The rise and benefits of urban farming

Added on 14 December 2022

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Crops produced by urban farming can have higher yields than conventional ones, but the benefits of urban agriculture go beyond food.

In 2019, Gotham Greens opened its 9,300-square-metre Baltimore farm on the former site of Bethlehem Steel, once the largest steel-manufacturing plant in the world. It’s one of ten farms the company has established across cities in the USA – three more are in the pipeline – repurposing unused rooftop spaces and derelict factories for food production.

With urban populations projected to increase by 2.5 billion by 2050, urban agriculture could help to feed our growing cities. But despite the rise in city-based farms, Florian Payen says that there’s still a lot we don’t know about them, including the economic and environmental costs.