New blog series: Urban sustainability and vertical farming
70% of Europeans live in cities, and that share is growing in almost every country worldwide. These people, on average, eat three meals a day. In a city like London that’s 30 million meals.
30 million meals is a lot of food. Bringing 30 million meals to 10 million mouths is a logistical miracle, and if we’re going to talk about sustainable food, we have to acknowledge that virtually none of it is grown, reared, or processed where it’s consumed.
But it could be.
This basic premise is behind the new blog series: Urban Sustainability and Vertical Farming. This series will loosely build on the dissertation I wrote at the London School of Economics a few years ago. It will explore how a technological innovation, vertical farming, could be used to shift London’s foodscape towards sustainability.
Over the next few weeks we will explore questions including:
- Is vertical farming even sustainable?
- Why does it matter to London?
- What impact could vertical farming bring?
- How do we scale it?
The aim of this series is to inform and inspire debate. Many of those following this blog don’t need convincing of the potential of such technologies, but the slow uptake signals that these views are not shared. Therefore I invite you to share these around and talk about it around you. Don’t hesitate to start a debate in the comments sections or reach out to me directly.
