For six years, Hope Farms has shown that the words “urban” and “farm” are not...
Annie Mulligan, Houston Chronicle / ContributorFor six years, Hope Farms has shown that the words “urban” and “farm” are not mutually exclusive.
Hope Farms’ goal is to demonstrate that sustainable urban farming is an economically viable alternative to the modern food-distribution system, which transports food over long distances, often thousands of miles. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought home to the consumer the fragility of these long, global supply chains, Cavnar said.
“After every rain we were dealing with thousands of gallons of water on our site that was an impediment to a smooth operation and really needed to go somewhere,” she said. “We felt that it would be most productive if we could redirect it into serving our actual water needs.” From there, he determined that the best place to collect that volume of rainwater was on the roof of the barn, which has a surface area of 3,600 square feet, about the size of a medium-size commercial business roof.
Based on the Houston’s average annual rainfall of about of 50 inches per year, and the storage capacity of 5,000 gallons, the water-collection system is capable of capturing about 95,000 gallon per year, or enough to fill about 20 tanker trucks.
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