UK: Homes, workplaces of the future to be self sufficient in fruit and veg
The extraordinary potential of so-called vertical urban farming techniques to feed growing city populations will form one of the centre pieces of this year's Manchester International Festival. Thousands of festival goers are expected to visit the site of a formerly derelict print works on the banks of the Irwell in Salford next month to glimpse the future shape of farming, gardening and shopping.
Based across different levels of the building and surrounding grounds, the project will demonstrate how vegetable, mushroom, meat and fish production systems are able to feed naturally into each other to generate food crops requiring a minimum of tending.
The Biospheric Project is the brainchild of Manchester Metropolitan University PhD student Vincent Walsh from Wythenshawe who for the past two years has been conducting a unique experiment in ways that city-dwellers and designers might respond when oil resources are depleted.
"Food is the social fabric of our community. It was the thing that always connected us but that has been lost," said Mr Walsh.
"If supermarkets disappeared tomorrow how many people would know how to feed themselves? Very few. That shows how disconnected we have come from our food for whatever reason. That is what the biosphere is all about. To understand and make us more resilient," he added.
At present the Biosphere offers a fairly limited diet of freshwater fish, mushrooms green leaves, apples, pears and the occasional citrus fruit or plum.
But according to the project founder, the potential is limitless. The concept is based on the traditional African agricultural traditions where crops are grown above each other - for example, coconuts above bananas, over coffee and ground tubers such as yams.
Mr Walsh believes pressure on land and declining energy resources will mean the West will be forced to give up growing vast horizontal fields of single crops in remote farms and transporting them hundreds of miles to urban centres to be consumed. Instead every building and open space in towns and cities will be put into production.
Source: independent.co.uk