Innovative urban farming will save our cities

Cities are getting more polluted. Sustainability and health has become a growing concern for people. Consumers seek fresh, safe, and natural products. Yet it is challenging for citizen to get access to fresh food due the distance between the farms and the city.

We expect two-thirds of the world’s population to move in cities by 2030. Cities have to plan how to grow enough fresh food to feed their citizens in a smart ecologically friendly way.

Urban farms bring food closer to the homes by shortening the supply chain. The product is fresher, more nutritious and has reduced carbon footprint. To fit in the urban busy landscape while growing a large amount of food, the traditional farm need to innovate: Either situated on rooftop, indoor, vertically built or digitally advanced…

1. A vertical farm on a rooftop of the Mercure hotel (Paris)

Here are examples of those smart urban farms:

2. Digital farming in (Singapore)

Archisen leverages on IOT and data analytics to enabled the modernization of farms. “Using sensors, parameters such as microclimate data, plant physiology, soil and water conditions can be monitored in real-time. These data can then be used to intelligently drive decision-making or actuation systems, for instance pumps, through feedback loops based on contextualised data, resulting in “dynamic automation”. Our solution constantly collects growth data and builds on top of existing literature to improve growth recipes for all our clients. “

3. Supermarket Opens Up A Huge Rooftop Garden (Montreal)

IGA supermarket in the Saint-Laurent borough of Montreal has created a garden on its 25,000 square feet roof. To save water, the soil is watered by the store’s dehumidification system. The rooftop also features beehives that produce 600 jars of honey every year. The 30 kinds of vegetables grown organically and the honey are sold directly in the supermarket.

4. Indoor vertical farm (San Francisco)

Plenty start up believes that an interior farming is more effective than an outside one: “When you’re not outside and you’re no longer constrained by the sun, you can do things that make it easier for humans to do work and work faster, and for machines to work faster,” Plenty CEO and co-founder Matt Barnard told Fast Company. The company claims it can grow crops up to 350 times more effectively than conventional farms in a given area.

Smart cities must be at the forefront of urban agricultural systems to become better living places for the future.