Farming For Community Transformation: Aeroponics to Uplift an impoverished communiy

Poverty and food insecurity are inextricably linked. As with most complex problems, it’s messy, requires context and there is more than one answer. Industrial aeroponic farming may set a new standard for agriculture, but how exactly will it help those in greatest need? Inner city micro aeroponic farming could also provide novel solutions for well-being.

“One in five families in Chicago households is experiencing food insecurity.” Headlines like this from the Greater Chicago Food Depository website are mirrored around the world. Globally, nearly 30% of the population does not have consistent access to food. The key drivers: climate change, conflict over natural resources and economic shocks. The World Health Organization calls for a redoubling of efforts to transform agrifood systems and leverage them towards reaching UNSDGs.

Food insecurity is defined as the set of circumstances that prevent consistent access to food. Increased food prices, rising inflation, and record numbers of asylum seekers are among the culprits exacerbating a historically poverty stricken population in Chicago who often live in inner city communities further beset by concentrated gentrification.According to the US Department of Agriculture, the all-food Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose by a total of 20.4 percent

Blue collar workers, traditional in-person jobs that involve physical labor or skilled trade are the working class backbone of America. But it’s in the service industry, this tertiary sector, a whole vertebral column of health care, education, administration, retail and hospitality workers, most of whom are people of color, some 18 percent of the population, are the lowest paid and most in demand. After the big end of 2022, when 50 million US citizens decided to leave their jobs, a stubborn shortfall of manufacturing and service workers remains.

While the affluent retreated anew to second homes during Covid, swathes of frontline workers living in historically diverse vibrant US cityscapes remained in dilapidated poverty-stricken neighborhoods. Not to mention homelessness and drug addiction, inner city communities are in dire need of resolutions to physiological problems: food, shelter, clothing and rest.

The Greater Chicago Food Depository provided a staggering 76.5 million meals across its food programs in the 2023 fiscal year, up 25% compared to pre-pandemic times. Food sourced through donations and purchase is managed and redistributed into the communities in need.

The shock and awe of both the incredible quantity of food readily available for donation, and the complete range of quality, from organics to hyper processed food, the latter of which is most abundant, highlight a complex food management challenge for reappropriation. Luckily, food banks do exactly this. And still, handing over endless boxes of processed foods to the poor is a gut-wrenching experience. All food is not created equally and poor people often get the most low quality food, further exasperating well-being and ultimately the quality of human capital, a nation’s greatest resource.

Expanding the food distribution system globally, snacks, protein bars and quick solutions to improve nutrition without water or cooking do not come from sustainable delivery systems or provide prolonged nutrition for those in war zones. Former US Senate Agriculture Committee chair Pat Roberst put it bluntly in a 2015 speech, “show me a nation that cannot feed itself and I will show you a nation in chaos.” At that time, one in nine people, some 800 million people around the world, were going to bed hungry. Today, that number is estimated to be at least 828 million.

Redistributing food is problem solving through management, iteratively striking a balance between an ebb and flow of goods to people while often also managing cascading offshoot programs for transformation.

A reimagining of food cultivation is visionary. Visionary thinking is resolute, intentional and purposeful for a desired future state. The future of food cultivation is already a reality with massive potential to eliminate poverty.

NASA established alternative food growing systems to support the International Space Station in 1984. Today, individual and commercial alternative food cultivation largely fits into two categories, aeroponics and hydroponics, both soil-less growing methods. Aeroponic systems grow plants vertically, washing exposed root systems with nutrientenhanced waters at regular intervals whereas hydroponic systems immerse roots. Both systems are significantly environment friendly. As a start, they completely bypass soil use and therewith soil degradation, while also radically cutting carbon footprint and free up vast tracts of land. Compared to traditional farming, alternative cultivation systems produce up to 30% higher yields and up to 98% reduced water usage. It goes without saying that indoor farming is year round.

Commercial-grade aeroponic farms dot the US with the world’s largest aeroponic farm, the start-up Aerofarms located in a former steel factory in Newark New Jersey, capable of producing up to 2 million pounds of greens a year is setting a new standard in agricultural production. The 70,000 square foot facility grows more food with less effort than comparable traditional farming. Aeroponics resolves numerous traditional farming-related issues such as chemicals, climate and transit. Appropriately, Aerofarms is named one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company, the leading US magazine focused on companies “inventing the future and reinventing business.”

Vertical Harvest, a venture capital backed in Jackson Hole Wyoming opened in 2016 specifically to employ “underserved populations,” community members with developmental disabilities, formerly incarcerated citizens and immigrants seeking asylum as a community oriented indoor farming company producing 100,000 pounds of vegetables a year. As a second venture, Westbrook Maine is on track to opena 52,000 square foot hydroponic greenhouse capable of producing 2, 200, 000 pounds of food and provide careers for up to 50 underserved community members, proving their point that architecture can be a vehicle for change. In another, “hyperlocal sustainable farming” example, Altius Farms sits atop a restaurant in a gentrifying part of downtown Denver, Colorado. Restaurants like Bell Book & Candle in New York City, who claim to grow 60% of produce atop their own roof top aeroponic garden reflects the variety of applications for aeroponics. Apart from the usual greens, watermelons, strawberries, well over 150 varieties of above ground vegetables, flowers and herbs can be grown in alternative systems.

By the end of the century, more than 11 billion people will reside here on earth, up from 8 billion today. The business case for alternative food cultivation could not be more clear. Alternative food cultivation could directly reduce poverty through increased quality food production. Aerofarms may be a standout for the future of farming. And still the question remains, what about community life, affordability and inclusivity? Not everyone will be able to access premium priced nutrition, regardless of where it is farmed.

The development of neighborhood farms especially within a repurposing of commercial spaces particularly in urban and inner city environments, where food is most needed is also a key to sustainable communities, UN SDG#1. For sure current commercial alternative cultivation aims to serve both retail and community shoppers year-round.

A re-entering of communities around indoor alternative farms aims more pointedly at human centered problem solving for poverty at street level, in the city where the poor actually are.

A Chigaco startup, The Food for Life Research Project, reimagines inner city commercial real estate for food cultivation in a pivotal vision for literally bringing new life into impoverished communities. Whereas industrial food cultivation is clearly on the rise, communities rely on ease of connection and access to basic needs and beyond.

Food cultivation systems need to be securely housed, have access to electricity and clean water. That’s about it. A replicable inner-city /urban model for sustainable community well-being through alternative food production could also provide jobs, redefine innercity living where quality food is easily accessible and serves as an anchor point for gentrifying neighborhoods otherwise left behind. A sustainable, income generating model readily available to those who need it most, the poor, is the transformative vision underway in Fox Lake Chicago.