Does this look like a farm? Hardly, but go to England in 2013 for the Manchester International Festival (MIF) and you will see that it morphed into Alpha Farms. If all goes well it will be a prototype for rebirthing old buildings into modern age food factories all over the world.
This decrepit old building will soon house multiple stories of vegetables and fish growing hydroponically and aeroponically.
Watch the video and you will see what it looks like now.
Also, see what John Edel is doing in Chicago. He too is converting an old building into an urban vertical farm he calls The Plant. Will Allen’s Growing Power and Sweet Water Organics are projects of similar nature in Milwaukee.
I wonder when (or if) we will see projects like these in New York City. Currently we are the city of dirt. There is no significant future for often-contaminated dirt in the city.
via www.bbc.co.uk
"Imagine a greenhouse stacked on top of itself, so you have three or four layers of greenhouse - it's a multiple storey greenhouse."
Dr Dickson Despommier is a pioneer of vertical farming, an agriculturual technique which has inspired an ambitious new project in Wythenshawe.
His basic idea - to increase the available land for farming - is now being put into practice inside a derelict office block on the edge of Wythenshawe Civic Centre.
Over the next two years, Alpha House will be transformed into Alpha Farm, growing produce for the 2013 Manchester International Festival (MIF) on its eight floors.
As well as growing leafy plants and root vegetables, it is also planned to incorporate fish tanks, bee hives and a hen hangar on the roof.
Simon Mellor, general director of MIF, said what made Alpha Farm unique is that it is the first attempt to turn an existing building into a food supplier for the 2013 event.
"That is our dream," he said.
"Can we get to a sufficiently productive level that most things that people are eating, in terms of the vegetables, have been grown on this farm?"
The main challenge, as a former worker in the derelict block put it, will be the "ramshackle, decrepit old building" they are working with.
"It is poorly insulated, single-glazed and it will be hard to maintain the temperature.
"If they can do it in there, they can do it anywhere really."
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