as can be found anywhere . This is Bowery Farming , an urban agriculture startup founded in 2015 by Irving Fain , David Golden and Brian Falther , backed by Google Ventures . In an interview in 2018 , Fain - who is also Bowery ’ s CEO – claimed that his company ’ s urban farming techniques use no pesticides and “ 95 % less water than traditional agriculture , all while remaining 100-plus times more productive on the same footprint of land .”
Urban and vertical farming techniques are growing ( sorry ) in popularity across the world as a potential way to solve a number of the challenges posed by increasing populations , climate instability and food deserts ( areas of rural , suburban or urban land without farms or grocery stores , making it next to impossible to obtain quality , fresh food in an affordable way and offering only convenience food chains in their place – food deserts are playing a major role in the deterioration of urban population health ). The practice has its roots ( again , sorry ) in times of economic scarcity and turmoil - the Great Depression and the Second World War both saw a huge increase in the number of urban farms – and can be as low-tech as growing a head of lettuce on your bathroom windowsill , or as futuristic as a fully-automated , end-to-end hydroponic facility operated by artificial intelligence ( but more about Stacked in a minute ). At the moment , urban farming operations are turning to vertical farming , the practice of using ( typically ) climatecontrolled environments to grow plants across multiple levels – a practice that can turn a 3,000 sq ft allotment in a city centre into effectively a 9,000 sq ft agricultural facility .
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