It may sound like a pie in the sky idea, but vertical farms containing enough food to feed four million people, could one day divert a potential world food shortage. The huge ‘living’ skyscrapers have captured the imagination of architects in the U.S and Europe as food prices soar. They are the brainchild of Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University.

The revolutionary scientist proposes gleaming 21 storey skyscrapers that could potentially be as productive as 588 acres of land and grow up to 12 million lettuces a year. The farms was assumed to project to cost £45m to build and £2.7m a year to run, would be both environmentally friendly and economically profitable.

Dr Despommier created his concept in 1999 with graduate students during a class on medical ecology. With the world’s population expected to increase to 3 billion by 2050 and almost 80 per cent of farming land in use, the idea has never been more relevant source