Over the next 50 years, rapid climate change issues will play a major role in agriculture. It is estimated for every 1° of increase in atmospheric temperature, 10 % of the land where we now grow food crops will be lost. The ability of governments to provide essential services for its citizens, and in particular to maintain systems that provide a reliable and safe food and water supply becomes more and more problematic. In less developed countries, other problems also exist that will become magnified because of global warming. For example, diseases transmitted by fecal contamination, such as cholera, typhoid fever and a plethora of parasitic infections, are commonplace where human excrement is used as fertilizer (an estimated 50 % of all farming on the planet). These infections are in large part responsible for widespread poverty and illiteracy. Geo-helminths, alone, cripple enormous numbers of children and adults alike. Heavy infections with ascaris, hookworm and whipworm can permanently reduce a child’s capacity for learning, and the diarrheal diseases they cause routinely keep them out of school. Illiteracy, malnutrition, and poverty are the result. Today, even in more developed countries where many of these kinds of infectious diseases have been either eradicated or are under control, food safety and security issues dominate the headlines. Over the last 5 years, in the United States alone, food recalls due to bacterial infectious diseases have resulted in billions of dollars of lost income. In traditional farming, a plethora of plant pathogens (e.g., rice blast, wheat rust) and insect pests (e.g., locusts) account for staggering losses of crops worldwide, further pushing the yields of most grain and vegetable crops towards lower and lower limits. Soil erosion due to floods and droughts completes the picture of climate change issues that have already significantly reduced where we can grow our food. The majority of environmental experts agree that farming as we know it will become marginalized over the next 50 years, as climate changes accelerate even more due to deforestation. This is because forests are being sacrificed for farmland. The consequence of this activity is that the carbon cycle is out of balance and will only get worse if nothing is done on a global scale. Controlled environment agriculture is one answer to reversing this situation. Greenhouse technologies are well-established and guarantee a safer, more reliable food supply that can be produced year round, and they can be located close to urban centers. By “stacking” these buildings on top of each other in an integrated well-engineered fashion, we can greatly reduce our agricultural footprint, and the vertical farm concept can then be applied to every urban center, regardless of location.
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Public Health and Microbiology, Columbia University, 60 Haven Ave, Rm. 100, New York, NY, 10032, USA
Dickson Despommier Ph. D.
Correspondence to Dickson Despommier Ph. D..
About this article Cite this articleDespommier, D. The vertical farm: controlled environment agriculture carried out in tall buildings would create greater food safety and security for large urban populations. J. Verbr. Lebensm. 6, 233–236 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00003-010-0654-3
Received: 10 September 2010
Accepted: 26 October 2010
Published: 03 December 2010
Issue Date: June 2011
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00003-010-0654-3
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