"The vertical farm is a world-changing innovation whose time has come. Dickson Despommier's visionary book provides a blueprint for securing the world's food supply and at the same time solving one of the gravest environmental crises facing us today."--Sting
Imagine a world where every town has their own local food source, grown in the safest way possible, where no drop of water or particle of light is wasted, and where a simple elevator ride can transport you to nature's grocery store - imagine the world of the vertical farm.
When Columbia professor Dickson Despommier set out to solve America's food, water, and energy crises, he didn't just think big - he thoughtup.Despommier's stroke of genius, the vertical farm, has excited scientists, architects, and politicians around the globe. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Despommier explains how the vertical farm will have an incredible impact on changing the face of this planet for future generations.
Despommier takes readers on an incredible journey inside the vertical farm, buildings filled with fruits and vegetables that will provide local food sources for entire cities.
Vertical farms will allow us to:
- Grow food 24 hours a day, 365 days a year
- Protect crops from unpredictable and harmful weather
- Re-use water collected from the indoor environment
- Provide jobs for residents
- Eliminate use of pesticides, fertilizers, or herbicides
- Drastically reduce dependence on fossil fuels
- Prevent crop loss due to shipping or storage
- Stop agricultural runoff
Vertical farms can be built in abandoned buildings and on deserted lots, transforming our cities into urban landscapes which will provide fresh food grown and harvested just around the corner. Possibly the most important aspect of vertical farms is that they can built by nations with little or no arable land, transforming nations which are currently unable to farm into top food producers. In the tradition of the bestsellingThe World Without Us,The Vertical Farmis a completely original landmark work destined to become an instant classic

Dickson Despommier's profile page

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DR. DICKSON DESPOMMIER spent thirty eight years as a professor of microbiology and public health in environmental health sciences at Columbia, where he has won the Best Teacher award six times, and received the national 2003 American Medical Student Association Golden Apple Award for teaching. His work on vertical farms has been featured on such top national media as BBC, French National television, CNN,The Colbert Report,andThe Tonight Show,as well as in full-length articles inThe New York Times, Time Magazine, Scientific American,andThe Washington Post.He recently spoke at the TED Conference, Pop!Tech and the World Science Festival and has been invited by the governments of China, India, Mexico, Jordan, Brazil, Canada, and Korea to work on environmental problems. He has been invited to speak at numerous national and international professional annual meetings as a keynote speaker, and at universities, including Harvard and MIT. He is one of the visionaries featured at the Chicago Museum of Science and Technology. Despommier lives in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

“A book you will read, and then you will read it again. It is a book that could begin a revolution. Let's hope it does.” —Chicago Examiner
“Nobody has ever dreamed as big as Dr. Dickson Despommier.” —New York Magazine
“Despommier has quickly become the central figure in what could be a worldwide revolution.” —Scientific American
“Despommier's . . . ingenious idea . . . could ultimately ease the world's food, water, and energy crises.” —The Huffington Post
“Lucidly written . . . inspiring . . . Vertical farming is no doubt fast emerging as a powerful futuristic concept.” —Businessworld
“A captivating argument that will intrigue general readers and give policymakers and investors much to ponder.” —Kirkus Reviews
“A visionary known the world over, Despommier believes that the ‘vertical farm is the keystone enterprise for establishing an urban-based ecosystem' and for ‘restoring balance between our lives and the rest of nature.” —Booklist (starred)
“Dickson Despommier is a futurist, an architect, and an intellectual in the same vein as Leonardo da Vinci, I. M. Pei, and Buckminster Fuller. Vertical farms will be remembered as one of the preeminent breakthroughs of the early 21st century, and Despommier will be remembered as the man who brought them to us.” —Josh Tickell, director of Fuel, winner of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for Best Documentary
“This book makes the case that urban agriculture can go vertical as well as horizontal, putting all those expanses of pretty glass to some actual use!” —Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
“Cities of the future must generate their own food supply. Dickson Despommier's elegant, simple answer for achieving this goal is vertical farming. Welcome to the third green revolution.” —Peter Diamandis, Chairman of the X Prize Foundation and Co-Founder of the Singularity University