Trend Alert: Digital, Indoor, Ultra Urban…Farming?

Image courtesy Ildar Sagdejev, Wikimedia Commons

Yes, Whole Foods Market’s Top Ten Food Trends for 2022 include edgy foodstuffs like yuzu, moringa, and hibiscus. But the top food trend may surprise you: ultra-urban farming.

Ultra-urban farming relies on CEA techniques. CEA is “controlled environment agriculture,” where crops are produced in an environment designed to provide optimal growing conditions. CEA systems can range from simple hoop houses or greenhouses to elaborate automated, closed-loop systems with controlled lighting, water, and ventilation. Advanced systems tend to minimize use of space, water, fertilizer, and pesticides and can also limit labor costs. Many CEA techniques are well-suited to urban areas and promise to provide high-quality food close to consumers. Advocates argue that they’re a key part of sustainable, resilient food systems. Critics say that their benefits are over-hyped.

In terms of land use, CEAs disengage farming practices from their traditional requirement of open land with good soil, a relationship that we as planners (and our zoning ordinances) tend to take for granted. What we know as planners is that, as agriculture increasingly crosses the rural/urban divide, CEA systems will be challenging to implement under regulations written when it was safe to assume that agriculture meant open space.

Planners in urban areas can expect to see indoor and rooftop ultra urban agriculture increasingly incorporated into master-planned residential and mixed-used developments, sometimes at the behest of government policies related to public health and community development. Planners everywhere can expect to see farming of all types adopt digital, technology-oriented approaches to production, while large swaths of traditional farmland become dedicated to farms of a completely different sort: solar energy production. APA PA wants to know what this looks like in your community. Please drop us a line through our social accounts!