Floating Farm Takes Sustainable Agriculture to the Next Level

Inspired by the 2012 food shortages witnessed in New York City following Hurricane Sandy, husband and wife team Peter and Minke van Wingerden came up with the idea for a sustainable farm that floats on the sea. Designed to produce food where there’s the greatest demand – inside a city – the Wingerdens’ three‑story floating dairy farm bobs idyllically in the Netherlands’ Port of Rotterdam, an innovative beacon of sustainable agriculture. The need for a floating farm? One out of every four freight trucks on the road at any given time is transporting food to urban settings. If these trucks stopped running, as they often do during natural disasters, it’s estimated that grocery stores located in cities would run out of food in just three days.