{"id":22419,"date":"2025-02-18T22:05:28","date_gmt":"2025-02-18T23:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=22419"},"modified":"2025-02-18T23:27:06","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T23:27:06","slug":"dickson-despommier-who-championed-farming-in-skyscrapers-dies-at-84","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=22419","title":{"rendered":"Dickson Despommier, Who Championed Farming in Skyscrapers, Dies at 84"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A microbiologist, he popularized \u201cvertical farming\u201d \u2014 raising crops in tall buildings \u2014 to remediate climate change and feed more people.<\/p>\n

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Dickson Despommier, a microbiologist who proposed that cities should grow food in high-rises, popularizing the term \u201cvertical farming\u201d \u2014 an idea that crossed over from the realm of the purely fanciful to become a reality around the globe \u2014 died on Feb. 7 in Manhattan. He was 84.<\/p>\n

His wife, Marlene Bloom, confirmed the death, in a hospital. He lived in Fort Lee, N.J.<\/p>\n

Dr. Despommier (pronounced des-POM-ee-yay), who was a professor for 38 years at Columbia\u2019s School of Public Health, specialized in parasitic diseases, but he gained far wider influence as a guru of vertical farming.<\/p>\n

In 2001, he and students in a medical ecology class designed a 30-story building that theoretically could grow food for 50,000 people. Some 100 varieties of fruits and vegetables would be grown on upper floors, with chickens housed lower down. Fish would feed on plant waste.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Dr. Despommier argued that vertical farms would use 70 to 90 percent less water than traditional farms, allowing agricultural land to return to a natural state and helping to remediate climate change. He evangelized at TEDx talks<\/a> and in a book, \u201cThe Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Dr. Despommier said that when his book \u201cThe Vertical Farm\u201d was published in 2010, no such farms existed. That changed.<\/span>Thomas Dunne Books<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWhen my book came out, in 2010, there were no functioning vertical farms that I was aware of,\u201d he told<\/a> The New Yorker several years later. \u201cBy the time I published a revised edition in 2011, vertical farms had been built in England, Holland, Japan and Korea.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A microbiologist, he popularized \u201cvertical farming\u201d \u2014 raising crops in tall buildings \u2014 to remediate climate change and feed more people.Dickson Despommier, a microbiologist who proposed that cities should grow food in high-rises, popularizing the term \u201cvertical farming\u201d \u2014 an idea that crossed over from the realm of the purely fanciful to become a reality around the globe \u2014 died on Feb. 7 in Manhattan. He was 84.His wife, Marlene Bloom, confirmed the death, in a hospital. He lived in Fort Lee, N.J.Dr. Despommier (pronounced des-POM-ee-yay), who was a professor for 38 years at Columbia\u2019s School of Public Health, specialized in parasitic diseases, but he gained far wider influence as a guru of vertical farming.In 2001, he and students in a medical ecology class designed a 30-story building that theoretically could grow food for 50,000 people. Some 100 varieties of fruits and vegetables would be grown on upper floors, with chickens housed lower down. Fish would feed on plant waste.Dr. Despommier argued that vertical farms would use 70 to 90 percent less water than traditional farms, allowing agricultural land to return to a natural state and helping to remediate climate change. He evangelized at TEDx talks and in a book, \u201cThe Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century.\u201dDr. Despommier said that when his book \u201cThe Vertical Farm\u201d was published in 2010, no such farms existed. That changed.Thomas Dunne Books\u201cWhen my book came out, in 2010, there were no functioning vertical farms that I was aware of,\u201d he told The New Yorker several years later. \u201cBy the time I published a revised edition in 2011, vertical farms had been built in England, Holland, Japan and Korea.\u201dWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22421,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22419"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22422,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22419\/revisions\/22422"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}