Book Talk 5

                Chapter thirteen is about my home town, Chicago. The subtitle of this chapter is, “the Vertical Farm” and one can easily imagine what this means. Chicago is compacted and filled with tall buildings. Companies cannot build a place to work horizontally, so they have to build up. According to the media, the year 2010 was the year of the vertical farm – essentially a skyscraper layered with pigs, fish, arugula, tomatoes and lettuce. The only problem was that it has never been done before. The most recent wave of vertical-farming ideas is especially focused on “closed-loop system.” This is where livestock waste is intensively recycled as plant fertilizer; freshwater fish grow in tanks and produce nutrient-rich water for salad crops; water loss is minimum, and Mother Nature has no affect. Chicago is home to many well-established community gardens, including the Howard Area Community Garden. Developer, John Edel is creating “The Plant” in Chicago, which will be the first ever vertical farm.

                Chapter fourteen is about Cuba. In Cuba, by the 1980s, 1.3 million tons of chemical fertilizer and $80 million worth of pesticides were being used on the state directed Cuban mega-farms. Sugar was king with the help of the chemical fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides and tractors. Terminals could export up to 75,000 tons a day, which accounted for more than 74% of Cuban’s exported goods. Asides from the massive amounts of sugar that they grew, they grew normal products as well. They had normal farms, animals and products. Because of the civil war and the fighting, it slowed down productivity but nothing halted to a stop.

                The last chapter was conclusion. When the author started her book, she wanted to answer two different questions. Why the overnight interest in urban good gardens, urban chickens, and urban beekeeping? And what else was happening in cities that were taking back control of their food supplies and systems? After reading this, I have learned the answers to both of her main questions, but more developed as I was reading. The main question I have now is what does the future have in store for farming. Will cities look like variations of one of the Cuban cities, or will we build forty-story vertical farms to feed our growing urban populations? Because most of the population has moved away from the country side and towards cities and suburbs, what will become the most productive way for a farm to get their food to the public?