
Today more
than half the world’s people – 3.2 billion of them – live in cities, and all
predictions are that this number will only grow. To feed a city, food has a
long journey, both in terms of transport and the producer-consumer chain. That
is why people are starting to grow their food where they live – in the city.
Urban farming opens up new opportunities and finds new uses for spaces that are
unvalued or, maybe, simply hidden from human eyes. Farms on building rooftops
are a popular option today. One of the leaders in this field is the United
States.
We spoke with the creators of one American rooftop farm. Mary and Joseph Ostafi, founders of FOOD ROOF FARM (Saint Louis, Missouri), spoke with us about how a rooftop farm can turn places forgotten by the city into productive spaces, and how they were able to inspire city dwellers to grow food everywhere they can.
– Mary and
Joe, could you tell us about how your rooftop farm began?
Joe: We
started doing urban farming in 2011 – we created community gardens in St.
Louis. We had to keep jumping from property to property. The problem is that
the land is usually owned by a developer or building owner, and they don’t want
to let it go, so agreeing on rent is complicated – it’s hard to maintain
something long term. We finally started to look up a different solution. One of
our community gardener’s husbands owned a building in the city center. We asked
if he had any interest in putting a community garden on top of this building.
He found it to be an intriguing question, and we took a tour of the building.
It was perfect because it was structurally sound and able to withstand the
weight of putting a garden – or a farm in this case – on top of the building.
Mary and I both have an architecture background so it was easy for us to
visualize the possibilities. The owner of the building was looking for more
revenue from his property, and everything on his property is rent-based. Our
idea was attractive for him – it is normally an unoccupied space that brings in
no income.
Mary: There
wasn’t much opportunity on the ground because we’re in a dense urban
environment. Rooftops are the new
opportunity.
– How
widespread was rooftop gardening when you began your project?
М: I
wouldn’t say that it was widespread in our country. There are some rooftop
farms in the United States, and we have been fortunate to learn from a few
other rooftop farmers in Chicago, New York, and Toronto. But there were none in
St. Louis, so ours was the first.
– Is there
any regulation of rooftop gardening? Does a building owner have the right to
build a farm on his roof?
M: The
project is zoned as a commercial property, so we’re allowed to put a business
on the rooftop. Some cities, like Chicago, have specific urban agriculture
ordinances that incentivize urban agriculture.
St. Louis is not quite there yet, so we just had to follow typical building
codes.
J: We had to make sure the building could structurally support a farm. It’s a lot, as you could imagine – putting all that soil on the roof. It’s heavier than most roofs are designed for. The weight of the farm is five times higher than the weight of snow. We hired structural engineers to do an analysis to be sure the roof could hold it. That was probably the biggest regulation hurdle we had to get over.
– Construction must have required a lot of financial investment. Was it hard to get the necessary funding?
J: Our
community has a long-standing track record for supporting agriculture,
technology, innovative ideas, and philanthropy. All those things combined in
our project. We’re a non-profit, so we rely on money coming in as donations. It
took us a good part of two and a half years to raise the money, but we did do
it, and were amazed at how supportive the community was.
M: Our
largest funder was the Metropolitan Sewer District. We received a stormwater
management grant.
Cities like
St. Louis have very antiquated sewer systems, so there are a lot of overflow
issues when we have storms. The Metropolitan Sewer District is trying to
mitigate that, and we brought a unique solution – rooftop farms. Essentially a
green roof system captures and reduces the amount of water that goes into the
sewer system. As part of that grant we designed the rooftop farm to hold as
much water as possible, and that’s not typically what a green roof system is
designed for, but our farm can hold up to 17,000 gallons of water per storm
event. So it was a win-win for us and for the Metropolitan Sewer District.
– Could you tell us more about the rainwater harvesting system, and the water supply system in general?
J: Most
roofs have a water supply system, because you need it for the mechanical
systems of the building. Things such as a cooling tower or a chiller are
usually on the roof, so frequently there’s already a water supply through a
standard spigot. So getting water to the roof isn’t the issue for us, but
getting the distribution of water throughout the roof system was the challenge.
We constructed an irrigation system to distribute water to the plants when they
need it through a drip system.
Something
to take into account is that over the winter everything freezes, so we have to
drain all the water systems.
M: There
are two ways we harvest rainwater. Our agricultural green roof has a retention
board that is right below the soil – it captures water during a rainstorm. The
water remains there until our plants wick it up through capillary action.
During the next rainstorm, it gets replenished. The other way that we capture
rainwater is the roof of the greenhouse. We have gutters on the roof and it
gets routed into the greenhouse into a modular system where the rainwater sits
until we use it to water the greenhouse.
J: Actually it’s a very standard European system. And I think one of the interesting things for us was that even our green roof specialist had to get a lot of materials from Europe. The green roof system industry in the US is a little bit behind Europe’s.
– What was
the hardest part of the project?
J:
Construction itself was a big challenge for us. The hardest part is that
there’s not an infrastructure of builders that know how to build a rooftop
farm. There are companies that have installed green roofs, and there are lots
of roof contractors. A green roof for farming is something different, and there
are only a few companies that have ever done it. It’s hard to find a contractor
that does both as one package. So we had to stitch together a lot of disparate
contractors ourselves.
М: Our
profession really helped us in building the farm: as architects we were central
figures and managed the building process, because we know how it had to look in
the end. But it was very complicated, everything was very fast-paced, and we
both had full-time jobs as we were doing it.
It was a new project type for us and the contractors. We learned a lot on our own, and it will come in handy in the future. Now we know how to do it faster, easier, and cheaper.
J: We hired
structural engineers, hydrologists regarding the rainwater capture piece,
irrigation specialists, plumbing, a greenhouse contract, a green roof
specialist, a soil agronomist, and a roofing system specialist. That was to get
through all the city permitting issues, so it was a small but complex project
that involved a lot of specialists.
Some people
contact with us after finding out about us in the media. For example, the green
roof contractor and the green roof specialist helped us get a grant.
And then
yes, through my work there were a lot of building materials suppliers that we
were able to tap into. Some of them even donated materials.
– What were
the major costs?
J: I would
say the new roofing system was probably the most expensive thing. Then the
green roof came with the drainage boards, the soil, and the aggregate,
etc. Probably three-quarters of our cost
was into those two elements. After that, the greenhouse was the next most
expensive thing.
– How did
you select which cultures to grow?
M: Since
this was our first year, I wanted to experiment with growing as much as
possible, so that I could learn and see what works best on a rooftop in our
region. We knew that what grows best on a roof in New York or Chicago is not
necessarily going to be the best for our microclimate. We grew sixty-two
varieties of plants on the roof this year: ten different types of tomatoes, six
different types of peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, herbs. We have seen what
works best and now we are making a plan for next year.
J: Also we do research on a variety of different growing methodologies – like hydroponics, for example.
– Is your
produce eco-friendly?
J: We
advertise our products as being organic because we don’t use any pesticides or
herbicides. We also like to use more heirloom-variety seeds and not hybrid
seeds.
– How do
the environmental factors in the city affect the farm? How does the farm handle
the air pollution, the car exhaust, the dust?
M: Plants
are actually extremely resilient and they’re excellent at filtering air. There
have been studies that have shown that plants, especially food crops, grown in
the urban environment are not that affected by air pollution. They’re more
affected by soil pollution. So if you grow plants in contaminated soil that are
high in heavy metals, they will soak it up through their root structure and it
will integrate in the plant. So we need to watch the quality of the soil, which
we do.
J: I want to note that sustainability is the basis of our project. When we conceptualized the project, we tried to make it as ecological as possible. We tried to create a closed-loop and a biologically-diverse space. Besides growing food we also created a pollinator garden for butterflies and other pollinators like bees, and put in beehives. Soon we will have chickens.
By putting
a farm on the roof we are also reducing the temperature of the microclimate –
we’re reducing the heat island effect, as we call it here in the United States.
– You spoke
about how it is important to have healthy soil. How do you manage the soil?
М: The
first year of the soil is always the biggest challenge because you have to
build up the microbiology and provide nutrients. Due to weight restrictions we
can’t add organic matter like compost, like we normally would. Plants get their
nutrition through liquid organic products added to the soil. Different plants
take up different nutrients from the soil. So we have to plan ahead where to
put our plants to provide them with all necessary nutrition. Crop rotation is
very important.
J: To keep
track of the soil’s health and quality, we run tests. We take soil samples and
give them to a laboratory at a local university where scientists analyze them.
They give us a report of the pH and nutrient levels. That helps us to see what
the health of our soil is, and what we need to do to balance it out or make it
healthier.
– Who
consumes the produce grown on your farm?
М: This
year we donated 60% of our food. Since we started four years ago we’ve been
partnering with St. Patrick Center, a charity that focuses on reducing
homelessness. The center has a café that
is a training kitchen for homeless people to learn skills and then get a job in
the restaurant industry.
We also
have a community garden on the farm where people lease their own plots and grow
their own food. I think that’s about thirteen percent of the food grown on the
roof.
The rest of
it we sell to local restaurants. This year I delivered food to several
restaurants by bicycle. That way we have earned some income to offset all of
the food we donate in the community.
– I would
imagine that you’re helped out by volunteers.
М: Yeah,
I’m the only full-time staff. I run the organization and the farm. I have a
group of volunteers that help on a regular basis and other volunteers that come
on community volunteer days. We had at least a hundred volunteers on the farm
this year. Some of them are students. Some of them are people who live in the
neighborhood. Some of them are retirees, some of them are master gardeners… We
have all kinds of people come and help out on the farm. Some people have never
grown food in their lives and are really curious about learning. Other people
have a lot of experience growing food and want to lend their expertise. We
invite anybody to help out that’s willing to lend us a hand.
– Does the
produce you sell compete on price with produce grown far away, shipped in, and
sold in supermarkets?
М: Our
produce is more expensive. But restaurants buy from us, because they know
exactly where it was grown and by whom. It’s harvested and within ten minutes
delivered to their kitchen. Besides, it’s a good story for their business to be
supporting a local urban farm.
Food that’s
grown locally and organically, whether on the roof or on the ground, is more
nutritious because it’s getting to the restaurant or the end consumer a lot
faster than conventional produce.
J: Financially we cannot compete with large food distributors for restaurants. Our farm is very small scale, and we cannot produce food at the same price as large distributors.
– Why do you do all of this?
J: We are a
not-for-profit, non-commercial organization, as you have probably already
realized. In the United States there’s a term – “social enterprise”, which I
think aligns with what we’re doing.
М: A social
enterprise is a business whose main focus is having an impact. So for us it’s
an impact on society. Our mission is to grow healthy food while growing a
healthy community. For us that mean putting a farm right in the middle of the
city where people live so that people can come and experience the farm and
learn from it and get inspired by it. First and foremost we want to engage
people in the local food system, but we need a way to support the farm and pay
the bills. To do that we sell part of our produce to restaurants.
We would
love for people to grow food wherever they can, whether somebody has a backyard
and they’re growing a garden, or they participate in a community garden, or
they find a rooftop and start an urban farm. We hope that we can help them with
that. The more food that we can grow in our cities that is being directly
distributed to people in the community, the fresher it’s going to be, and the
more resilient our food systems will be.
In addition to our charity work, we started partnering with local schools. A lot of schools have their own gardens, but wanted to see what it looks like on a rooftop. Some simply come on field trips, and for one nearby school we became a good outdoor classroom. We allocated a small portion of the farm for a youth education area. So the kids – they were second-graders – planted some food and watched it grow and harvested it.
– In your
opinion, how will food be produced in the future – in, say, 10, 20, or 30 years
from now?
J: I think
the future of urban agriculture is more rooftop farms, more vertical gardening,
indoor hydroponic gardens. Of course, it still has its challenges in terms of
profitability and commercialization – the scale needs to be significant.
M: Urban
farming is going to gain momentum and is the way of the future. People are
becoming aware of the food that they eat and demanding healthier, organic food.
People support the local food system because they can get a glimpse into where
their food was grown and they trust it.
– Are there
projections of what percentage of the world’s essential crops will be grown by
cities?
М: The Food
and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has recently reported that
800 million people worldwide grow fruits or vegetables in cities. They say that
urban farms are currently producing one fifth of the world food supply. Since
this trend is becoming more popular and more feasible, I would say that number
is going to double within ten years, maybe even more.
– What
advice do you have for people who are only beginning to build their rooftop
farms?
М: For
people who are just starting out, my biggest word of advice is to start small.
That’s something that I’ve learned from other urban farmers. Start small with a
big vision but gradually make your way up there.
The other
thing is to leverage people like myself and Joe and others. We’ve gained
expertise, we’ve built our farm, and now we’re consulting other people.
– What are
your plans for the future?
М:
This is our pilot project, and we’re learning from it. We hope to scale up to
many other rooftop farms in St. Louis and actually beyond the city. We’re
currently talking to a couple of building owners downtown who have approached
us and are interested in building a farm on their roof. Next year we hope to
have at least one more rooftop farm, maybe more.
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