Solving the global food crisis: vertical aeroponic farm grows food out of thin air

More than 50% of our planet's massive human population is concentrated into urban centres - and on current estimates, that's likely to be as high as 80% by the year 2050, a year many of us will be around to see. So the challenge facing today's forward-thinking architects is how to create positive outcomes out of a crushing space constraint. Going upwards, in projects like Eugene Tsui's Ultima Tower and the London Vertical Village concept, seems to offer some practical solutions to the living space conundrum - but what about feeding all those people? Vertical Aeroponic Farming seems to be an idea whose time has come - it will let us use land, nutrients, power and water much more efficiently than ever before, while delivering a quality-controllable, year-round and emissions-positive food source for urban communities. Eric Vergne's Dystopian Farm is a design study that examines how a vertical farm might use the latest in agricultural and architectural technology to feed the cities of the future.

A looming global food crisis

For all our many advancements and civil societies, modern humanity is a ticking time-bomb of violence and destruction if certain key criteria aren't met. The most telling is food - Britain's MI5 security agency operates on the famous maxim that any society is only four missed meals away from complete anarchy - if some catastrophe interrupts the supply of food, widespread looting and rioting will quickly follow.

That catastrophe is becoming easier and easier to imagine, with vastly overcrowded and growing cities becoming ever more separate from their food sources. And consider this: with the population continuing to grow pretty much everywhere in the world except Western Europe, we're already farming more than 80% of the land that's suitable for crops - arable land which is disappearing at a rate of more than 100,000 square kilometres per year due to poor land management and deforestation.

Much of the third world is already in a serious food crisis - but with global food prices jumping a massive 75% since 2000, the developed world, its cities and urban areas are being affected for the first time. This is not a problem that will go away - the World Bank estimates that global food demand will *double* by 2030. It seems clear that some radical thinking is needed in the short-term to avert a global hunger epidemic in our lifetime, and the social upheaval that will go with it.

But how do we create food out of thin air?

Perhaps by growing it *in* thin air. Growing plants in soil may be the most obvious and 'natural' way to produce food crops, but it's by no means the most efficient, and the vast spread of variables in any patch of natural dirt makes for a poorly controlled production environment.

All plants really need to grow and thrive is light, water, nutrients, oxygen at the roots and carbon dioxide for photosynthesis. Dirt can be a supplier of nutrients, but isn't necessary in and of itself - hence the effectiveness of hydroponic plant growth, in which the plant's roots are submerged in nutrient-rich water.

But water in itself is becoming more and more scarce a commodity - and the more recent technology of aeroponics has proven itself to be a significantly more water- and energy-efficient means for food production.

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