For such economical reasons, Dickson Despommier,

professor of environmental health sciences and microbiology

at Columbia University in New York City,

believes that the food growth should come from the inside.

So, he has developed the idea of vertical farming.

But what exactly is vertical farming?

It is an architectural approach, based on two concepts:

the vertical development of buildings,

and the possibility of cultivating biological products from the inside.

Take a look.

My name is Dickson Despommier.

I teach at Columbia University's medical school and school of public health.

The world would be a much better place if we had vertical farming.

New York City, where I live, that's a big city right? Eight million people.

These eight million people consume food that it takes the state of Virginia in land mass to grow.

We have to find another way to farm.

And here's the other way to farm.

If you could think of stacking greenhouses on top of each other, that would be one way to envision it.

You know, the leaning, no, not the leaning tower of Pisa, forget about that.

Think about the hanging gardens of Babylon.

Here's my vision of what a vertical farm might look like.

My gold standard for this is the Apple store in New York City on 5th Avenue.

If you took that building,

and made it into a five story building...

Now in the building, you have multiple floors, of course.

And inside each floor you have multiple layers of crops.

Let's take some typical crops:

let's take tomatoes, strawberries, and turnips.

And you could grow a lawn of cabbage, a lawn of lettuce.

There's a seed sorting facility next door,

you've got people sitting there sorting out all of the seeds of the world coming in.

This one's good, this one's not so good.

You've got continuous planting at one end,

monitoring of growth in the middle.

And at the end of it, you've got people harvesting.

I mean, what you've done here is create a mini ecosystem.

My world will be ecologically balanced.

And it will be balanced because we've learned how to manufacture food

for ourselves in tall buildings within the cityscape.

We have learned to live within our means.

Life is good, life is good, life is good.

Thanks to hydroponics, these crops will be able to produce

a richer harvest as they are protected from atmospheric conditions and parasites.

The idea of vertical farming could be the solution

to many of the problems that we face today. Especially overpopulation and food shortages.

According to Dickson Despommier's estimates,

the large 30-story building will be able to feed up to 50,000 people every year.

Who would have ever thought that one day we could build skyscrapers that will feed us?