From a farm within an office in Tokyo to urban rooftops repurposed as farms, discover how urban farming is taking cities by storm worldwide
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Where do you get your food from? For most people, the label displaying the origin of their favourite fruits, vegetables or other produce is likely to come from outside – possibly thousands of kilometres away – the borders of their own home.
But a new trend is growing: the concept of producing your own food, right in the heart of a city. Several cities, from Singapore to Toronto to Tokyo, have created measures to make it easier for food to originate almost exactly where millions of residents live.
Read on to find out more about these cities and their efforts to take part in urban farming…
Urban home-grown food
Across the world, many cities have taken it upon themselves to produce their own food. Take Tokyo for example, home to the Pasona Urban Farm – where produce is grown inside a downtown office. Stretching across nine storeys and 215,000 square feet, roughly 20 per cent of the building is dedicated to growing more than 200 species of produce from fruits to vegetables and even rice.
To do this, the farm utilises both hydroponic – growing plants without soil – and soil-based farming, with automatic irrigation and precise climate control.
Along the outside of the building, planter balconies act as a means to support seasonal flowering plants and fruit trees. That’s not all, though – within the building itself, tomato vines loop above meeting tables, and lobbies are filled with rice paddies and broccoli patches.
Any food produced is also served in onsite cafeterias, providing approximately 10,000 meals per year to employees.
In addition to Tokyo’s efforts, other cities have also taken steps to become self-sufficient in their food production. Singapore has made plans to ensure its produce is home-grown: by 2030, the city-state aims to grow 30 per cent of its own nutrition, a plan known as 30 by 30. To achieve this, Singapore has utilised vertical farming – a method yielding ten to 15 times more produce per square metre than regular farms – as well as fish farms integrated onto rooftops.
Other measures include the creation of Singapore’s first fully autonomous vertical mega-farm in Changi, projected to produce 500,000 kg of leafy greens per year.
Urban rooftops are also being used as farms in the city-state. Currently, nine multi-storey car park rooftops have active farm tenders underway.
The power of communities
One valuable means of urban farming is bringing local communities together in projects. Such examples include a movement in Detroit, where more than 1,500 urban gardens now feature in the city. Previously abandoned lots are filled with produce such as tomatoes and sunflowers, helping to revitalise neighbourhoods and feed individuals.
Additionally, across the miles, an initiative in the city of Melbourne, Australia, is helping with urban farming. Launched in 2017, the ‘Green Your Laneway’ initiative aims to transform narrow side streets into leafy hubs through community work and a planting scheme.
To do this, the city rolled out greening permits, allowing individuals to plant ferns, create vertical gardens and ‘drain-gardens’ that can capture rainfall. Since its inception, the laneways now support a variety of plant life from trees to vines and planters.
Havana is also home to another innovative gardening technique: organopónicos – low-tech, soil-based gardens introduced after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s.
These raised-bed market gardens are built on concrete slabs, vacant parking lots and parks, made of blocks or repurposed materials and planted with organic soil and compost. By the late 1990s, Havana had around 7,000 organopónicos supplying as much as 90 per cent of the city’s fresh vegetables and 60 per cent of national fresh produce.
The farms have also created thousands of jobs – in 2001, Havana’s urban farming workforce reached 23,000, rising to more than 44,000 by 2006.
Agriculture turning ‘smart’
Some cities are utilising technology to help grow produce. For example, in Oslo, vertical farms utilise tailored LED lighting that adjusts according to a plant’s growth stage. Elsewhere, in Bangkok, hydroponic systems enable residents to monitor everything from the pH to the power consumption of the plants they grow at home.
On a larger scale, drones in Karnataka, India, help to support the growth of plants. This is because drones can precisely target the finger millet crops below with agrochemicals, cutting water use by 90 per cent and boosting yields by 5 to 10 per cent. Other technology includes autonomous tractors, which have been trialled in the US. These vehicles can apply pesticides and fertiliser only where needed, cutting the use of chemicals.
In the US, another major development in farming has taken place using AI: the introduction of laser weeding systems. Like the name suggests, these systems utilise AI to identify weeds and then zap them with lasers, offering a precise and, importantly, pesticide-free alternative to traditional weed-picking.
