Harvest green project - 01
"We can not overestimate the transformative power of food and agriculture. A sustainable agri-food system can be harnessed to realize enormous benefits to BC community objectives such as improving BC health, strengthening local economies, and reducing climate emissions. Planning communities in BC around food to create sustainable food and agriculture systems is not only possible, it is essential.
"Foregrounding" food across this province is one of the top priorities for BC in the 21st century."
Harvest Green Project explores the notion of the 'foregrounding' of a new agri-food system in and around the strategic urban location of an arterial transit hub. To a certain extent, we have seen 20th century town planning disregard the importance of food and farming, and urban development has virtually eliminated agriculture in our cities. By 2050, there will be globally an additional 3 billion people to feed, and traditional farming simply can not sustain this increase in population. Therefore, incorporating urban farming prominently into the fabric of the city, and in a synergistic mixed-use development integrated with transit, is a way to re-assert the cultural and environmental importance of locally produced food to the health and sustainability of the city and its residents. The concept of the "vertical farm" is not new. No new mechanics or science is needed - the technology exists today. Dr. Dickson Despommier, an environmental health scientist at Columbia University, is currently exploring this concept in cities such as New York and Shanghai. His work reveals that for every one acre of indoor farming, four to six acres of outdoor land can be saved. It is also well recognized that traditional commercial farming is currently in a crisis situation. For example, due to the effects of climate change, farmers are unable to continue to grow the same crops. Furthermore, massive flooding, protracted droughts, class 4-5 hurricanes take their toll each year, destroying millions of tons of valuable crops. The over-use of pesticides has also rendered much of the world's farmland soils infertile.
If successfully implemented, projects like the Harvest Green Project can offer the promise of urban renewal, sustainable production of a safe and varied food supply, year round crop production, and the eventual repair of ecosystems that have been sacrificed for large-scale traditional horizontal farming.
(From competitor's text)
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