To Solve the Food Crisis, Look Up

As anxieties mount as to how we will possibly support the twenty-first century’s hungry megacities, the rush to articulate the "new agriculture" is on.

The task will be daunting. The world not only expects an additional three billion people in the next 40 years, but climate change and plummeting water tables in arable lands will make feeding nine billion humans with significantly less farmland an immense challenge.

The Food and Agriculture Organization predicts one-sixth of the world’s population will go hungry in 2009, eclipsing last year’s figure by more than 100 million. While agribusiness is developing technologies to make existing agricultural regions more efficient, many are realizing that food production will have to be localized, particularly in the world’s urban areas.

As Joel K. Bourne Jr. mentions in a recent National Geographic article, two models have emerged to bring urban agriculture to scale. The first envisions agriculture as a grassroots effort where food is produced by communities than consume it. In many cities, this approach can be seen in the explosion of urban and rooftop gardens where small-scale growing is seen as both a means of self-reliance and a way to revitalize communities.

Others see the future of agriculture as an increasingly high-tech industry shaped by the urban form itself which will produce unprecedented amounts of food through engineering marvels.

One of the more prominent figures in the latter movement is Dickson Despommier whose Vertical Farm project recently unveiled Pyramid Farms, a system of self-sufficient ecosystems that can do everything from raise poultry to grow crops to manage urban waste.

Similar models have sprung up around the world to meet specific regions' ecological needs. In Dubai, for instance, there are plans for Seawater Vertical Farm which will desalinate salt water to irrigate hectares of crops.

For now, both models of next-generation agriculture have their downsides. The public does not yet desire the responsibility of producing all of their food--and even fewer want crop production dictated by a handful of technocrats.

Clearly, some sort of innovative combination between the two paradigms needs to emerge, an effort which will likely have dramatic social, political and economic consequences the world over.