Tag Archives: Rooftop farming

Small-scale farming

Richard Thomas, Worm Lover

Richard Thomas / Worm Lover

 

Last time I wrote about a new revolution underway in food production: rooftop farming.

This movement is certainly gaining momentum in the United States. More than 350 roofs in Chicago are wholly or partially covered with vegetation, including a 1860m2 at the Chicago Botanic Garden, with capacity to provide 10,000 servings of fresh vegetables annually.

There is the capacity – and the intention – to expand this rooftop farm to cover 3 acres under cultivation, which would mean that it overtook Brooklyn Grange in New York, currently the largest rooftop farm in the US at 2.5 acres over two roofs in New York City.

As well as the volume and variety of food grown, this type of farming serves a social purpose, with several of the farmers being under-employed ex-offenders; and an environmental benefit, reducing the heat island effect of large city buildings.

In Australia, rooftop farming is very much in its infancy. But it’s begun. Earlier this year, Australia’s first rooftop worm farm was launched on the top of Curtin House, at 252 Swanston St, in the centre of Melbourne.

Rooftop Farm at Mesa Verde, Curtain House, Swanston St, Melb, under construction in 2013
Rooftop Farm at Mesa Verde, Curtain House, Swanston St, Melb, under construction in 2013

 

Made possible by the dedication and commitment of ‘Worm Lover’ Richard Thomas, and the vision and financial backing of the building’s owners, the Mesa Verde restaurant on the 7th floor of 252 Swanston St now has half a dozen specially-made (in New Zealand) ‘Hungry Bins’, with thousands of worms, processing dozens of kilos per week of organic vegetable waste and coffee grounds from the kitchen.

 

Mesa Verde Construction Phase
Mesa Verde Construction Phase

And turning it all into the highest quality worm castings and worm wee, which is then used to fertilise the 30m2 of raised wicking beds that now occupy about an eighth of the building’s roof. Those beds also include many meters of trellising, to permit the growing of beans, peas, cucumbers and other climbing crops.

 

“Just about anything will grow in this stuff, that’s the beauty of it”, says Richard.

And with the beauty of a closed-loop, zero-waste system, the 30 different varieties of herbs and veggies then go back to the kitchen to appear on customer’s plates.

The project was two years from concept design to implementation and required an investment well in excess of $150,000, which included the fitting of 10 tons of reinforced steel columns in order to reinforce the weight-bearing load of the roof by 30-40 tons, to cope with the extra weight of the wicking beds and the soil.

Mesa Verde Construction Phase
Mesa Verde Construction Phase

 

Funds permitting, the aim is to triple the growing area of the rooftop over the next few years. Rooftop farming in Australia, where, unlike America, buildings were not designed to bear the extra weight load of snow falls, is a complex matter that will require significant investment.

 

Mesa Verde reinforced steel columns to support rooftop farm
Mesa Verde reinforced steel columns to support rooftop farm

 

“These guys are visionaries”, Richard says of the owners of Curtin House. “They bought this building when Swanston St was a desert, when the building was derelict, and they saw the potential. They’ve pumped millions into it over the years – it’s the first vertical laneway, the first rooftop cinema. They’re pioneers, which is why they’ve invested in this project, despite the cost and the challenges.”

“In ten years’ time, when everyone’s doing this, they’ll be able to say they were the first. There’s also the food for the restaurant, the amenity for the staff, and the publicity, it’s already attracting a lot of attention in the building”, Richard told us.

It certainly is an impressive sight – one to add on your list of places to see and things to do when you’re next in Melbourne.

 

 

Self-sufficiency, Small-scale farming

Rooftop Farming

Urban agriculture heading up

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday, 9th November, 2013

‘We are today part of a new revolution, The Urban Revolution. Cities that housed 200 million people, or ten percent of the world’s population in 1900 now accommodate 3.5 billion people, or fifty percent of the world’s population, and will, by 2050, accommodate 64 billion people or seventy percent of the world’s population… More than 80% of Australians already live in cities that are projected to double their size in the next 40 years.’

These are the opening words of the City of Melbourne’s, Transforming Australian Cities For a More Financially Viable and Sustainable Future, first published in May 2009 and updated in March 2010. For anyone who has spent time in Sydney or Melbourne recently, the prospect of these megalopolises doubling their size by 2050 is rather alarming, to put it mildly. Which no doubt explains the steady flow of urban refugees, the tree changers and sea changers, only too happy to exchange peak hour on Hogbin Drive for the daily grind of the M4 or the South-eastern freeway.

As Australia’s big cities double in size, how will they be fed?

From my perspective, it was doubly surprising that the word ‘food’ did not appear once in the Transforming Australian Cities strategic document. At the heart of the strategy for ‘sustainable growth’ (an oxymoron, arguably) of our big cities was the concept of ‘productive suburbs’, with the iconic ¼ acre blocks forming corridors to become the new ‘green wedge’ zones of Sydney and Melbourne. There was discussion of ‘making backyards productive’ through installation of rainwater tanks and greywater recycling systems. This, combined with the rollout of solar PV panels and other forms of domestic-scale renewable energy generation would, it was claimed, help Australian households move closer to ‘self-sufficiency’ and therefore ‘sustainability’.

But what about food? Given that some of the projections of climate change anticipate a reduction in productivity of our major foodbowl regions – the Murray-Darling in particular – of as much as 60% by 2050 – surely any strategy for the sustainability of our cities must integrate as a matter of highest priority how the residents are going to be fed?

Or perhaps, more to the point, how they are going to start feeding themselves, if we are serious in talking about ‘self-sufficiency’.

This conundrum of feeding growing cities is not of course a uniquely Australian issue. Indeed it is driving the burgeoning urban agriculture movement in North America. New York City now has an estimated 700 urban farms. Some of these are familiar community gardens, where groups of residents work small plots to produce food for themselves and their families.

Urban agriculture goes commercial – and up to the roof

Increasingly, many others are commercial-scale operations that have negotiated supply contracts with restaurants, grocery stores and supermarkets. And one of the recent trends is for commercial-scale farming to take place on the flat roofs of high-rise office and apartment blocks.

 

Rooftop Farming in New York City
Rooftop Farming in New York City

One of these is the 555 m2 Eagle Street Rooftop Farm, based on a warehouse on the East River in Brooklyn. Eagle Street is an open-air intensive market garden which supplies organic vegetables to nearby restaurants by bicycle, and operates a farmers’ market onsite during the growing season.

Other rooftop farms operate year-round, by erecting greenhouses and using aquaponic and hydroponic growing techniques.

Office and apartment blocks in a city like New York are inherently more suited for this type of production than similar buildings in Australia, because their roofs are already built to a higher load-bearing capacity because of snowfall. But that’s not to say that this type of ‘farming’ can’t happen in Australia. In fact recently I was lucky enough to visit what is one of the very first attempts to do it, at the Mesa Verde rooftop bar and cinema at 252 Swanston St, Melbourne. It’s the brainchild of Mr ‘WormLover’, Richard Thomas, and I’ll tell that story next time.