Building-integrated agriculture / REF / 108 / 2014

Building-integrated agriculture (BIA) is of the practice of locating high performance hydroponic greenhouse farming systems on and in mixed use buildings to exploit synergies between the built environment and agriculture.
Typical characteristics of BIA installations include: recirculating hydroponics, waste heat captured from a building's heating-ventilation-air condition system (HVAC), solar photovoltaics or other forms of renewable energy, rainwater catchment systems, and evaporative cooling.
The earliest example of BIA may have been the Hanging Gardens of Babylon around 600 BC. Modern examples include Eli Zabar's rooftop greenhouse, The Sun Works Center for Environmental Studies, Gotham Greens, Sky Vegetables, Top Sprouts, Cityscape Farms, Dongtan, Masdar City, AeroFarms, Solar 2, Lufa Farms, BrightFarms, and Big Box Farms.
The term building-integrated agriculture was coined by Dr. Ted Caplow in a paper delivered at the 2007 Passive and Low Energy Cooling Conference in Crete, Greece.

Background

Applications of BIA are motivated by trends in patterns of energy use, global population, and global climate change. Specific observations include:

• Globally, modern agriculture uses 70% of fresh water withdrawals, is the world's largest source of water pollution, and the largest consumer of land.
• According to official UN estimates, global population is expected to exceed nine billion by 2050. Food travels hundreds of thousands of miles to reach urban consumers, adding to traffic congestion, air pollution and carbon emissions.
• Increased urbanization, results in marginalization of natural world and distance from food production.
• In the United States, buildings account for 39% of energy use, 68% of electricity consumption, 12% of water consumption, and 38% of carbon dioxide emissions.
• Global warming is predicted to lead to widespread shortages of food, water, and arable land by 2050.

Environmental advantages

Proponents maintain that BIA is an environmentally sustainable strategy for urban food production that reduces our environmental footprint, cuts transportation costs, enhances food security / safety, conserves water, protects rivers, improves health, reduces waste, cools buildings, and combats global warming. For example, hydroponics uses ten to twenty times less land and ten times less water than conventional agriculture, while eliminating chemical pesticides, fertilizer runoff, and carbon emissions from farm machinery and long distance transport. Using a building's waste heat and solar photo voltaic panels reduces fossil fuel emissions that typically result from production and distribution. Rainwater catchment systems help to manage stormwater, much like a green roof.

Economics

Integrating a farm into a building offers all of the building performance benefits of a more conventional green roof, and results in a lower combined energy bill than if the components were separate. These systems are achievable with extant technology. Projects such as Gotham Greens 10,000-square-foot (930 m²) greenhouse will cost approximately $1.4 million to build. Shulman, Robin. "Raising the Root: Some City Dwellers Are Hoping Rooftop Farming Will Bear Fruit.". The economics of BIA were the subject of a 2011 article in the New York Times business section.

Applications

 BIA systems may be integrated into commercial, educational, and residential buildings of varying sizes. Feasibility varies based on building size, climate, availability of light, and new build vs. retrofit. BIA farms are located on the building's envelope to make maximum use of normal light. Both horizontal (rooftop) and vertical (façade) surfaces may be used.
A sprinkling of rooftop hydroponic greenhouses can be found around the world, including at academic centers in the United States (Washington University and Barnard College, among others); on a hospital (Changi) in Singapore; in the Netherlands, in India, and in parts of the developing world. The Science Barge, while not on a building, is widely credited with invigorating interest in BIA in New York City, following its 2007 public debut.

Retrofit

Example of  retrofit projects include:  has been the growing of vegetables since  heating the rooftop greenhouse with waste heat .

Related concepts

Vertical farming is a proposed agricultural concept in which entire urban high-rise buildings, not just the building envelope, are dedicated to large-scale farming. According to various researchers, to be realized vertical farms would require significant technological breakthroughs with regards to energy consumption and lighting. It has been estimated that a prototype five-story farm would cost between $20 million to $30 million.
Methane capture greenhouses utilize recovered landfill methane to heat their facility. Rutger’s EcoComplex includes a 1-acre (4,000 m²) commercial greenhouse heated by landfill gas, allowing for year-round production of food crops. The heat for H2gro’s greenhouse is produced using special heat recovery equipment surrounding 7 electrical generators at neighboring Innovative Energy. These generators are powered by methane gas collected from Modern Landfill. By using waste heat from the landfill gas to energy plants, carbon emissions are significantly reduced (as compared to traditional fossil fuel boilers that are often used to heat greenhouses).
In compost heated greenhouses, heat and carbon dioxide are generated from a manure-based compost contained in a special chamber attached to one side of the greenhouse.^[ An experimental composting greenhouse was designed and built  in 1983 to research opportunities for the production of biothermal energy. Growing Power utilizes heat produced through vermicomposting to provide heat for their greenhouse.


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