Hanging gardens of... Future!

I believe one of the major challenges that we, as a living organism, will face in the future will be lack of usable land for agriculture. Exploding population growth will need more land to be used as habitat. Considering this grim situation, it will be soon the need of hour to innovate the farming process and identify alternate methods of farming.

Though I am not an expert at farming - actually I do not even have an iota of knowledge about it , I still ventured to let my imagination take flight. I wanted to develop the idea based on the requirement of using less ground space. I remembered reading about “Hanging Gardens of Babylon” in the book “Seven Ancient Wonders” by Matthew Reilly. From what I remember, the hanging gardens came across as some innovative and efficient method of more common Terrace gardening. The irrigation method also warranted a special mention as the challenge was two fold - getting the water upto the top of pyramid like structure and ensuring the foundation is not damaged. I do not know the intricate details and will be googling after the post most probably.


Now, My idea is - we know how to build a skyscraper. Now how about having a skyscraper with a design that can support farming. What I can dream of is - let the weight of the building be supported by a central mast. Now , the levels themselves can be something like how leaves are attached to stem - alternating left and right as you go up.Ok, I am thinking of let the levels rotate around the central tower so that there is enough sunshine. Irrigation can be done by having streamlets run thru central tower and the levels thus ensuring the usable space is moist. A very rough sketch ( A very ugly one Pardon me ). My two cents will not hurt, right? :-)