Super Eco

Photo credit: Pop!Tech (kris krug), flickr

Dickson Despommier is a professor of public health at Columbia University. His recent public health focus has been on the transmission and spread of West Nile virus. His 2001 book, "West Nile Story," is a popular account of the disease as it spread through New York in 1999 and 2000.

Professor Despommier got his Ph D. from Notre Dame and has been at Columbia University since 1971. He is a microbiologist who conducted laboratory-based research for 30 years. During the last 10 years, he has focused on the ecology of infectious diseases (www.medicalecology.org) and the transmission of them at the agricultural interface. Most recently, he has championed the concept of urban farming in tall buildings (vertical farm - www.verticalfarm.com).

He has identified important disease agents that are transmitted during traditional outdoor dirt farming ("the agricultural interface"), including West Nile, avian flu, malaria to hookworms. Indoor farming, he concludes, could remove many infectious disease vectors from the human environment. Bringing farming indoors has the advantages of improving productivity and returning some of the world's farmland to ecological balance.

Despommier's research shows that growing food in a 30-story building, one square New York City block, could supply a balanced diet for 50,000 people. One building could supply the same amount of food as 588 acres of land. One hundred and ten buildings could feed New York City

By 2050, he suggests, vertical farms may be the solution to feeding all the people on the planet.

Notable Eco Activity

Despommier originated the idea of the vertical farm. Sustainable urban life is a major interest of his. Inventing new approaches to the raising of food within the confines of a large urban center is bound to be fraught with hidden pitfalls and caveats when starting out, so he has drawn together a multidisciplinary approach to the concept. Enlisting experts in industrial and soil microbiology, engineering, public health, policy making, urban planning, architecture, agronomy, plant genetics, and economics, he plans to make his vision a reality.

• Dickson Despommier Details

  • Birth Date

    June 5, 1940

  • Born In

    United States

  • Home Page

    http://www.verticalfarm.com/

  • Lives In

    United States

  • Organizations

    Unavailable

  • Occupation

    Professor of Public health