- Microbiologist and professor, Columbia University
Dickson Despommier believes vertical farms, also called “farmscrapers,” could provide a sustainable solution for feeding the world’s growing population and repairing ecosystems damaged by traditional farming methods. Imagine if the building in... More
Dickson Despommier believes vertical farms, also called “farmscrapers,” could provide a sustainable solution for feeding the world’s growing population and repairing ecosystems damaged by traditional farming methods. Imagine if the building in which you lived provided all the fruit, vegetables, fish and livestock you needed to eat during the year. Thanks to Dickson and his graduate students at Columbia University’s Environmental Health Sciences lab, drawings for such a building already exist. Equal parts microbiologist, ecologist and agricultural architect, Dickson uses greenhouse techniques and recycled resources to envision buildings that could provide enough food for their residents while minimizing land use, water waste and the possibility of crop failures. Dickson was named Teacher of the Year by the American Medical Students Association in 2003, and he has earned the same distinction six times at Columbia. He will be included in a major upcoming exhibit featuring ten great innovators at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry.
Dickson Despommier's Presentations
| PopTech 2008 | October 2008 |
Sustainable Visions: In his vision of the world, we used to live in the biosphere - a self-sustaining world, that’s circular and complete. We live in the technosphere; a world where we create problems and use up resources and then have to come up... More Sustainable Visions: In his vision of the world, we used to live in the biosphere - a self-sustaining world, that’s circular and complete. We live in the technosphere; a world where we create problems and use up resources and then have to come up with solutions to those issues. So even if we have resources to provide food for everyone in the world, we’ve created unsustainable systems that make it difficult - look at agricultural runoff, which appears to be a requirement for feeding ourselves, but is killing off the seas through pollution. Do we have to choose between raising food crops or restoring the environment, he asks. “We’ve created machines that can catch the dust from a tail of a comet and analyse it,” he says. “And if we can do that, what I’m about to tell you is a piece of cake.” His suggestion is to use soil-free agronomy; hydroponics, aeroponics and drip irrigation - to build urban vertical farms, raising crops in tall buildings. This creates more jobs in cities, lets farmers move into urban areas, One acre of strawberries grown inside was the equivalent of 30 acres of strawberries grown outside, freeing up 29 acres of land outside. How do we do it? The systems are already there, and new technologies aren’t needed. All we need to do, he says, is simply start to imagine that it’s possible. |
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