The Largest Rooftop Organic Urban Farm in the World
Can you imagine a 150,000-square-foot farm on a rooftop that can produce 1Ton of seasonal fruits and vegetables per day manned by 22 market gardeners with 40 culture spaces for rent, able to accommodate 10,000 visits per year? That is not a dream, but a reality Agropolis, an innovative company in urban farming is installing in Paris. Set to launch in 2020, this humongous rooftop farm is certainly a testament to the fact that rooftop gardening is an achievable solution for sustainable food production in cities which are increasingly becoming densely populated. This is not the first rooftop farm project by Agripolis, they also installed a 300m2 rooftop farm on the roof terrace of a hotel in Boulogne Billancourt. You can watch the installation video here. Image courtesy and all credits to Agripolis.
The French Government’s Parisculteurs initiative in Paris has an objective “to green 100 hectares of buildings by 2020 in the capital, a third of which will be dedicated to urban agriculture.”
Other Rooftop Gardens
There are other rooftop gardens in different parts of the world such as
1) Waldspirale, Darmstadt Germany
which is said to host “as many trees as there are human occupants”.
2) Gardens By The Bay, Singapore
There are futuristic super-trees which are concrete and steel tree-like structures standing as tall as 30m and host over 200 species of exotic plants. There is also a cloud forest which “houses plants from tropical highlands as high as 2,000 metres above sea level. Besides carnivorous plants, stalactites and stalagmites that can be taken in from the cloud walk or treetop walk, the conservatory houses an impressive 35-metre-tall waterfall set against a carpeted wall of plants.
Granted, these are ambitions to aspire towards as Kenyans but it goes to show that rooftop gardening is a serious venture that can generate income as well as provide educational value, healthy foods and beneficial plants for citizens.