Farm sprawl: Farming high rises

When Dickson Despommier, a Microbiologist and professor at Columbia University in New York, first thought up "vertical farming" the concept of indoor farming wasn't new. He'd been working on a rooftop gardening project, which over eight years spun into a full building venture. With the world's rapidly decreasing good farm soil on the horizon, Despommier and his crew took the statistic that 80 percent of the world by 2050 would be living in urban dwellings and turned it on its head by having the country come to the city. Vertical farming isn't just a play on words, the idea is to create skyscrapers that are literally farms of produce from strawberries to corn on each floor, and in the middle of town centers. According to the group's website, "If successfully implemented, they 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 horizontal farming."

By letting the land lay low for a while, Despommier and his Vertical Farm team of architecture and environmental health students, from not just Columbia but other schools like the University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana, believe the earth can begin to repair itself without allowing billions of people to go hungry, as class four and five hurricanes ravage ocean fronts and floods take their tolls. With a checklist of must-haves and a list of dos and don'ts, Vertical Farming may be the way of the future.

To learn more about Vertical Farming and it's advantages, head to Verticalfarm.com.

Click here to watch a video from CNN about eco solutions and vertical farming