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myNotes

Towering Farms

10 Vertical farms take the concept of
growing upward to the next level—
skyward! Designers have been imagining

high-rise growing spaces that aim to
produce as much food as possible
without draining all of a city’s resources.
11 Creating a vertical farm is more
complicated than building a living wall.
It’s a bigger venture than just converting
office towers into farms. For example, if
sunlight can’t reach all of the plants,
solar panels may need to be installed to
supply energy for artificial growing
lights. Designs also have to include ways
to capture, recycle, and pump water
throughout the building.

12 Until someone constructs the first
vertical farm, we won’t know all the
challenges of building one. We won’t
Pictured above are beans and zucchini growing
know all the advantages such a farm
up a city-home trellis. When you can’t spread
might bring to a community. But with so out, you can always stretch up!
many people energized by the
innovative plans, it’s only a matter of
time until we find out.

13 An architect named Gordon Graff
designed a 58-story green building, “ Vertical farms take the concept

called Sky Farm, for the city of Toronto.

It has 8 million square feet (743,000 of growing upward to the next
square meters) of growing space. That’s level—skyward!”
enough to feed 35,000 people per year.
Time will tell whether a costly, untested
project like this will come to be. But
it’s the right kind of dreaming.

artificial If something is artificial, it was
created by humans rather than nature.

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