KANSAS CITY, MO - Picture swaying cornstalks nestled against a Wall Street skyscraper, an empty floor in an office building crowded with tomato vines or an entire high-rise dedicated to indoor fields. It might not be as far-fetched as it sounds. Urban farming can help revitalize urban areas while providing a potential solution to escalating food needs and land shortages. Urban farmers use land in city neighborhoods to grow fruits and vegetables to sell. An urban farm can be as small as a backyard or as large as an acre or two.
"We believe that 'farms,' rather than home gardens, offer some unique benefits to people; they can be a place to volunteer and learn job skills, they create jobs, they grow more food than a home garden [and] they are a small but nevertheless meaningful generator of economic activity," Katherine Kelly, executive director and farmer of the Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture (KCCUA), said in an e-mail interview.
KCCUA encourages a for-profit approach to urban farming. The Kansas City Community Farm, operated by KCCUA as a learning and resource center for those interested in urban farming, sold more than $100,000 worth of produce from 2.5 acres of land in 2007. They employ six workers, most of whom are seasonal. After payroll, expenses and purchasing new equipment, the farm netted approximately $10,000 in 2007, Kelly said.
Studies have shown that proximity to parks and other greenways has a positive effect on property values. Properties adjoining green areas have market values up to 32 percent higher than similar properties 3,200 feet away, according to a 1979 study by Correll, Lilldalh and Singell of Boulder, Colo. It is possible that this could include properties in close proximity to farmland. Investors who own multiple homes in a single area could add value to their properties by leasing a lot or two as urban farms. This could potentially present a use for investors' empty lots, providing rental income while revitalizing the area and leaving the land largely available for future development.
"[Urban farms] enliven the neighborhood. Gardens [and] farms change their appearance every day as plants grow, die, [and] new ones are planted," Kelly said. Urban farms also create local jobs if the farm needs additional workers, which can boost the neighborhood economy and foster more financially viable buyers. There are more than 30 urban and peri-urban—located at the edge of the city limits—farms in Kansas City, according to Kelly, though she believes there are more that have not been officially counted. And she said the interest has grown during the past three years, as new faces appear at KCCUA's meetings.
It's even possible that, in the future, urban farms will extend beyond adding desirability and self-sufficiency to neighborhoods and become an integral part of the cityscape. One such experimental farm is Pasona O2, an indoor farm located in what was once the vault of Resona Bank in Tokyo, Japan. Among the skyscrapers and offices of major corporations, the Pasona O2 farm was developed by Pasona Inc., a Japanese staffing agency. Pasona O2 is not intended as a key part of city infrastructure—its first crops were used in the Pasona Inc. cafeteria—but rather to provide job and training opportunities for unemployed locals, according to The Japan Times.
But skyscraper farms could eventually serve a city's food needs in addition to creating job opportunities. Dr. Dickson Despommier, a professor of environmental sciences and microbiology at Columbia University, has been developing the concept of vertical farms—i.e. farms on multiple floors within skyscrapers—for six years, according to New York Magazine. His concept was spurred by the fact that increasing world population and decreasing land space will likely spell trouble for humanity if a solution is not found.
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Source: NuWire