Experts
Dickson Despommier
Professor, Columbia University
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The Challenges of Vertical Farming
Dickson Despommier explains that vertical farming would constitute a closed cycle, thus solving many of the water and waste related challenges of modern agricultural methods. Read More
March 11, 2009 | In Arts & Culture
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Getting Food to the Dark Side of the Moon
Technologies used by arid countries could be used in space, says Dickson Despommier. Read More
March 11, 2009 | In Arts & Culture
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Agriculture: The Accident That Changed the World
Dickson Despommier on 20,000 years of agricultural history. Read More
July 30, 2008 | In Environment
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Dickson Despommier On Population Growth and Food Production
Dickson Despommier gives four answers: the Malthusian, the Darwinian, the Smithian, and his own. Read More
July 30, 2008 | In Arts & Culture
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What is the Third Green Revolution?
No longer able to rely on the countryside for food, people all over the world are moving to cities, says Despommier. Read More
July 30, 2008 | In Environment
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Dickson Despommier On Vertical Farming
Growing food indoors is not a new concept, and Dickson Despommier says global climate change will require that we re-examine it. Read More
July 30, 2008 | In Science & Tech
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Dickson Despommier On Cities of the Future
The ideas of vertical farming visionary Dickson Despommier. Read More
July 30, 2008 | In Future
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Dickson Despommier On The Transition to Vertical Farming
According to Dickson Despommier the revolution may not be televised, but it will be blogged about. Read More
July 30, 2008 | In Future
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Dickson Despommier On Selling the Vertical Farming Concept
When describing vertical farming Dickson Despommier used to hear "Should we do this?" Now he hears, "How should we do this?" Read More
July 30, 2008 | In Science & Tech
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Dickson Despommier On Food Security
Dickson Despommier reassures us that vertical farming is ultimately safer than traditional farming. Read More
July 30, 2008 | In Science & Tech
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Dickson Despommier on How to Join the Third Green Revolution
Search for the website on Google, says Dickson Despommier, and sign up. Read More
July 30, 2008 | In Environment
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Dickson Despommier on Encouraging Innovation
Necessity may be the mother of invention, but innovators need to address problems before they become absolute necessities. Read More
July 30, 2008 | In Science & Tech
I am a microbiologist/ecologist by training, and for 27 years I conducted laboratory-based research on molecular aspects of intracellular parasitism funded by NIH. I also teach courses in the medical school and in our school of public health (e.g., Parasitic Diseases; Medical Ecology; Ecology 101). Many of them deal with parasitism and its effects on large segments of the poor that live in the tropics. Controlling soil-based transmission cycles of helminthes that cause significant health problems throughout the world is of prime importance to me.
I left the lab in favor of working on more globally relevant projects that address some these important problems. Since it is generally agreed agriculture is solely responsible for so much environmental disturbance and serves as the interface for the transmission of geohelminths, one area of focus of mine has been on how to raise food without further encroachment into natural ecosystems.
I have established The Vertical Farm as a theoretical construct to look at the possibility of agricultural sustainability within cities. The idea grew out of a class project to measure the effects of rooftop gardening in New York City on reducing the dome of heat that develops over us each year. From that original idea, I expanded the concept to include urban agriculture and finally to multi-story indoor farming. I have given this project to my students in my course, "Medical Ecology."
