tech corridor, focused on human involvement, the experience of people and agriculture will be more interactive than ever before. By having lab-made meats, instead of meat farms, animals are able to live a life not aimed for slaughter.

Nutrition The ag-tech corridor will allow for physically better nutritional opportunities and nutritional education. The location of the ag-tech corridor should be near urban food deserts to allow better nutrition and healthier food options to those who currently do not have access to it. The ag-tech corridor will also allow for nutritional education to occur. A farming and schools study completed by Anupama Joshi MS, Andrea Misako Azuma MS, and Gail Feenstra EdD RD found that programs that incorporate farming and kids positively affect children in multiple psychological ways, but also increases their knowledge on what they should and should not be eating in order to have a proper diet. See Figure 10. for the specific results.

Higher Education The Netherlands has been so successful because of their university entirely focused on food production, Wageningen University. While it may be impractical in the United States for this, Howard Rosing and Daniel R. Block were on the right path in “Farming Chicago�, when they argued that higher education should be the key move makers in furthering agricultural developments. By having an ag-tech corridor, there is the possibility of a higher education living laboratory, where all of the schools in the region can work together to facilitate new ideas and developments.

Renatured Land To avoid the lifeless landscape depicted in movies such as Wall-E and Blade Runner, there must be a focus on renaturing the land. Land untouched by human-hands, allowed to return to its natural state. I envision a state where the buildings are incredibly advanced in technology and function while surrounded by nature and forests.

Lab-made meats and all-inclusive animal farms will allow for the 2/3 of land currently being used to grow animal feed, to be renatured. Figure 11. shows the contrasting amount of land required for a 1,000 pig farm with traditional agriculture as the food source versus a layered indoor farm food source. The land required drastically decreases when animal feed is indoor and layered.

This, along with indoor farming, will reinvigorate the natural wildlife, jump starting an effort to reverse global warming. A large amount of farmland in the midwest was once hardwood forest. By allowing these trees to grow back, significant amounts of carbon in the atmosphere will be taken out and begin healing the damage done by greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. Figure 12. shows the possible projected land-use for the state of Illinois if Stratified Agriculture in a Smart State is employed.

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Farming & Schools study results chose a balanced diet on their own

correctly identified healthy options

knew daily nutrtional requirements

identified high-sugar products

Figure 10. associating farming with school children is shown to positively increase the above categories. These are the results from the farming and school study.

all-inclusive animal farm land use animal feed crop farm outdoor pig space layered indoor feed farm

Figure 11.

projected illinois land-use with the implementation of stratified agriculture in a smart state

Figure 12.

These before and after maps of Illinois land us demonstrate the possibilities stratitifed agriculture in a smart state can offer. the projected state features triple the amount of less concentrated farmland, which is where most of the natural land and hardwood forests lie.

concentrated farmland half farmland less concentrated farmland semi Urban urban

Current

projected 37

CONNECTION: URBAN AG-TECH CORRIDOR To implement this theory of Stratified Agriculture in a Smart State, I propose that Ag-Tech Corridors be introduced to the metropolitan areas of each state. An ag-tech corridor will solve the problem of people acknowledging where and how their food is coming to them. It serves as a connector from the rural to the metropolitan, thereby making the entire state involved in food production, focusing on its yield outputs, its environmental impact, and the populations’ overall nutritional health.

The goals of the Ag-Tech Corridor will be to: 1. Reconnect people to their food in the suburban and metropolitan area 2. Get more people involved, therefore generating more ideas and development 3. Offer a wide range of jobs 4. Be home to existing solutions, such as indoor farms, urban gardens, urban agriculture, and other solutions 5. Display small versions of what is happening outside of the city in the larger, rural scale 6. Serve as an incubator and living laboratory as a showcase for burgeoning ideas This ag-tech corridor achieves multiple goals of Stratified Agriculture. It provides more food production opportunities, it will utilize smart technology, be provided through political practices as the city is in charge of the industrial corridor designation, reconnect people in both the suburbs and the city to their food, places food closer to those who need it and helps aid the food deserts, will create better experiences in farming for people, provide better nutrition, and incorporate higher education.

Within the state of Illinois and Chicago specifically, I propose that one of the industrial corridors be turned into the ag-tech corridor. The city of Chicago has 24 industrial corridors, making up twelve percent of city land. The boundaries of these corridors tend to align with railroad embankments, waterways, highways, arterial streets, and other manmade and natural buffers (see Figures 13-18) that serve as barriers from residential and commercial activity. Within an industrial corridor, policies and zoning only permits manufacturing and industrial structures. This keeps the city diverse in economy and also keeps the businesses safe from residential development encroachment, making financing options more achievable. In the spring of 2016 Mayor Emanuel put in place the Industrial Corridor Modernization Initiative. Prior to this Chicago’s industrial land policies had not been updated in twenty-five years, begging for some modernization. The goal is to refine land use policies “for continued growth and private investments in the City’s Industrial Corridor system”. The goals are to: • Unleash the potential of select industrial areas for advanced manufacturing and technology-oriented jobs, while reinforcing traditional industrial activities and other areas • Maintain and improve the freight and public transportation systems that serve industrial users • Support new job growth and local job opportunities • Leverage the unique physical features of local industrial corridors to foster demand.

These goals can easily line up with the goals outlined above of the urban ag-tech corridor. Chicago has always prided itself on being one of the world’s most competitive manufacturing centers. It can only improve this competition, by manufacturing not only commercial, technological, and industrial goods, but also by producing food in a modern way. The zoning is already in place to keep out residential and retail initiatives, allowing for the food manufacturing to be the focus without worry of any intrusion. The existing buildings used for manufacturing and industrial can be easily used for indoor farming, as shown by AeroFarms and the other warehouse style farms described in the case studies previously. Industrial corridors often have a decent amount of vacant lots, which can easily be used for urban farming/gardening. And finally, the access the locations of these industrial corridors have, is also ideal for the ag-tech corridor’s food dispersal needs.

Of these corridors, I believe the Little Village and Pilsen corridor should be turned into an Ag-Tech Corridor (see Figure 19). This corridor is the ideal location because it touches both the Loop, the center of the city, and the suburbs, creating the ultimate connector. To see more information on the existing land use for each of these corridors see Appendix Figure 14 and 15.

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elston/armstrong

peterson/pulaski

ravenswood addison knox

kennedy

pulaski armitage

north branch

kinzie

northwest

western/ogden

roosevelt/ cicero

figure 13. industrial corridor truck access

figure 14. industrial corridor viaduct clearance

figure 15. industrial corridor interstate access

little village

pilsen

stockyards brighton park harlem

stevenson

greater southwest burnside calumet

west pullman

figure 16. industrial corridor boundary integrity

figure 17. industrial corridor railroad access

figure 18. industrial corridor waterways access

Pullman

figure 19. map of the industrial corridors with the new proposed ag-tech corridor in dark blue 39

INTERACTION: AGRICULTURE EPICENTER The future of agriculture is going to be mostly interior. To properly integrate this indoor farming into society, thus making it more successful, more needs to be done than the unaesthetic warehouse farm. It is the job of the architect to create an experience for people and farming; a positive, thought-provoking, inspiring space that makes people take pride in their food and lend their support. Without the architect designing these important spaces, agriculture will continue at its current pace.

It is now up to the architect to design how agriculture is going to interact within people’s spaces. How can the architect create compelling interior spaces of interaction between people and their growing food? This thesis design will be an interrogation of the people’s experience with the future of farming. Within the proposed Chicago Ag-Tech Corridor, I will be designing an Agriculture Epicenter on the site of the existing and historic Damen Silos.

Design

LOOP Pilsen Lower West Side Chinatown

Armour Square Bridgeport Mount Pleasant

Suburbs

From the research of existing indoor farms, the ability for people to interact with the farm is missing. Successful, praised case studies incorporated people with the plants or animals. Kipster created community focused spaces within its farm to attract its local people. They have a park available, indoor and outdoor free seating, and a learning center to allow everyone to see and be inspired by their farm. Pansona Offices physically merge people and plant spaces, using the plantings as an aesthetic, as well as a farm source. However, Sky Greens learned the hard way that it is important to keep a pest free environment, so Pansona may face this soon, considering they are a new farm.

The least intriguing, and therefore least interactive farms are the warehouse designs, where they are hidden away in a warehouse. Though a beautiful picture when inside, these farms are not inviting to the community it lives in.

The most intriguing farms, to me, are the adaptive reuse indoor farms. Adaptive reuse gives life back to a once loved or important piece of architecture in a community. It sparks intrigue in the transformation, while also being better for the environment by being less Lawndale wasteful. In using the Damen Silos as an adaptive reuse project, I hope to inspire the community in not only the Silos’ renovation, but also in its mission of creating a healthier, environmentally focused future, and by giving them a place to be proud of and interact with. The Damen Silos are located within the center of the Ag-Tech Corridor along the Chicago river, designated on the map in Figure 20. by the white area. It is the Corwith ideal site, with easy access to the river, highways, el, and bus system, and also Brighton feature an idyllic view of the city’s skyline.

Park Figure 21. shows a closer scale site map of the Damen Silos.

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Ducktown

South Brighton

figure 20.

This is a full site map of the proposed ag-tech corridor. The white block in the center represents the Damen silos site.

s. damen ave.

Canalport riverwalk Canalport

S. Robinson st. s. ashland ave.

s. damen ave.

w. 29th st.

w. 29th st. ashland red-line

figure 21.

The Damen silos are located on the Chicago river, off of S. Damen Avenue and West 29th street.

stevenson expressway

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Damen Silos The Damen Silos were once the epicenter of agrarian Chicago and have been a part of Chicago history since 1832. They now stand as an unofficial landmark of a time when Chicago was once the center of agriculture and manufacturing. The silos have been vacant since 1977, but returning the silos to their agricultural purpose will allow Chicagoans to once again take pride in this historic structure.

Grain was a large point of pride in the Chicago community, serving as the largest player the American grain trade. It served as a representation of Chicago’s prosperity and hope for the future. Libby Mahoney, senior curator for the Chicago Historical Museum, emphasized Chicago’s grain silo importance, saying “a lot of [Chicagoans] made their fortunes off the grain industry...that’s where many of our city’s greatest fortunes were made.” Grain elevators were the city’s first skyscrapers and serve as an important part of our agricultural history, but also architectural history because of this. Chicago’s architectural history is a competition to build higher and higher, and these silos were the beginning of that story. Today only two grain facilities remain open in the city. Dozens have been demolished, but most remaining silos sit vacant because they are too large or expensive to tear down.

The existing Damen Silos, once described as the Santa Fe System, were designed by the engineers at the John S. Metcalf Company in 1906. The original complex included a powerhouse, elevator with temporary storage and processing silos, and thirty-five grain storage silos. It had a bushel capacity of 400,00 and could accommodate sixty railroad cars at the elevator and another three-hundred railroads cars in the yard. Additional silos were added that allowed for 1,700,000 bushels, with a total of fourteen reinforced concrete silos. Beneath the silos are a labyrinth of tunnels and rooms that eventually connect to the Silos themselves that were used for transporting materials and mechanical equipment. The silos themselves are twenty-three feet inside in diameter and eighty feet high.

The Silos have a rough history, facing four fires/explosions in their lifetime. The original silos on the site were the tallest structure in Chicago, at thirty feet tall. They were the largest grain elevators in the city. These silos no longer exist because, in 1832, they were burned down in the first of many fires. In 1906 John Metcalf went on to redesign them, this time using concrete with vents and windows, in an effort to prevent another fire. This same year unfortunately, the second explosion occurs. These silos survive the fire though and are the silos still there today. The third explosion in 1932 comes with the realization by industrialists that grain silos will blow up no matter what. The grain dust mixed with oxygen creates a volatile gas that explodes at high temperatures, making the fires inevitable.

The silos are again rebuilt and repaired and continue to produce grain. The fourth and final explosion occurs in 1977. By this time, most agriculture has moved out of the city and the silos are not repaired because it is no longer lucrative. The silos are sold to the Department of Central Management until an investor can buy the land. The site is listed for the first time in 1977 for seventeen-million-dollars.

This price has dropped significantly since then and is now listed at a mere $3.8 million.

T oday the Damen Silos still stand, having outlived the industry itself in Chicago. They have been left a ruin, a graffiti canvas for urban artists, a place for thrill seekers to sneak into, and a set for the movie Transformers to do explosion scenes. They stand as a symbol of what once was in Chicago and offer a brilliant site for future endeavors.

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43

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modern day damen silos

Program Murals

Community Involvement

Crops

Grocery Store/ Farmers Market

Food Production

Ag-Tech Town Hall

Fish

Farm park Showcase

Meats

Agriculture Epicenter

Ag-Tech Info Center State Map agriculture identifier

Nutritional Education

Cooking School

Restaurant Cooking Demos

Using Ag-tech produced food

With a meaningful site selected, this will be an adaptive reuse project turning the Damen Silos into an agriculture epicenter for the ag-tech corridor. The ultimate goal will be to design an experience that allows people to interact with their food, encourage community involvement for all in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs, and become a point of pride in Chicago. To develop a program for this facility, I began with a brainstorm map of all the relative possibilities. The map allowed me to think about programmatic aspects that could foster interactions and experiences between people and food.

The working program for this agriculture epicenter will need to include: • Access for all • Ag-tech corridor town hall • Farm Park • Ag-tech Corridor info center • Showcase the different food production methods • Restaurant-showcasing the food produced and space for cooking demos • Nutritional Education • Mechanical rooms for each sector of planting to properly accommodate each plants needs • Space for water tanks • A connector to the water and public transportation to encourage safe and aesthetically pleasing access to the center

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APPENDIX

figure 1.

US GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS BY ECONOMIC SECTOR. REFERENCED IN AGRICULTURAL FAILURES.

figure 2.

AGRICULTURAL SECTOR AS A KEY SOURCE OF METHANE AND NITROUS OXIDE EMISSIONS. REFERENCED IN AGRICULTURAL FAILURES.

Agriculture and Climate Change.” USDA ERS - Food Environment Atlas, United States Department of Agriculture, www.ers.usda.gov/topics/natural-resources-enviRonment/climate-change/agriculture-and-climate-change/.

OECD. “Agriculture and Climate Change.” Trade and Agricultural Directorate, Sept. 2015.

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figure 3.

EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON YIELDS IN PRODUCING REGIONS. THOSE IN RED FACE NEGATIVE EFFECTS. THOSE IN BLUE BENEFIT. REFERENCED IN AGRICULTURAL FAILURES. OECD. “Agriculture and Climate Change.” Trade and Agricultural Directorate, Sept. 2015.

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figure 4.

AGRICULTURAL EFFECT IN TOTAL GHG EMISSIONS AMONG OECD COUNTRIES. REFERENCED IN AGRICULTURAL FAILURES. OECD. “Agriculture and Climate Change.” Trade and Agricultural Directorate, Sept. 2015.

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figure 5.

CHANGE IN POTENTIAL AVERAGE CROP YIELDS BY 2050.

REFERENCED IN AGRICULTURAL FAILURES. Applegate, Evan, et al. “5 Ways Climate Change Will Affect You: Crop Changes.” National Geographic, National Geographic Society, www.nationalgeographic.com/climate-change/how-to-live-with-it/crops.html.

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figure 6.

CLIMATE CHANGE RAISES RISKS TO CORN. REFERENCED IN AGRICULTURAL FAILURES.

figure 7.

GLOBAL PRODUCTION CHANGE IN THE MILLIONS OF TONS. REFERENCED IN AGRICULTURAL FAILURES.

Gustin, Georgina, et al. “Climate Change Could Lead to Major Crop Failures in World’s Biggest Corn Regions.” InsideClimate News, 13 June 2018, insideclimatenews.org/news/11062018/ climate-change-research-food-security-agriculture-impacts-corn-vegetables-crop-prices.

Applegate, Evan, et al. “5 Ways Climate Change Will Affect You: Crop Changes.” National Geographic, National Geographic Society, www.nationalgeographic.com/climate-change/how-to-live-with-it/crops.html.

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figure 8.

CROP YIELD RESPONSE TO CLIMATE CHANGE VARIES WITH CROP SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION PATTERNS. REFERENCED IN AGRICULTURAL FAILURES. Leng, Guoyong, and Maoyi Huang. “Crop Yield Response to Climate Change Varies with Crop Spatial Distribution Pattern.” Nature News, Scientific Reports, 3 May 2017, www.nature.com/ articles/s41598-017-01599-2.

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figure 9.

CROP YIELD RESPONSE TO CLIMATE CHANGE VARIES WITH CROP SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION PATTERNS. REFERENCED IN AGRICULTURAL FAILURES. Leng, Guoyong, and Maoyi Huang. “Crop Yield Response to Climate Change Varies with Crop Spatial Distribution Pattern.” Nature News, Scientific Reports, 3 May 2017, www.nature.com/ articles/s41598-017-01599-2.

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figure 10.

CROP YIELD RESPONSE TO CLIMATE CHANGE VARIES WITH CROP SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION PATTERNS. REFERENCED IN AGRICULTURAL FAILURES. Leng, Guoyong, and Maoyi Huang. “Crop Yield Response to Climate Change Varies with Crop Spatial Distribution Pattern.” Nature News, Scientific Reports, 3 May 2017, www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-01599-2.

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figure 11.

CROP YIELD RESPONSE TO CLIMATE CHANGE VARIES WITH CROP SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION PATTERNS. REFERENCED IN AGRICULTURAL FAILURES. Leng, Guoyong, and Maoyi Huang. “Crop Yield Response to Climate Change Varies with Crop Spatial Distribution Pattern.” Nature News, Scientific Reports, 3 May 2017, www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-01599-2.

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figure 12.

DARKER RED REPRESENTS MORE SUN, LIGHT BLUE REPRESENTS LESS SUN. WHEN DETERMING THE VALIDITY OF SOLAR PANELS YOU WANT IT TO BE ON THE REDDER SIDE. REFERENCED IN INDOOR FARMING-ENERGY GENERATORS. “How Does Solar Energy Work?” Solar Power Authority. Accessed December 14, 2018. https://www.solarpowerauthority.com/how-solar-works/.

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figure 13.

EACH CITY HAS A DIFFERENT AVERAGE WIND SPEED. THIS IS AN IMPORTANT FACTOR IN THE SUCCESS OF WIND TURBINES AS AN ENERGY GENERATOR. REFERENCED IN INDOOR FARMING-ENERGY GENERATORS. “Annual Average Wind Speed in US Cities.” Current Results- Weather and Science Facts. 2018. Accessed December 14, 2018. https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/US/wind-speed-city-annual.php.

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Industrial corridor – Little Village Land use

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“Little Village Corridor.” Little Village Land-Use. 2016. Accessed December 01, 2018. https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/city/depts/zlup/Sustainable_Development/Publications/Chicago_Sustainable_Industries/LittleVillage.pdf.

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figure 14.

LITTLE VILLAGE IS ONE OF THE INDUSTRIAL CORRIDORS PROPOSED TO TURN INTO THE AG-TECH CORRIDOR. REFERENCED IN THE AG-TECH CORRIDOR SELECTION.

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Pilsen Corridor. 2016. Accessed December 01, 2018. https://www.chicago.gov/ content/dam/city/depts/zlup/Sustainable_Development/Publications/Chicago_ Sustainable_Industries/Pilsen.pdf.

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LITTLE VILLAGE IS ONE OF THE INDUSTRIAL CORRIDORS PROPOSED TO TURN INTO THE AG-TECH CORRIDOR. REFERENCED IN THE AG-TECH CORRIDOR SELECTION.

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Chicago Sustainable Industries

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SOURCES

Arranged by the category in which they occur, in alphabetical order.

Agricultural Failures Agriculture and Climate Change.” USDA ERS - Food Environment Atlas, United States Department of Agriculture, www.ers.usda.gov/topics/natural-resources-environment/climate-change/agriculture-and-climate-change/.

This source shows data and statistics collected by the United States Department of Agriculture in regards to agriculture and climate change.

Applegate, Evan, et al. “5 Ways Climate Change Will Affect You: Crop Changes.” National Geographic, National Geographic Society, www.nationalgeographic.com/climate-change/how-to-live-with-it/crops.html.

This source gives modern statistics to show how climate change is affecting agriculture, specifically crop changes. The stats are up to date and give a fair assessment of how global warming is harming our food outputs.

“Climate Change Will Cut Crop Yields: Study.” Phy.org- News and Articles on Science and Technology, Science X Network, 15 Aug. 2017, phys.org/news/2017-08-climate-crop-yields.html.

This source gives current statistics on the effects of climate change on crop yields. The article gives charts and graphs of crop production changes over time based on global warming.

EN, VisualPolitik. Why the Netherlands is the World’s Agricultural Leader. YouTube. June 27, 2018. Accessed November 09, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUmP8Tli-Mc.

This video explains how the Netherlands is conquering the agricultural market. It explains the political, social, and technological reasons that the Netherlands is advancing in this category, siting Wageningen University, also known as the Food Valley, for the reason behind this agricultural leader.

“FAO Says Food Production must rise by 70%”. The Population Institute, The Population Institute, www.populationinstitute.org/resources/populationonline/issue/1/8/.

This article analyzes the growing population and how The Population Institute believes we can deal with increasing our food output to meet the demand. They site advances in agricultural technologies, vertical farms, cutting down wastefulness, and being a more nutritional society as options for the predicted food shortage.

Gustin, Georgina, et al. “Climate Change Could Lead to Major Crop Failures in World’s Biggest Corn Regions.” InsideClimate News, 13 June 2018, insideclimatenews.org/news/11062018/climate-change-research-food-security-agriculture-impacts-corn-vegetables-crop-prices.

This article collects and shows data on the major crop failures in corn, caused by climate change.

Hill, Holly. ATTRA-National Sustainable Agriculture Information Services. ATTRA. OECD. “Agriculture and Climate Change.” Trade and Agricultural Directorate. Setp. 2015.

Hill describes how agriculture has both been affected by and affected climate change. This article lists modern statistics on climate change and agriculture.

Leng, Guoyong, and Maoyi Huang. “Crop Yield Response to Climate Change Varies with Crop Spatial Distribution Pattern.” Nature News, Scientific Reports, 3 May 2017, www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-01599-2.

This source shows data and statistics proving the crop yield response to climate change.

National Climate Assessment, nca2014.globalchange.gov/highlights/report-findings/agriculture.

This source shows statistics on how agriculture has affected climate change.

“OCE | U.S. Food Waste Challenge | FAQs.” USDA, United States Department of Agriculture, www.usda.gov/oce/foodwaste/faqs.htm.

This article explains how much food is wasted in America.

OECD. “Agriculture and Climate Change.” Trade and Agricultural Directorate, Sept. 2015.

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This article evaluates how agriculture and climate have corroborated.

Agricultural Movements Smart Agriculture Conversation, The Daily. The Future of Agriculture & Farming. YouTube. May 17, 2017. Accessed November 09, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qmla9NLFBvU.

“Conversation” is a YouTube Channel that posts researched content on modern-day, society relevant topics to try to educate the public on important issues. This video describes the different efforts and advances agricultural is making to address the factors of climate change and a growing population. It covers crop, poultry, meat, fish, and dairy farming methods and technologies.

Schultz, Heidi. “Step Inside the Silicon Valley of Agriculture.” National Geographic. October 18, 2017. Accessed November 07, 2018. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/urban-expeditions/food/netherlands-agriculture-food-technology-innovation/.

This article explains how the Netherlands has been so successful in their agricultural initiatives.

The Civil Engineer.org. “Dutch Greenhouses Have Revolutionized Modern Farming.” India Uses Coal Tax Money to Fund Renewable Energy Projects - TheCivilEngineer.org. Accessed November 11, 2018. https://www.thecivilengineer.org/news-center/latest-news/item/1544-dutch-greenhouses-have-revolutionized-modern-farming.

This source shows the Netherlands agricultural advances and their greenhouse success.

The Future of Agriculture & Farming. Conversation, The Daily. YouTube. May 17, 2017. Accessed November 09, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qmla9NLFBvU. This video analyzes the potential of smart agriculture and its advancements.

Treat, Jason. “This Tiny Country Feeds the World: How the Netherlands Feeds the World.” National Geographic. January 14, 2018. Accessed November 07, 2018. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-agriculture-sustainable-farming/.

This article explains the successful strategies of the Netherlands as a food producer.

Urban Agriculture De Cunto, Anja, Cinzia Tegoni, Roberta Sonnino, Cecile Michel, and Feyrouz Lajili-Djalai. Food in Cities: Study on Innovation for a Sustainable and Healthy Production, Delivery, and Consumption of Food in Cities. European Commission.

This article analyzes how urban centers have started to work on food. The authors analyze different food strategies amongst European cities, focusing on different innovations in making inclusive, resilient, safe and diverse strategies. Many different cities and their food strategies are analyzed to find common threads that make a successful urban food plan. De Cunto, Tegoni, Sonnino, Michel, and Lajili-Djalai argue that in the end the most important factor is the reconnection between food producers and the consumers, connecting the local actors, cities and their surrounding rural regions, and the urban global scale.

Gallagher, Mari. “Food Desert & Food Balance Sheet.” Mari Gallagher, Mari Gallagher Research & Consulting Group, Sept. 2014

Mari Gallagher named food deserts. In this source she examines and maps the food deserts in Chicago. This data and map is used to locate these under-sourced areas in an effort to provide more food to them through the ag-tech corridor.

Maye, Damian. “‘Smart Food City’: Conceptual Relations between Smart City Planning, Urban Food Systems and Innovation Theory.” City, Culture and Society, September 25, 2015. doi:10.1016/j.ccs.2017.12.001.

This article attempts to develop a conceptual link between smart city planning and urban food systems through governance and innovation. The idea of a smart city is to use technology and data collection to advance the urban environment. Maye sets up the key elements required to combine the urban food movement with the smart city to create a Smart Food City. Through case studies and analysis of the two movements Maye finds that a successful smart food city must include city regionalism, connectivity, spatial synergies, circular metabolism, and social practices.

Rosing, Howard, and Daniel R. Block. “Farming Chicago: Prospects for Higher Education Support of Sustainable Urban Food Systems in the U.S. Heartland.” Metropolitan Universities 28, no. 1 (2017): 27. doi:10.18060/21464.

Rosing and Block detail Chicago’s urban agriculture movements. They go through the timeline of urban food efforts in Chicago, beginning in 1970, until the modern Chicago Go To 2040 proposal. Rosing and Howard then argue, through this timeline’s information, that the reason all of these efforts have not been successful is because higher education has not been involved. Agriculture and higher education in Chicago has only just begun, and though many programs are listed, Rosing and Block point out that not enough collaboration has been done. To have successful urban agriculture in Chicago, they argue that higher education must collaborate and support the food movement to better sustain our growing population.

Steel, Carolyn. Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives. London: Vintage Books, 2013. “Strategies for Sustainable Food Systems in Smart Cities.” Meeting of the Minds. August 15, 2018. Accessed November 07, 2018. https://meetingoftheminds.org/strategies-for-sustainable-food-systems-insmart-cities-28028.

This book is cited as an urban agriculture source. In this book Carolyn Steel describes how food needs to be integrated back into society and be closer to those who eat it.

Urbanization and the future of cities - Vance Kite. TED-Ed. YouTube. September 12, 2013. Accessed October 29, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKnAJCSGSdk.

This video shows the potential of future cities and urban agriculture.

Viljoen, Andre. “Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes.” Open House International 34, no. 2 (June 2009). doi:10.4324/9780080454528.

This is the article sourced for Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes cited as a successful Urban Agriculture strategy.

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Indoor Farming “Annual Average Wind Speed in US Cities.” Current Results- Weather and Science Facts. 2018. Accessed December 14, 2018. https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/US/wind-speed-city-annual.php.

This data, collected by Weather and Science Facts, shows data on the wind speed across cities in the United States. This information is used in reference to wind collection as an energy generator.

Benke, Kurt, and Bruce Tomkins. “Future Food-production Systems: Vertical Farming and Controlled-environment Agriculture.” Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy 13, no. 1 (November 17, 2017): 13-26. doi:10.1080/15487733.2017.1394054.

Benke and Tomkins argue for the case of vertical farming in this article. They address the trends of increasing population, urbanization, water supply, and climate change as factors leading to vertical farming. They analyze these drivers for these farming initiatives utilizing modern statistics including the analysis of arable land trends in the world and australia.

They examine the potential of vertical farming with factors like a controlled environment. Benke and Tonkins analyze the necessary components of a vertical farm and show case studies of good farms. Examples include Sky Greens, Valcent Company, and Mirai Company. They establish the advantages of vertical farming to be economic, environmental, political, and social and acknowledge the disadvantages in terms of cost and energy use. Concluding, they suggest further exploration of vertical farming as an agricultural sector, saying it requires further exploration in the quantifications of economics, its derivatives, the design enclosure, policy-making, employment opportunities, and funding.

Despommier, Dickson D. The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century. New York: Picador, 2011.

Despommier started the conversation and idea about vertical farming. Coming from a technological and agricultural perspective Despommier covers the reasons we should change our current agricultural practices, advantages of vertical farming, techniques for vertical farming, the necessary design of vertical farms, and the social and political possibilities. You cannot read an urban indoor farming movement without hearing about Despommier perspective. Despommier argues that farms should all move to urban centers in large farm skyscrapers to feed civilization. Despommier argues that the energy con to vertical farming can be solved through plasma arc gasification, in which human waste in metropolitan areas can be turned into energy.

“Does It Really Stack Up?” The Economist. December 09, 2010. Accessed November 05, 2018. https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2010/12/09/does-it-really-stack-up.

In this article by the Economist, the author addresses the shortcomings of Despommier envisioned Vertical Farm. Energy use is sourced as the main issue of the vertical farm proposal. The author scoffs at the need to keep an indoor farm lit all day and night, dismissing solar or wind power as possible energy generators.

Friedman, Lisa, Hiroko Tabuchi, and John Schwartz. “Why Not Get Your Own Wind Turbine? Many Reasons.” The New York Times. March 07, 2018. Accessed December 14, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/climate/personal-wind-turbine.html.

This sources describes how wind turbines work and their potential advantages and disadvantages. It is used in reference to possibly energy generators for indoor farms.

“How Do Wind Turbines Work?” Department of Energy. Accessed December 14, 2018. https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/how-do-wind-turbines-work.

This source describes the science and technology behind wind turbines. This information is used to describe the potential of wind turbines as energy generators for indoor farms.

“How Does Solar Energy Work?” Solar Power Authority. Accessed December 14, 2018. https://www.solarpowerauthority.com/how-solar-works/.

This source describes the science and technology behind solar power energy. This is used to examine the possibility for solar power as an energy generator for indoor farms.

Joshi, Anupama, et al. “Do Farm-to-School Programs Make a Difference? Findings and Future Research Needs.” Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition, vol. 3, no. 2-3, 2008, pp. 229–246., doi:10.1080/19320240802244025.

This study is sourced as a benefit to placing indoor farming in urban areas. It proves that having farms near children results in higher nutritional knowledge and choices, resulting in a healthier lifestyle.

Moustakas, K., D. Fatta, S. Malamis, K. Haralambous, and M. Loizidou. “Demonstration Plasma Gasification/vitrification System for Effective Hazardous Waste Treatment.” Journal of Hazardous Materials 123, no. 1-3 (March 11, 2005): 120-26. doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2005.03.038.

This article describes how plasma arc gasification works. It analyzes what the largest waste producers are and how they can be transferred into energy. This is used as a possible energy generator for indoor farming and animal farms.

“What Is Aquaponics? Sustainable, Profitable, Indoor Farming of Fish and Vegetables.” Nelson & Pade Aquaponics. 2010. Accessed December 14, 2018. https://aquaponics.com/aquaponics-information/.

This source describes how Aquaponics works and its advantages.

Case Studies “A New Breed of Urban Farm Is Cropping up All over London.” Evening Standard. June 15, 2016. Accessed November 02, 2018. https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/esmagazine/how-londons-new-underground-farms-will-revolutionise-the-way-we-source-our-food-a3267221.html.

The article investigates the new underground farm in London “Growing Underground. The author interviews the owners and visits the site to give their personal experience of the farm. They cover the technology, adaptive reuse, and design of the farm. This was a first look at the farm for the community of London and all those interested and is a great evaluation of the farm.

“AeroFarms Is on a Mission to Transform Agriculture.” AeroFarms. Accessed November 02, 2018. https://aerofarms.com/.

This is the AeroFarms company website. It lists in detail how they got started and their inspiration, the reason behind their farm and its benefits to the movement, the technological inventions, movements, and efforts made, the production yields, and descriptions of each physical farm the company owns.

Andrews, Kate. “Pasona Urban Farm by Kono Designs.” Dezeen. April 17, 2017. Accessed November 02, 2018. https://www.dezeen.com/2013/09/12/pasona-urban-farm-by-kono-designs/.

This article is from Dezeen, a design/architecture focused publication. Andrews explains the client architect relationship, and the programmatic list. They delve into how the plantings work throughout various spaces along with images of the different types of spaces and plantings. The architectural mechanics and design are described fully explaining how the building properly functions.

Bayer Crop Science. YouTube. September 30, 2016. Accessed November 02, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSXDL3XX1WE.

This video shows a walkthrough of the Singapore vertical farm “Sky Greens.” It includes a walk through tour of the farm, an interview with the founder, statistics on the product output and yield, how it is distributed into the local market, its faults/struggles, and it’s future ambitions.

DD News. YouTube. Sky Green’s. November 20, 2013. Accessed November 02, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32To1nfNx18.

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This video shows a walkthrough of the Singapore vertical farm “Sky Greens.” It includes a walk through tour of the farm, an interview with the founder, statistics on the product output and yield, how it is distributed into the local market, its faults/struggles, and it’s future ambitions.

Factor Magazine. YouTube. Growing Underground. October 20, 2014. Accessed November 02, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP0Bq51SQRY.

This video gives a walkthrough of the underground indoor farm, Growing Underground. It includes interviews with the owners, technology advances, and lighting techniques. It shows the potential of the space and the initiative that led to this unique indoor farm.

Garfield, Leanna. “A San Francisco Startup Just Created the World’s First Lab-grown Chicken.” Business Insider. March 15, 2017. Accessed November 07, 2018. https://www.businessinsider.com/memphis-meats-chicken-lab-grown-2017-3.

In this article Garfield examines the California based company “Memphis Meats.” Memphis Meats is making lab-grown meat, but is not yet producing for the public. Garfield explains the inspiration, process, and goals of Memphis Meats.

Garfield, Leanna. “Kimbal Musk Just Opened a Shipping Container Farm Compound in New York City.” Business Insider. January 04, 2017. Accessed November 07, 2018. https://www.businessinsider.com/kimbal-musk-shipping-container-farms-new-york-city-2016-12#on-four-parallel-walls-leafygreens-and-herbs-sprout-from-soil-free-growing-beds-filled-with-nutrient-rich-water-instead-of-sunlight-they-rely-on-hanging-blue-and-pink-led-rope-lights-3.

This article takes a business perspective to the new indoor farming movement “Square Roots” in Brooklyn, New York. Being that it is published on Business Insider, they explain how Square Roots functions as an entrepreneurial program and a catalyst for more urban food businesses. Garfield explains how the Square Roots experience works, how the farms function inside, the yield potential, and the hopes of the program.

Good Housekeeping UK. YouTube. Growing Underground. October 03, 2018. Accessed November 02, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eqvf-aZ6yBA.

This video gives a walkthrough of the underground indoor farm, Growing Underground. It includes interviews with the owners, technology advances, and lighting techniques. It shows the potential of the space and the initiative that led to this unique indoor farm.

“Gotham Greens.” Gotham Greens Local Produce. Accessed November 11, 2018. http://gothamgreens.com/.

This is the website for the Gotham Greens company. Gotham Greens is an urban greenhouse farm initiative, with locations in New York and Chicago. Their websites describes their products, mission, story, and ambitions.

“Home.” Sky Greens. 2014. Accessed November 02, 2018. https://www.skygreens.com/.

This is the website for the company Sky Greens, a vertical farm in Singapore. The website lists basic company information, what they produce, their technology, and aspirations as a company.

Hornyak, Tim. “$50,000 Strawberry-picking Robot to Go on Sale in Japan.” CNET. September 27, 2013. Accessed November 06, 2018. https://www.cnet.com/news/50000-strawberry-picking-robot-to-go-on-sale-in-japan/.

Hornyak describes a new technological advancement in this article, of a new Strawberry-picking robot. He describes the technology behind it, what has driven it, and the possibilities the robot could ensue.

“Inside the World’s First Vertical Farm.” CNBC. November 01, 2013. Accessed November 02, 2018. https://www.cnbc.com/video/2013/10/31/inside-the-worlds-first-vertical-farm.html.

This video and article shows a walkthrough of the Singapore vertical farm “Sky Greens.” It includes a walk through tour of the farm, an interview with the founder, statistics on the product output and yield, how it is distributed into the local market, its faults/struggles, and it’s future ambitions.

“KIPSTER.” KIPSTER. Accessed November 11, 2018. https://www.kipster.farm/.

This is the company website for Kipster. This detailed website lists out every find detail of their indoor, carbon-free, innovational chicken farm. The inspiration behind the chicken farm, as well as the story behind the farm is listed. The design, emphasis on chicken welfare, energy production, and focus on advancing chicken farm design for a rural and urban location are described on this site.

McCurry, Justin. “Japanese Firm to Open World’s First Robot-run Farm.” The Guardian. February 02, 2016. Accessed November 06, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/01/japanese-firm-to-open-worlds-first-robot-run-farm.

This article explains the new robot-run farm Spread. Its describes the technology and output of the farm in comparison to traditional farming and even in comparison for people-run indoor farming.

“Memphis Meats- Home.” Memphis Meats. Accessed November 07, 2018. http://www.memphismeats.com/.

This is the company website for Memphis Meats. Memphis Meats is a company focused on creating lab-grown meat as an alternative to the current animal-meta practices. Memphis Meat is not yet producing any goods for sale, but their website describes the technology they are developing, the products they have developed, and the goals of the company.

“PIG CITY.” MVRDV. 2001. Accessed November 07, 2018. https://www.mvrdv.nl/projects/181-pig-city#!#archive.

Pig City was a hypothetical proposed design by architecture MVRDV. At the time of the proposal, swine diseases were a big issue because of the transferring of pigs amongst sites. MVRDV proposed “Pig City”, a vertical pig farm as a solution to this problem in the form of renderings.

Schwartz, Ariel. “This Startup Is Making Real Meatballs in a Lab without Killing a Single Animal.” Business Insider. November 15, 2016. Accessed November 07, 2018. https://www.businessinsider.com/memphis-meats-lab-grown-meatballs-2016-11.

This article analyzes Memphis Meats success and potential future from an economic and business standpoint.

“Spread Company.” Spread: A New Way to Grow Vegetables. Accessed November 06, 2018. http://spread.co.jp/en/technology/.

This is the website for the indoor, robot-run farm Spread.

“Urban Organics.” Urban Organics. Accessed November 07, 2018. http://urbanorganics.com/.

This is the website for Urban Organics, an indoor farm case study.

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Urban Ag-Tech Corridor “5 Things to Know about Chicago’s Planned Manufacturing Districts.” Chicago Architecture Center - CAC. Accessed December 07, 2018. http://www.architecture.org/news/retrofitting-buildings/5-things-to-know-about-chicagos-planned-manufacturing-districts/.

This article explains the history of Planned MAnufacturing Districts, a specialized zone of industrial corridor.

“Little Village Corridor.” Little Village Land-Use. 2016. Accessed December 01, 2018. https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/city/depts/zlup/Sustainable_Development/Publications/Chicago_Sustainable_Industries/LittleVillage.pdf.

This is the land-use map for the Little Village Industrial Corridor, supplied by the City of Chicago’s website.

Pilsen Corridor. 2016. Accessed December 01, 2018. https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/city/depts/zlup/Sustainable_Development/Publications/Chicago_Sustainable_Industries/Pilsen.pdf.

This is the land-use map for the Pilsen Industrial Corridor, supplied by the City of Chicago’s website.

“Planning and Development.” City of Chicago :: Chicago Blues Festival. July 25, 2018. Accessed December 07, 2018. https://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/dcd/supp_info/repositioning-chicago-s-industrial-corridors-for-today-s-economy.html.

This is from the City of Chicago’s webpage, describing the future goals of planning and development in the industrial corridors.

“Planning and Development.” City of Chicago :: Chicago Blues Festival. Accessed December 07, 2018. https://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/dcd/supp_info/tif/kinzie_industrialcorridortif.html.

This is from the City of Chicago’s website, describing the future goals of planning and development in the industrial corridors.

Damen Silos American Urbex. “American Urbex - The Damen Silos.” American Urbex RSS. Accessed October 23, 2018. http://americanurbex.com/wordpress/?p=839.

This blog shows a brief description, history, and photos of the Damen Silos throughout its history.

Flickr. October 23, 2018. Accessed October 23, 2018. https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=damen silos&w=all&m=&s=int&mt=&referer_searched=.

This is a collection of photos from the photo collection source Flickr. This is where many of the modern photos of the Damen Silos are sourced from.

Hieggelke, Brian. “Grain of Truth: Taking Stock of the Relics of Chicago’s Era as the World’s “Stacker of Wheat”.” Newcity. June 02, 2010. Accessed October 23, 2018. https://newcity.com/2010/06/02/grain-of-truth-taking-stock-of-the-relics-of-chicagos-era-as-the-worlds-stacker-of-wheat/.

This source gives information on the Damen Silos history and photographs throughout it.

Ketchum, Milo Smith. Design of Walls, Bins and Grain Elevators. Place of Publication Not Identified: Nabu Press, 2010.

This source gives a history on the Damen Silos and how they work.

Kumer, Emma. “The Story of the Silos, as Told Through Explosions.” North by Northwestern Winter 2018 Magazine. Accessed October 23, 2018. http://apps.northbynorthwestern.com/magazine/2018/winter/dancefloor/damen-silos/index.html.

This article from the Northwestern school paper goes over the Damen Silos history of explosions and its impact on the community throughout history.

Ugc. “Damen Silos.” Atlas Obscura. May 04, 2018. Accessed October 23, 2018. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/damen-silos.

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This article describes the Damen Silos in its state today.