Dixon Despomie, who defended agriculture in a skyscraper, died at the age of 84.

Dixon Despomeur is a microbiologist who proposed that cities grow food in skyscrapers and popularize the term “vertical farming.” In Manhattan. He was 84 years old.

His wife, Marlene Bloom, confirmed his death in the hospital. He lived in Fortrey, New Jersey

Dr. Despommier (pronounced De-Pom-Ee-Yay), a professor at the School of Public Health in Colombia for 38 years, specialised in parasitic diseases, but as a leading figure in vertical farming, he had a much broader impact. I've won it.

In 2001, he and a student in the Medical Ecology class designed a 30-storey building that could theoretically grow food for 50,000 people. Approximately 100 types of fruits and vegetables are grown on the upper floors, and chickens are housed below and below. Fish eats plant waste.

Dr. Despommier argued that vertical farms use 70-90% less water than traditional farms, and that farmland will return to the natural state and help repair climate change. He was evangelized in his book with Ted Talks, “Vertical Farms: Nursing the World in the 21st Century.”

“When my book came out in 2010, there was no functional vertical farm I knew,” he told New Yorker years later. “By the time the revised edition was published in 2011, vertical farms had been built in the UK, the Netherlands, Japan and South Korea.”

High-tech investors have poured their money into vertical farming. The operation generally used a watering system filled with plant roots, replacing indoor LED lights for sunlight. No soil was needed. Farms sprouted in a variety of places, such as Newark in the Persian Gulf, downtown Dubai and Dubai.

The Guardian estimated that in 2022 there were over 2,000 vertical farms in the United States, growing vegetables and fruits on stacked trays or long pillars, some heights, some caring for the robots. That year, Walmart announced that it would harvest salad greens from a vertical farm in Compton, California and be operated by a company called Ponty.

Recently, the industry has been stumbling. High interest rates and energy costs have led to many businesses being bankrupt or declared. They include one of the Compton and Newark Ark Arks that New Yorkers featured prominently in their 2017 article on Dr. Desmier. It was once valued at $2.3 billion, but last year it closed.

Critics questioned whether vertical farming actually lowers carbon emissions, calling it a trend. Others said the industry can endure simply experiencing shaking.

Dixon Donald Despomey was born in New Orleans on June 5, 1940 to Roland and Beverly (Wood) Despomey. His father was an accountant on the transport line. His parents divorced when Dixon was young.

He received his PhD in Biology from Fairy Dickinson University in 1962 and a PhD in Medical Parasitology from Columbia in 1964. in microbiology from Notre Dame in 1967.

Dr. Despommier joined Columbia faculty in 1971 as an assistant professor in microbiology. He taught second-year medical students the necessary courses for parasitic diseases for 30 years. His research focused on tropical diseases. He was co-author of the textbook “Parasite Diseases” and was the director of the website “Parasites Without Borders.”

In addition to his wife, he was survived by his sister, Duane Desmier Cuickendal. his sons, Bruce and Bradley; stepdaughter, Molly Bloom; son-in-law, Michael Goodwin; Four grandchildren. and three great grandchildren. His previous marriage to Judith Forman ended with divorce.

The idea of ​​vertical farming came into view in 2000 when a student told Dr. Despommier that he was bored with a course in medical ecology. He redirected the term by raising the question, “What will the world be like in 2050?” And then a follow-up question: “How do you want to make the world in 2050?”

The discussion focused on how dense the planet will be in 50 years and how food must be grown, with less water from chemical fertilizers and less pollution. The student said New York City should source all the food from nearby. They proposed using the city rooftop for farming. However, they calculated that if all rooftops in all five boroughs were converted into gardens, the growing area would only be supplied about 2% of the population.

Dr. Despommier then considered raising crops on glass and steel skyscrapers stacked on multiple levels, just like the human inhabitants. He continued to refine his designs in his annual ecology student class. In 2001 he adopted the term vertical farming.

After he appeared on Comedy Central's late-night show “The Colbert Report” in 2008, he discussed his ideas in Eggplant, traffic to his website was up to 400,000 visitors overnight. I've won.

Many of the startups have transformed Dr. Despommier's vision into a vertical farm that has actually built a two- or three-storey vertical farm, compared to the 30-storey giant he proposed. One was installed in a parking garage in Jackson, Wyoming. Others were housed in the ship's bay.

However, the idea traversed the world with the Vertical Agricultural Association, a nonprofit organization launched in Germany in 2013.

All along, skeptics have questioned whether the costs and carbon footprint of indoor farming have improved over the traditional types practiced by humanity for about 12,000 years.

Bruce Bagby, a professor of crop physiology at Utah State University, told the New York Times in 2016. This means that plants need a lot of light. It's free outside. If you do that inside, you will need to burn many fossil fuels. ”

The industry's shakeout is cruel, and the editors of Vertical Farming, a news site, today declared that venture capital investments in vertical farming fell by around 90% in 2023.

Unbelieving, Dr. Despommier continued to brainstorm how modern life thrives in the face of dangerously changing climates. In his final book, “New Cities: How to Build Our Sustainable Cities Future” (2023), he proposed building cities with wood in the future.

He says that while the carbon footprint of concrete and steel production is huge, wood is a carbon sink – wood absorbs carbon from the air as it grows – and with new technology in engineering wood, We were able to build a very tall building.

“It sounds like we're using up all the wood,” he said last year. “But if vertical farming is successful, there's more land to grow trees.”