Thursday, May 14, 2015

Future of Food: Urban Farming


In this age of endless innovation, sometimes the best technology is actually nature-based technology.

Food is an essential part of life. How we produce, transport, and consume food has a enormous impact on society. People are starting to question the traditional methods of large-scale factory farming, and bringing food production back into the hands of local communities.

Especially in unused or abandoned urban areas, there is potential for people to learn how to farm and grow gardens. This would bring fresh, whole foods into the local area and allow people to connect with life through a purposeful activity.

I recently saw this profile of Will Allen, the founder of Growing Power, which aims to educate people about growing methods & implementing programs to get communities to produce their own food.

Huffington Post:



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Kijani Grows is another company trying to bring on the urban farming revolution.  I watched this video awhile ago, with the founder Eric Maundu explaining the computer-controlled aquaponics system he uses to maintain a continual cycle of growth with recycled water & biomatter. 



Aquaponics is a self-sustaining growing system, which uses waste from aquatic animals as fertilizer for plants. It uses the natural ecological cycles of life to efficiently grow plants and vegetables.


Another developing trend for future food technology is the idea of vertical farming. This is the use of high-rise buildings to house hydroponic & aquaponic growing facilities, to create more food in cities or other places where a smaller footprint is needed.


By reclaiming urban real estate for growing crops, using modern green technologies, we can address many of the problems with food availability in cities and densely populated areas.

There are solutions to all our pressing social problems, we just need the resourcefulness and intelligence to find effective ways to address them.

Technoccult:

Web Urbanist:

(click to enlarge)



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