Why this exists
Fruit and vegetables reach a Spanish city after travelling a long way from large farms that use a great deal of land, water and chemistry to grow them. Almost none of that distance is necessary. The surfaces to grow on are already here, directly above the people who will eat the food.
The thinking
- The problem
- Conventional production spreads across enormous areas, far from the people it feeds, and spends most of its energy moving what it grows. Freshness is lost in transit and the environmental cost is paid in fuel, water and land.
- The unused surface
- Every city is covered in flat, empty, sunlit roofs. They are the one resource a city has in abundance and does nothing with — and they sit exactly where the demand is.
- What changes
- Growing on those roofs shortens the distance to almost nothing, cuts the water a harvest needs, removes the chain of intermediaries, and puts green surface back into a city built of concrete.
Where this goes
We are growing in Madrid. The model was built to be repeated: a city with roofs and people is all it needs, and every large city has both. Spain first, then further — but a rooftop in another city is only worth opening once the ones here are running well.