The Value of Rooftop Farming for the Community | Farm Dreams

Things are living, and things are growing on the roof, so they're always living and growing. The flowers look amazing! Oh man, and you know the flowers are bringing the pollinators. Yes, we got the butterflies coming; we got the birds coming. So it's going down, which is magical because when you're downstairs, you're in Skid Row.

You know it's a very intentional space that has been ignored on purpose. Being able to grow food in this space, I mean that's everything. I think you named it surface level. What we get to experience is all of the organized abandonment. Yeah, but on the rooftop, we're able to elevate in so many other ways.

Not just simply coming up the stairs, but you know, walking on a rooftop and just breathing fresh air. Much like many other low-income communities, access to fresh fruits and vegetables is slim to none, right? You know, it's important to have this space; it's important to be able to have these gardens to grow and to be able to just relax.

There are so many ways to bring nature and plants into urban industrial areas, but one issue that troubles every rooftop farmer is access to water. I remember when I was here, and I was watering things by hand using city water. One time I left the hose—oh yeah, that was the bill that I was like a high water bill! But I have these friends; they have a similar setup now. They're really focused on trying to figure out how to bring water to their garden in a way that isn't going to drive their water bill through the roof.

I want to check in with Pete about some exciting technology from a company called Skywell that has totally changed Pete's water game. As long as there's 27% relative humidity in the air, this large machine creates 100 gallons of water per night. Right?

So when you're not—when you're in a region like Los Angeles that's adjacent to the ocean, there's always going to be at least 27% relative humidity in the air. And so we built a reservoir, and we just started using water from the clouds to actually feed our gardens. An atmospheric water generator uses technology to collect water from the air.

Fans pull air over a cooling coil, which prompts condensation. The water droplets are collected and filtered for drinking or watering gardens. The collected water can be stored in a reservoir and hooked up to a drip irrigation system that's set on a timer. So this means that you're not on public city water.

With the current setup that we have, we are using some— we're using 50% less! Wow, oh water, that's right, and that's significant. Yeah, that is in a place like Los Angeles, that's amazing. My friends at Bluma, they are just pumping their water from a lower level up to their rooftop farm, and I mean that's running their electricity bill up and it's just difficult. It's hard on their system.

You have to make it as easy and as comfortable for folks to garden, because if ease and comfortability is not there, the garden will die, right? Farmers know, right? And urban farmers know all too well that the cost of running a garden—the highest cost is the water.

Yeah, and then the water that is being harvested, is that drinkable water? Oh yeah, you can bathe in it, you can cook in it, and it's delicious. It's locally sourced! I mean, how many say that? How local?

Yeah, yeah, this is my water right here! Yeah, I'm about to drink you later! Right? So yeah, that's so cool. In Skid Row, I mean there's no water in Skid Row. There's no real facilities for people to use; there's no drinking water.

So for us to be able to offer this as a place for people to come, a destination for people to come and get fresh clean water is amazing. I mean, that's a game changer for us. That's incredible! Sweet, yeah, I'd love to try some downstairs. Thank you!