True Activist – by John VibesThornton’s Budgens supermarket in Crouch End, north London, was one of the most sustainable supermarkets in the world, until its untimely end this past March. The most interesting feature of the supermarket was that it actually had a rooftop garden that supplied the store with food.
The rooftop garden was part of a program called “Food From The Sky”, which brought a new philosophy of sustainability to the food industry. Not only was all of the store’s food produced on the roof, but the compost used for the garden was actually made from waste produced by the store.
The market was also heavily involved with teaching the community about urban gardening and permaculture. In fact, each year the market held a number of classes and seminars that were attended by hundreds of people.
“It began with a vision I had four years ago while walking down the streets of London longing for the bounty and beauty of the land of Embercombe, a sustainability centre near Exeter, that I had just left. I started ‘seeing’ orchards on all flat roofs, dangling strawberries, tomatoes, with children and elders learning together. I asked myself, could we bring the land, conscious communities and healthy food to the roofs of London?” co-founder, Azul-Valerie Thome said.
In 2009, Azul met Andrew Thornton, the owner of Thornton’s Budgens, who was impressed with his vision and agreed to help make it a reality.
“I saw Food from the Sky as a chance to connect so many people, adults and children, with what they eat and to connect us even more with each other. I underestimated the impact it would have on everyone who walked up those stairs. I still love the looks on their faces when new visitors get their first glimpse of the garden,” Thornton said.
While the market was popular with the community, the building fell into disrepair in recent years, and they could not continue to fund the project.
However, this idea should not stop with this supermarket, this should give the food industry a perfect model and example to follow for the future!
Read More: http://www.trueactivist.com/why-cant-all-supermarkets-grow-food-on-the-roof-like-this-one-did/
This is such a good idea. Too bad more grocers don’t see it that way.
I don’t know if I’d eat the produce grown on an open roof. There are far too many rain-born, wind-born contaminates like radiation, chemtrails, etc..
A grower needs to keep rainwater out of the plants and use a closed system.
“Why Cant All Supermarkets Grow Food On The Roof Like This One Did?”
My local supermarket has about two feet of snow on their roof, for starters, but the cost of labor makes small-scale farming impractical for profit-taking.
Gardening is a great way to offset the rising price of food, and will soon be necessary for survival, but if you count up all the man-hours involved in growing veggies, you’re working for much less than minimum wage.
Right now a pound of carrots costs about a dollar, but if you had to pay those people an hourly wage to grow them on the roof of a supermarket, you’d have to multiply that price exponentially.