Floating Dairy Offers Approach to Resilient Local Food Production

In Rotterdam, a high-tech floating microdairy offers a new take on local food production, reports the Guardian. The dairy consists of nearly nearly 10,000 square feet of space floating on pontoons that includes space for feeding and milking its 40 cows, milk-processing and cheesemaking facilities, and a space to age cheese. The cows are able to cross a gangplank to waterside pasture, and are also fed clippings from sports fields in the city. The concept’s inventor says it makes sense to be able to produce food in an area where land values are high, and the floating structure can cope with sea-level rise or flooding. He’s also looking at adapting the concept to create a floating vegetable farm and replicating the floating farm elsewhere to help produce more food in urban areas.