The Urban Farm Revolution

Providing a suitable habitat for the fruits and vegetables we depend on can be extremely difficult in an urban setting. Beyond the high cost of land, local climatic conditions can be greatly altered by the growth of a city, and can have adverse effects upon agriculture. But it is a pressing issue - food prices are currently at record global highs, and significant numbers of the urban poor are facing rising food insecurity, a problem shared by an increasing number of nations as the global recession deepens.

To assist in counteracting this rising insecurity, various city farm schemes have been proposed throughout the world, and many have been implemented already. Most major US cities now have some form of scheme in place; a few of the very largest conurbations, such as New York City, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and the Bay Area, have seen great successes. By redeveloping derelict spaces and thinking creatively (rooftop vegetable gardens are a great example), it is possible to get a lot back from a relatively small input - but despite the many success stories, we are very far from achieving self-sufficient cities.

Over the years, the transfer of knowledge between legal agriculturalists and (largely) illegal cultivators of Cannabis has been great. The first indoor Cannabis gardeners were greatly supported by the wealth of pre-existing knowledge of indoor growing in general, and due to massive selection pressures on establishing efficient, covert and low-impact systems, they and their descendants have become leaders in the field. Now their knowledge is proving valuable to the urban farming industry, and liaisons between Cannabis growers and various urban farm initiatives are becoming more common in some parts - although for obvious reasons remain largely unpublicized.

The art of producing a high yield from a limited space, without sacrificing quality, is without doubt the specialty of the pot farmer. 'Sea of Green' is a classic example of a Cannabis cultivation technique that has been successfully applied to various other fruiting plants, such as tomatoes, beans and peas. This technique is suitable for plants that can be planted very close together, and will flower and fruit after very little vegetative time. Examples of such knowledge transfer in this direction are few, but Cannabis growers are important for other reasons also.

The Cannabis market is worth almost $120 billion

The Cannabis market is worth almost $120 billion in the US alone, according to some estimates, and growers are often among the earliest adopters of new and experimental techniques, which helps to encourage further research and development and ultimately leads to improved products. Lighting systems are a good example: the need to reduce heat, power consumption, and visibility to law enforcement meant that LED lighting technologies were eagerly taken up by the Cannabis world, even in their earliest stages of development, helping to reach our current highly competitive standards. Now LEDs are the sole lighting source for many productive commercial enterprises, including PlantLab, a vertical farm scheme in Den Bosch, the Netherlands, whose managers report up to three times the yield from conventional systems using their specially-tweaked high-efficiency LED rigs. Similarly, hydroponics as a technique for high-yield, intensive cultivation was adopted by the earliest indoor growers, so avidly that the method soon became inextricably linked to Cannabis. This is still the case: pioneers of new hydroponic urban farming schemes have occasionally found their suggestions summarily rejected by investors on the basis of an uncomfortably strong perceived association. However, ignoring these schemes may well prove hugely short-sighted, as they show several signs of being truly viable options for a sustainable future.

Farms

Large vertical farms were proposed as a potential solution to the food crisis as early as 1915, and over the last few years the movement has markedly increased, particularly since the publication of ecologist Dickson Despommier's 1999 work, The Vertical Farm. In Linkoping, Sweden, construction has just commenced on what they claim is the world's first fully-automated vertical farm concept - the Plantscraper, which functions as a template for future projects. Work is due to be completed by mid-2013. While the concept of utilizing as much vertical space as possible is hardly revolutionary in agricultural circles, the idea of building specially-designed skyscrapers solely to grow food is hugely controversial, for various reasons. Critics suggest that the environmental and financial cost of such projects would outweigh the benefits, and it is certainly true that conservative estimates of the cost of building a 21-story tower are around the $84 million mark - a cost that could only be borne by the biggest agribusinesses (or ironically, some of the wealthiest Cannabis producers). The buildings would require supplementary lighting, irrigation systems and automated systems, not to mention the building materials themselves, which are often extracted from hugely environmentally-damaging quarries. However, supporters of the vertical farming concept are positive that the cost to run a properly-designed vertical farm would be minimal.

Using one existing technology, VerticropTM from the UK company Valcent Technologies, a daily power usage equivalent to that needed to run a desktop PC for ten hours can reportedly yield annual harvests of half a million lettuces - up to seven times less expensively than conventional methods. Another benefit of an enclosed vertical system is the relative certainty of crops successfully reaching maturity; as our cropland is devastated by the ravages of invasive monoculture, we are seeing diminishing harvests. It is possible that investment in vertical farming schemes will soon be seen as safer and more appealing than investing in traditional agriculture altogether, to the objective financier. In the US, vertical systems are not springing up as the Despommier school had hoped.

Although much ado was made on the internet a few years ago over a proposal to erect a $200 million hydroponic tower in Las Vegas, city authorities denied the existence of any such plan. However in Chicago, 'The Plant' has begun construction - a former meatpacking warehouse that by 2015 will have completed its transformation into a net-zero, off-grid vertical farm, drawing its power from an anaerobic digestion system consuming 10,000 tons of food waste a day. The project is part-funded by grant money from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, and is a gigantic step in the right direction that could be quickly repeated by other cities if successful. Some have postulated that an ideal urban farming environment may even be better for our species at its current state of development than more traditional outdoor methods.

Water control

For one thing, the systems already in place to control waste water could ensure that potentially-harmful runoff is safely contained within the confines of the city, rather than finding its way to the groundwater, and properly-treated human waste could be used as fertilizer. Furthermore, the proximity of the food supply to the consumers is hugely important: the number of food miles clocked up by transporting produce vast distances to the customer makes a massive contribution to current levels of emissions, and if food was produced on the doorsteps of the 60% of the world's population living in cities,these food miles could be slashed. The urban poor could greatly benefit from a sustainable, secure and low-cost supply of diverse produce, and the potential for job creation and adoption of community labor- and produce-sharing schemes could further help to alleviate poverty. Theoretically, quality of urban life and environment could be greatly improved. It is not only the urban environment that would benefit: creating contained urban farms would allow pressures on our beleaguered rural ecosystems to relax greatly, and they could be allowed to recover.

The benefits of allowing even a small portion of the 400 million or so acres currently devoted to cropland in the US to revert to nature would be huge - biodiversity would have a chance to increase, honey bee populations could recover, and visual scars on our landscape would be covered with new growth. Although on a much smaller scale, the vertical systems now being implemented have been tested and made viable by Cannabis farmers (among others) over the last two or three decades. While the scale of the projects now being proposed is much larger than those used by Cannabis cultivators, the concepts are very much the same. For example, the lighting, airflow and irrigation systems likely to be used would be familiar to any hydroponic weed grower. A 30-story skyscraper would comprise various different environments on individual floors, and the individual floors would operate on a scaled-up version of the stacked systems available today. Stacked systems are suitable for growing a wide variety of crops including lettuce, micro-greens and mushrooms. Beyond all consideration of economic factors, Cannabis uniquely provides a reason for people to get involved with plants, to understand the basic concepts and apply them to growing other crops when needed, and to rekindle the natural interest in plant husbandry that so many urban-dwellers have lost.

An excellent example comes from the Farm:Shop collective in London, England, which has striven to include community members of every status - almost entirely volunteer-run, they are regularly paid visits by local Cannabis growers keen to offer advice, and are not averse to taking it!

A multitude of durable, well-designed products is available to assist the urban gardener. For a minimal outlay, it is possible to establish a small garden wherever there is space. Simple vertical stack systems, such as the HydrostackerTM or Vertigro®, provide customizable solutions for all requirements - these are easiest to find online, but any local garden supply center should have a similar system for home cultivation projects. Anyone who has successfully set up a Cannabis farm will have little problem figuring out any other type of system, and the only significant extra knowledge needed is that of each crop's own specific requirements. Looking at the Old Farmer's Almanac or similar resources will provide most of the needed information - beyond that, all that's required is a small amount of time for initial setup and and even smaller amount every day or two for maintenance.

How much time is needed depends upon the chosen crops and the size of the project, so it is advisable to keep it small and simple at first. Because of Cannabis, many people who would never otherwise have any reason to learn have become experts in the intricacies of plant cultivation, and their expertise is needed. If every Cannabis cultivator could spare a few hours a week to volunteer at a local community farm shop, or to find a spare balcony or rooftop to convert to a fecund paradise of succulent edible greenery, we could collectively make a huge difference to our communities, as well as doing our part to shatter the lingering negative connotations of Cannabusiness. The future may well consist of skyscrapers filled to the rafters with an array of delicious crops, but just as important will be the smaller, local community efforts that will in time lead to every single member of urban society being involved.