Gorgon Graff’s SkyFarm Concept Meant For Downtown Toronto!

Toronto scientist Gordon Graff has constructed plans for a 58-floor concept building called the “Sky Farm”, (2.7 million square ft. of floor area and 8 million square ft. of growing area), which would grow crops in the heart of Toronto’s downtown theatre district. This could potentially provide enough food for 35,000 people every day. Though the design and construction would be very expensive, Graff believes that the farm could reap about $23,000,000 in annual revenue.

Vertical farming has the possibility of making our cities more sustainable by cutting the miles “food travels.” Therefore, in cities the best direction to grow now is up. High density greenhouses would be a productive use of energy, space and water, and such a building would have a massive green-roof effect. Much of the waste would be recycled, composted and reused, and the vertical farm could operate entirely organically, without the use of pesticides or fertilizers.

The building would grow products ranging from soybeans to strawberries, to fields of lettuce. A service core at the back of the tower would include irrigation and electrical systems, and an isolated lower area could house chickens bred for both eggs and meat.

The protest innate in the vertical farming designs are odor, pest control, effective drainage, and the complicated system of trucking and distribution that would be required. However, such a building, would hypothetically avoid problems like seasonal droughts, diseases spread by livestock and water runoff pollution. Plus, Torontonians would gain profit from locally grown produce, and growth could be increased with a simulated controlled climate and 24hr “sunlight” year-round.

Farmers are a dying breed and according to the United Nations, the world’s population growth over the next 30 years will demand 60% more food than we produce now and by 2050, almost 80% of Earth’s population will live in urban areas.

Sadly, we aren’t likely see a “SkyFarm” in Toronto anytime soon, but we can imagine a day when they’ll no longer be an unfamiliar part of our skyline.