CPC is adjacent to a park and pea-patch, where neighborhood locals grow, in dirt, and lies along a busy path of shoppers, business-people and residents.  Our small patch of concrete will serve to inspire all to look at their  balconies and roof-tops as ‘fertile’ space.  This is goal one.  Images documenting progress and plant growth will be added as we go.  The project scale will be small - two feet by three feet and stacked two or three trays high.   

Equipment will be bought from online sources to get growing asap and gain confidence using these products.  Goal number two, however,  is to devise a do-it-yourself document for fashioning hydroponic systems from found objects and, more specifically, objects found in any urban slum.  Re-envisioning available ‘garbage’ and broken objects as tools for urban agriculture may help change someone’s life for the better.  In aggregate, the personal growing of several individuals and families within a slum could supply the product diveristy and bartering tools to change many people’s lives.   This DIY system will also be built and documented.

 http://www.cascadepeoplescenter.org/

Very gratifying - Thank you slideshare! 

www.slideshare.net   A Future for Agriculture

Below is the transcript:

01 Can nature offer all this?

My core message to you is this: “Our best available landscapes for food crop production and agricultural development are not yet exploited.”  If we had a place to precisely deliver nutrient, water, and carbon to food crops helping them yield ten to fifteen times, TIMES, more;

02 ‘How would you redesign agriculture?’

if we could grow while protecting plants from UV light, insects and pesticides, hostile atmosphere, eroding topsoil and super fertilizers; if we could grow without modifying a plant’s genes, if our farmers could sell crops directly to consumers or nearby grocery stores for higher

03 Hairy

financial return to themselves year-round, how could we not?  We are engaged in a fight against nature. We ask our landscape to support ag-systems to feed livestock and people with adverse effect; We ask crops to thrive where they do not naturally belong. More human beings now

04 ISS

live in urban environments than rural.  It is where we live that we radically adapt our environment for our convenience and comfort. We are pros’ at this, often living where we do not naturally belong.  A future for agriculture will also be URBAN.  To leverage long term value gains and

05 Port of Seattle

cost savings, farmers will ‘grow where you live’ – which is where you consume them; where more of the carbon dioxide plants need to thrive is produced; and where we are masters of our environments.  Every metropolitan area on the planet will significantly contribute to producing

06 Model diagram

it’s own food.  For urban-ag precedents we have roof top, and improvised empty-lot gardens throughout the world - most unique in serving its population is Havana.  However, I propose two paradigm shifts:  First, stack multiple levels of grow space, minimizing the greenhouse footprint.

07 Warner Brother’s Image

Second, plants are considered the primary user group – design decisions are made to maximize growing efficiencies; human beings will be treated fairly but they come second here.  Latitude, climatic zone, and local economies will influence building design strategies throughout the world

08 Baby

but all will be: non-soil growing; within sealable envelopes; and will ensure sunshine is the primary lighting source and ever only marginally, impeded.  This is a new building typology.   The short-term vision for these buildings starts in adapted spaces, like now-abandoned Circuit City stores

09 Seattle Asian Art Museum

and other casualties of our economy.  The roofs and equator facing walls are retrofitted with glazing to diffuse light and heat inside.  Other walls bounce light back in and reduce daily thermal shifts.  The volume of space these buildings provide allow for multiple stackings of grow systems

10 Model diagram

determined by physical plant attributes.  The long term vision of Urban Agriculture is of skyscrap-ing greenhouses.  The same three rules apply only floor plates are elongated to ensure minimal dependence on grow lights.  Structure, elevators, and other systems are staged at the poles-side.

11 Fish

Ideally the greenhouse is aquaponic meaning fish are added and their processed fecal matter provides a base nutrient level for plant growth. You can sell these fish, mercury free!  Nutrient tanks at each floor allow you to adjust the solution for specific plant needs.    Neighborhood composting

12 Water source

also serves as plant food. The sealed envelope is important to maintain higher levels of carbon dioxide and the ability to reclaim water released by the plants.  In conventional farming, significant amounts of water are simply lost to the environment.  LED lighting is supplemental but is

13 Model

calibrated to deliver wavelengths best used by plants – which most often is a combination of red and blue light.  This is precision delivery: nothing is thrown at the user group that won’t get used by the user group.  Carbon dioxide, water, nutrient, light , temperature, pH, all

14 Model

controlled in delivery for plant comfort, to thrive.  So what about the people?  Farmers will buy or rent entire floors to produce.  This is the opportunity for year-round growing with reduced costs for fertilizer, fuel, zero pesticides, saving more money to be invested in something else.

15 Model

Attentive labor and staff need to be educated in soil-less farming and, nutrient is still needed from outside the system though much less.  However, by growing among consumers – travel time, packaging, marketing, damaged crops, prematurely picked crops, and dealing with middle-men,

16 farmer’s market

become significantly reduced or unneccessary.  And, because a core value of this idea is keeping consumers connected to their food, public spaces woud be rentable for the public to grow crops just as you find in Seattle’s pea-patches today!  Regardong impoverished populations, we should

17 Urgency

urgently be providing and teaching hydroponic systems of any scale just as hard as we have pushed genetically modified crops, especially in places where nutrient is leached from the soil and no drop of water should be wasted.  The world’s urban poor must be able to use their available resources with

18 Mercy

precision rather than become dependent on our industrial genetic wizardry. Knowledge of soil-less growing techniques, improvised grow trays and composting, could viraly improve people’s nutrition, and micro-economies.  Governments must recognize informal urban farmers as assets, not liabilities.

19 Cow is stealing from you.

I’d like to leave you with two actionable ideas for the purpose of managing our resources better, until these facilities are built.  The first, obviously is to eat as local as you can.  The second is to eat less cow. One day we will ask why we allow so many of our natural resources to be

20 CITYCROPS.org

diverted to an industry that yields so little back to us.  After the presentations are over, your critique and questions are very welcomed.  Also, please visit our website.  My name is Aaron Briggs.  I represent CITYCROPS.org.  Thank you! 

time’s up

The skyscraping concepts will come as part of the long-term vision.  To start, we will buy and retrofit an existing building - single story, warehouse-ish - like a Circuit City or an abandoned building in Seattle’s up-and-coming neighborhoods.  The roof will be relaced with a glazing system, diffusing light throughout.  The interior will be ensured to minimize thermal shift and an interior stacking system will be set up for hydroponic grow trays.  In time the aquaponic system will be integrated. 

Data collection for each facility will be important, especially for this first facility, and much data already exists to gauge efficient marketable productivity.  In comparison to the typical ag business models and impacts on farmers and consumers, growing food in the city buildings will prove to be a good plan.

I have a lot of experience with aviation architecture and working with a number of stakeholders to develop an environmentally responsible airport was as good a project as any to practice what LEED is helping to achieve. It’s not that I’m uber-passionate about airports, but I am passionate about helping any project find new efficiencies and ways to be environmentally sound. But the economy got the best of the tourist industry in Hawaii (down 40% at last count) and stalled our project a bit - as did the hierarchy. Then it caught up with us here in Seattle and around the US.  You know the story - many, many rounds of layoffs of architects in Seattle-area firms, not to mention my colleagues in LA who had been let go the month before (and it doesn’t look like the employment forecast is going to get any better any time soon).

Strangely (or perhaps is not) the next day was filled with relief.  It only took me a few days to realize this project is what I should have been developing  in the few years prior. Since working full time on CITYCROPS, I’ve been able to reconnect with why I love architecture. We can create public buildings and spaces that matter to people and help us change the way we think about and use our resources.

It’s fair to say being your own client doesn’t pay well at first. It’s fair to say I’ve been stressed (occasionally) about what that means. It’s fair to say that if I still worked in a firm, I would have found my way back to this project and my passions in architecture. But timing being what it is, I’m grateful for the ability to do this.

Urban greenhouses, proposed by CITYCROPS, require two paradigm shifts for design.  The first is to stack grow-floors on top of each other.  Stacking floors is not a stretch for city centers but covering grow-space is.  And if you have been in any office building, a dozen stories up, you have likely seen a sad looking potted plant, and you probably hoped there wasn’t black mold.

Paradigm shift two is:  Plants are the number one user group, not people.  Plants have needs, different from ours.  The design process requires you to determine what those are to achieve maximum crop production.  Regarding the need for sunshine, shift one is not in conflict with shift two if you understand the ‘unspoken’ paradigm shift ‘three’ which is to design for ecological sustainability.  (Thank you, Isaac Asimov.)

Simplicity is a means to achieving sustainability and, I would argue, conveyor systems and an over-reliance on electric lights is not ’simple’.  But supplemental lighting,  with a shallow, long floor-plate and lots of sunlight diffusing glass, are.  It’s fortunate that plants don’t need sunglasses.

The real issue is delivery, not scale.  Giving ‘more’ to food crops for growth and taking ‘more’ land to do it has kept most of us fed, thus far.  If instead we addressed ‘how’ we were feeding crops and ‘where’, we might all be getting fed, and using fewer resources to do it.

If you give a baby a spoon and enough open jars, you can be sure some of the food will get swallowed.  But then, why would we do that?  A solution to this, at least for human food crops, is to grow hydroponically, well, aquaponically, and you grow it in urban greenhouses.  Delivery of food and water goes directly to the plant’s roots and crops get delivered directly to the consumer, where they live - where you live.