mamaday on "earth focus, quot new ways to grow in cities. growing fruit on trucks? this entrepreneur and filmmaker may be onto something. his film "truck farm" looks at innovative ways to grow food in cities.

>> this is no ordinary route first posted barrier that keeps the roots out of your brain it helps the water to drain then you have a blanket and erosion blanket that keeps us all from washing away and then you have some special special lightweight soil that gives the roots of place to play. truck farm is like a roof truck farmers like a roof but you cannot drive around in a roof # the inspiration for the

project was born of necessity. i moved to new york city, wanted to have a place to grow some of my own food, but did not have any place to do it. i took a good long look at the back of my all dodge pickup truck and realized it was about the same size as a backyard garden bed. borrowing some technology from rooftop gardens, i made a truck farm happened. .ost of us grow up in cities the majority of the worlds population is an urban population. in the united states, we have long been for several generations are predominantly urban people. what that means is that we grow up without an understanding of certain fundamental things that are -- that our grandparents or great grandparents have taken for granted -- where food comes from, where water comes from. truck farms do one tiny little

part of that, even by driving through the neighborhood or being parked on the side of the street. they are a visual reminder that food comes from somewhere. it needs resources to survive, and needs healthy soil, rainwater, access to sunlight. it has a back story. i think the more reminders we have that the stuff we consume every day actually has a back story, the more careful we will be about what we choose to buy. the decisions will ripple back through the economy to make every aspect of our supply chain and rfid systems more sustainable -- our supply chain and our food systems more sustainable. i think that truck farms teach us that to make the food itself sustainable, maybe we need to

inject some amount of whimsy and out-of-the-box thinking into the way we are designing our system. i have seen truck farms get a much broader circle of young people interested in growing food than we might have otherwise. i think there is a lot of room for creativity and innovation. not long ago we launched a truck farm fleet where we encourage groups and individuals around the country in cities and counties all across the country to start their own truck farm, their own mobile gardens, to educate young people about how fun and easy it is to grow their food. they have been popping up everywhere. the first summer of truck farm fleets -- at the summer we had 25 truck farms and cities all across the country. they are continuing to pop up.

the latest one that over -- emerged is overseas in palestine. who knows? may be able take fire internationally as well. we're making making our first delivery of truck farm produce to nutritionist who has paid $20 for description. >> it is very casual. i kind of let things do what they do. but it has some interesting food. it has, for example, blueberries. there is your truck farm. i once talked to her produce manager for one of the big food chains in california about how long it took to get california toduce from a vegetable farm

one of the grocery stores in the neighborhood. he explained that the whole thing was about two weeks. it in pick this and put your refrigerator and keep it in your refrigerator, you can still eat it. it will be fine. fromannot keep produce california for a week. it will be mushy. it is much older and the nutritional quality will have deteriorated. the taste is gone. broccoli from california does not taste anything like that or durable creature is going to taste. thank you. this is wonderful. it looks delicious. you don't think that i can -- oh, it is good. >> the truck farm is not the solution to our urban food problems or global food problems. it is our garden in a pickup truck. it was never meant to be a

suggestion that everybody should abandon their farms and plant food and pickup trucks or that everybody in the city had a pickup truck filled with foods and everything would be ok. but i think that truck farms teach us a few things. food is fundamental. we all have to he. -- we all have to eat. but it is a window onto larger issues -- a window onto environmental and social and political issues. by understanding how we eat and how we grow our food, we can understand a lot about what makes our world take, and through that, understand better how to promote a more sustainable future. the way we eat has a tremendous ,mpact on the natural world and therefore on the ability of future generations to survive. if we can figure out a way to eat, we can not only make our own lives better and healthier, but we can figure out how to make the planet more sustainable in the long run. pre-k's

#that's a lot of food you might say how much food do we really need and how much food can we grow , mys get down to the facts friend this is something we would all like to know there are 32 teeth in the human mouth and 20 feet of intestines forwater in niagara falls the 150,000 gallons per second the largest dinosaur with 200 tons only 75 on mars not every man drove a mustache but people like the smell of new cars my's get back to the facts friend this is something we would all like to know the answers if we need a lot of food we should grow at every place we go #

. >> the project is all about making it possible for new yorkers and urban dwellers to grow food in their apartment year-round. themember looking at interior courtyard of my building, a six-story multifamily building that was just the central area where you leave all of your garbage. the whole area is just covered with windows going all the way out of it i remember taking a picture of it and thinking, what if we were just growing food inside this unused space acko -- in this unused space? it is possible for people to

learn much more about how plans work and how to grow their own food and just building up our own confidence, basically, about our ability to survive on our own. -- ound that >> i think it was very surprising and instructive to think critically about urban agriculture and question whether truck farming or rooftop gardening or vacant lot farming or window farming, growing food on boats, whether this is a good idea or not. few of these, farmers were suggesting that these were the solutions to our global food problems.

but it was still helpful to say , because we doing this it sheds a lot of light on what we need to in cities. a lot of people are growing food in cities because they miss working with their hands, and they also miss the taste of freshly grown food. on a larger scale i think a lot of people are growing food in cities because we like the idea of being able to live in a vibrant social environment but not be totally divorced from the natural world. farmers are all part of this project to figure out what cities of the future could and should look like. # a family of unusual farms truck farms as a family now

my loneliness is gone and my vegetables are here and soon we will be planting #gain >> truck and window farms provide healthy produce, but the needs of growing urban areas will also require large- scale sustainable solutions. tagoneden, the ceo of plan is planting a new seed for agriculture. will construct a cutting-edge greenhouse to produce more food using less space, to deliver fresh produce a lower cost by marketing directly to consumers, and to embody a new business model, one

that makes money while doing good. plantagon and her national is new concept. what is it wacko - what is it? >> we are trying to figure out how to feed the megacities of the world. we have many reasons , large-scale,od inside our cities, and we want to be part of the development of solutions to do that. we believe we will have three different problems to feed people living inside the city. one is the vast geographical sprawl of the cities. 42,050, most scientists agree that 80% of people will live inside cities. already today, we are reducing

80% of the arable land that we have for the whole town. if you put these developing curves together and you easily realize that what will happen is that we have to grow food, large-scale. the city is a dense environment. the land is really expensive. if you want to grow things in the city, you have to go vertical, and to go vertical you have to develop tactical solutions. crack vertical farming, how does it work? how much global area you can get out of the building. growing things vertical ali make sense if you don't have enough land where you want to grow your food. the way that we solve it is from building, constructing a building where you don't work with horizontal stories. instead we have an open

construction using a helical shape, but much -- which lets much more sunlight into the core of the building. then we have a logistics system for how to move our crops at the same time as they grow inside vertical building. >> when will the plantagon begin producing and what will it produce? 2013.the end of depends on the local authorities. we are ready to start building at this stage. we will have a production of 300 to 500 tons every year. on that building, the footprint on the ground is 400 square meters. that is the whole point of doing things vertical. on the footprint on the ground of 400 square meters, that is like a normal garden that you have your house. we produce 500 tons of food

every year. inwill be going back troy -- the dirty city environment you need to grow things in a closed system, or at least a semi- closed system. that means that you have to have people going into the system as he possibly could to protect this from being -- having to use pesticides and other things. what we and everyone else is developing is consistent -- like everything goes around. you plant at the same place as you harvest. that means that the whole is much morene efficient than if you would do this on freelance, because you move things around. here you are actually moving the field that you are growing on. instead of moving people and machines, you move the things

that are growing. that means it gets much less labor-intensive. this is both good and bad, because you take work opportunities away in one sense. on the other hand, if you don't compete, you don't disturb the markets and their jobs. .nd you create new jobs also opening up for a sort of new people becoming foreigners -- becoming farmers. if you would ask my children if it be cool to become a farmer, i think they would say no. if you asked them if they would be interested to work in this kind of high-tech, futuristic buildings that are producing, they might very well say yes. and one of our main work, this is the main reason for that, to get young people interested in becoming farmers. normal green a

specialist, it is much less expensive to build a normal greenhouse. on the other hand, to run a normal greenhouse is much more expensive than to run one of hours. ,he lifecycle of one of hours real estate where you can grow food at the same time. the greenhouse -- you build them, you take them away after 20 and at the most 30 years, but then you build a new one. we are rationalizing an old industry and making it like a .econd-generation rain house -- greenhouse. when you do things like this, when you industrialize an old system, you have higher investment and lower costs at the end. is about fiveme years on the whole building. the business case for this is really really good. you also have to remember that the cost of a tomato -- if you

buy a tomato at the grocery is cost oft 60% transportation in the store selling the tomato. we have taken all the way. -- all that away. it has much less costs at the end for our sales. >> meeting tomorrow's food needs beyond cities. rainfall patterns are less predictable tree providing food to growing numbers of people becomes increasingly challenging. scientists at penn state university, working with the national science foundation, may have the answer. they are finding ways to adapt plans to stressful conditions like lack of water. we are in your greenhouse. it is part of your research laboratory system. what is going on here?

we're doing here is growing plants under stress conditions. looks like the third world, developing countries. people cannot afford to irrigate and fertilize their crops. is moren hungry people hungry people than we have ever had in the history of our species. the affected challenge our species and it will be unprecedented, which is how do you sustainably feed a population of 9 billion or 10 million? most people cannot afford fertilizers and irrigation, so the crops have to deal with fertility and drought. drought is a problem in countries like the u.s. we are trying to understand how to get plants to adapt to these conditions and grow together despite the stresses. >> how can you grow crops without nutrients and water? will you want a plant that

do well under drought conditions or soils, you need to go to a system. scientists have known this for many years. it is important for getting water. but what exactly is it about roots that is most important? what is the difference between a good root system and patent system? -- and bad root system? one of the main components of the system is having good architecture, meaning the shape of the system, where it is in the soil. the main backbone routes of the root system of the main structural, architectural scaffolding of the root system from which the lateral roots and all the finer roots emerge. they can be shallow going out of the topsoil or they can be deep. surprisingly, this is the kind of thing that, in retrospect, is

on had -- is odd that it had not been done before. --ds that had shallow roots plants that had shallow roots were much big -- better at picking up the roots in the topsoil. pets with deep roots are much better at picking up water trade there is a trade-off here. at the cost of reduced water acquisition, renewed drought tolerance. we had a student show that in the field in honduras. significant growth advantage under low phosphorus. deep-rooted plants, you have increased drought tolerance. in honduras and other countries, they have with drought and low salt fertility. >> other selected combine both systems near to the surface?

>> we think we have discovered a trait that would help us get shallow and deep. we are working on a couple more. the ways we can combine topsoil foraging. this is exactly why the research is needed. nobody knows the answer to your question. nobody knows if we can do applied if we can -- and plant that can do both well. they have to be verified with actual plants in the field. we think we have some -- i think we have some solutions. by trying to develop plans to put roots where the goodies are , that is how we are going to improve crop production in these environments. but in these poor countries, people may not be literate, may not have access to government services, may not have much money or capability to do some sort of new farming system or

machinery. one thing they can do is plant a new seed. they are planting seeds now and if you give them better seats, this might get significantly food. that is an important improvement there. in the u.s., if we had corn plants that need less fertilizer, we can reduce the cost for american farmers and reduce the environmental impact. >> how far off is the end result? >> there are varieties being grown today in africa, asia, america, that have better roots, better yields. that is happening today. double and triple the yields without fertilizer, just by selecting for the better nutrients. when we look at the lines with the good root traits for nitrogen and water acquisition, we are talking a three to four fold increase in yield under drought.

in a study published last year, we had an eightfold increase. that was eight times more healed without water. instead of putting on more fertilizers and water, we are just selecting for a better seed. by having a better root system, we can have much better crop. i think the impact is going to continue. the overall picture is that we are really coming up with -- against biological limits of what we can do. you cannot just assume that we will be able to continue making on moretilizer, putting irrigation systems. there are plenty of resources to go around. we can't make progress on this problem. -- we can make progress on this problem. it is not going to take some kind of magic technology that has not been invented yet. we can use this using conventional plant breeding and common sense.

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>> the global recession has affected millions around the world. one of the most alarming figures is the growing number of people joining the ranks of the unemployed. by the end of 2009, it is estimated that 239 million people will be out of work. the downturn has also created insecure working patterns, temporary work, and a huge