• 3 days ago
This engineering school is testing new methods to modernize and maximize urban agriculture. (via Brut nature)
Transcript
00:00Hello everyone, welcome to the roof of Agro-ParisTech.
00:03We are carrying out experiments to find out how to grow on the roofs.
00:30Around me, I have been carrying out experiments since 2012.
00:34And our main goal is to see how we can cultivate only from products that come from the city.
00:40That is to say, we do not use natural soil.
00:42We only use products such as compost, coffee grounds, broken brick, crushed wood,
00:47everything that can be found in the city and that can be used to produce food.
00:50The interest is that behind these current waste, what happens?
00:53They are either incinerated or buried for their immense majority.
00:56And so that's nutrients, that's CO2 that is rejected.
00:59So it's a very important environmental impact, while these waste are actually products and we can reuse them.
01:04And the idea is that we put these materials in bins each time.
01:07And on it, we look at how much we can produce, what is the quality of what we produce, how this soil will evolve.
01:12At the moment, what do we have on the roof?
01:14So we have an association with chourave, beets, chives and fennel.
01:18So you see that we are trying to densify the vegetables as much as possible,
01:21so that we have a production that is as important as possible.
01:24And the idea is also to associate vegetables that are complementary.
01:27Typically, not this year, but the other years, we had an association of chou and beans.
01:30The idea is that there is one that will develop and use airspace, it is the bean.
01:34The chou will stay on the ground with a relatively deep root system.
01:37We test a whole bunch of vegetables, fruit trees, to see a little what works or not.
01:41Here in front of me, I have cassis trees.
01:43We have a vine foot, raspberries.
01:45Here we have a cherry tree, an apple tree, a leek tree.
01:47And on the roofs, there is potentially everything that can grow.
01:50Around me, I have melissa, lavender, I have a kiwi tree here.
01:54I have artichoke feet, which are adored by bees and ants.
01:59And so here we enter a second area of the roof,
02:02an area that is dedicated to questions around biodiversity.
02:07Because these spaces are above all spaces of nature
02:10that can be used to house a whole bunch of species in terms of fauna and flora.
02:14So the goal of an area like this is first of all to be a tree, if I may say, of biodiversity.
02:20That is to say, to welcome a certain number of species.
02:22And the idea that we had at the beginning, but that we could never test directly,
02:25is also that it serves the gardener.
02:27Because there are auxiliary cultures, typically the coccinellae,
02:30who can arrive in this type of area and then be beneficiary at the level of the gardener.
02:42In cities like Paris, which are very dense, we lack natural spaces.
02:46And the first idea here was to use spaces that are the roofs,
02:50which are currently mostly not valued.
02:52Roofs can represent up to 32% of the surface of a city.
02:54At the moment, these are surfaces that are lost.
02:56So the first reason is to use lost spaces.
02:58The second reason is to generate food production in these spaces.
03:02And also generate spaces where people can come,
03:05can garden, can simply spend time,
03:08either around educational, social activities, or just moments together.
03:11And the third thing, which is what I was talking about earlier,
03:14is that these roofs are useful to the city,
03:16partly because of what we call ecosystemic services.
03:18That is, the fact that they retain water, that they store carbon.
03:21All this will benefit the city's functioning,
03:23and it will make cities a little more livable.
03:25And this is one of the major challenges in the development of cities today.