Building-Integrated Agriculture

Urban agriculture is increasingly critical to ensure nutritional security, community resilience, and equitable access to healthy foods for growing urban populations. However, lack of open space and high land prices present a constraint to establishment of new urban farms and gardens. A possible solution and a way to establish new agricultural sites, is to produce food on and in buildings, for example, through rooftop farming, green facades, and controlled environment agriculture.

In collaboration with Oregon State University and the University of Oregon, NUREC received funding from the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture to assess and advance the state of building-integrated agriculture (BIA) in the United States. Our overall goal is to identify critical challenges, barriers, benefits, and opportunities and create a network of professionals to further develop BIA through academic training, applied research, extension programs, and industry engagement.