[lper100km]

This appeared in the Vancouver Sun this morning. Never mind that Surrey, the fastest growing community in Canada, has used most of its arable land in housing development over the past 40 years or so. For those unfamiliar with the local geography, the Vancouver and Metro area sits on the peninsula of the Fraser River delta, bounded by mountains to the south and east and the sea to the north and west. What arable land still remains, is steadily being eroded by the constant pressure to develop new housing, malls and business centres despite an Agricultural Land Reserve policy.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')i]Kelly Sinoski, Vancouver Sun
Published: Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Rooftop gardens and vertical greenhouses could be a sign of the times in Metro Vancouver as the region wrestles with ways to tackle a global food crisis and the effects of climate change. And Surrey could lead the trend, with at least one developer considering building a so-called vertical farm in Whalley, which is slated to become the region's second downtown. Vertical farms could potentially be as high as 30 storeys, with glass walls, solar panels and an irrigation system to grow beds of produce inside.
"We're trying to look at the future and the future is going to be some form of urban agriculture," Surrey Coun. Marvin Hunt said. "I'd like to see it right in the city centre."

[Loki]

My local paper recently carried a similar story, though it sounds like a vertical farm in Surrey may actually be a possibility rather than an idea rattling around the head of some grad student like it is here in Portland.

No yards needed in high-rise farms

It’d be an interesting experiment, if it's built using private money. Sounds like they’d be fairly resource intensive (lots of electricity, lots of water, imported substrate that’s probably made from unsustainable materials like peat, etc.). The only thing they’d really save on is distribution. They’d almost certainly have to produce high value crops and market to high-end restaurants to make it pan out financially, unless of course municipalities subsidized them.

In terms of public financing, I'd much rather see more resources allocated to community gardens. The City of Portland had a chance to significantly increase our community garden program recently, but chose not to, despite having 1000 people on the waiting list, with only 1200 plots available. It was a piddling expense, too (~$200,000). There’s plenty of land available to easily expand the program, but the City Council can’t be bothered. The mayor is a useless sack of shiite, a low-rent, hyperliberal version of George W.

I managed to get a community garden plot last year, and I’m glad to have it, but it’s tiny (~500 square feet) and is several miles from where I live. I know the head of the community garden program and she has to regularly fight to keep the program alive. All sorts of lip service given to sustainability here in Portland, but seems like if it doesn't involve light rail or other big construction projects, TPTB don't want to hear about it.

I really like the mayor of Delta's idea (from your article):
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')elta Mayor Lois Jackson said vertical farms would be a "good experiment," but she'd prefer to see municipalities buy farmland and lease it to farmers instead. "If we believe we're going to try and feed ourselves we [need] to look at doing that."

[lper100km]

Loki: Most interesting and informative comments. I had not heard of this concept before reading the OP article and did not know that Portland had dabbled in it. I have to say that my initial reaction was one of skepticism, thinking of the infrastructure build cost, power, light, presumably taxes at city rates and so on. I suppose that some form of automation could reduce labour costs. One assumes that the current thinking is for vegetables, perhaps fruit, but I wonder if someone is not considering livestock also? If we continue on this course, are we precipitating a Brave New World where everyone and everything is on a production line to hell?

There are 100s of acres of greenhouses in an adjoining municipality, producing tomatoes mostly. These are heated and lit continuously. The night sky is ablaze, to the outrage of people living nearby. It’s upsetting local wildlife, birds (owls) in particular apparently.

In the OP, I was talking only of the Vancouver Metro area. There are agricultural communities to the south and south east, centred on Abbotsford and Chilliwack, which are the prime agricultural, dairy and animal farm locations. However, even these areas are feeling pressure as the population spread continues to expand. Regardless, there is and always was a deficiency in the ability to support the local population from these areas and the majority of the basic food products are brought in from central BC, Alberta and the USA – WA, OR and CA mostly.

I've always been a city dweller or an urbanite, but I well remember the open space and seemingly vast and fertile farmland that stretched from the Fraser River to the 49th parallel up until the early '80s. Surrey is the largest municipality in the Metro area and it has just trampled over every square inch in it's desire to transform itself into a 'city'. The resulting development density has pushed the northern boundary of the farm belt southwards to just north of Abbotsford. Greed, population explosion and inadequate safeguards will do that.