Samuel L Jackson can have his snakes on a plane. Peter and Minke van Wingerden have concocted something even wilder: a herd of cows floating on the sea.
The Dutch husband-and-wife team’s experiment on sustainable agriculture, a hi-tech micro-dairy called Floating Farm, can be found bobbing in the port of Rotterdam. The modernist structure houses 40 Maas-Rijn-Ijssel cows, who collectively produce some 200 gallons (757 liters) of milk a day. In addition to helping nourish the local community, the waterborne farm is playing a part in the global conversation about how the climate crisis is pushing farmers to reconsider how – and where – they produce food.
Rotterdam has already established itself as one of the most climate-adaptive places in the world. Everything from office buildings to entire neighborhoods are built on water in the city, which is 90% below sea level. The Van Wingerdens’ floating dairy farm was a new but inevitable twist. Should a weather crisis arise, a waterborne farm isn’t necessarily stuck in place. An urban farm that serves city dwellers also reduces carbon emissions associated with food transportation. And a farm on water also helps to take a little pressure off the “global land squeeze”
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