Source: Floating FarmHoping to create a sustainable way to efficiently produce food in an urban setting, a Netherlands-based company is set to debut a floating farm in the port city of Rotterdam.

Aptly named the Floating Farm, the floating, fully functional dairy farm designed by Belado will be home to 40 cows. Estimates expect the cows will produce roughly 800 l of milk each day.

According to Peter van Wingerden, co-leader of the project, “We can potentially deliver 320,000 litres of milk a year, 7,000 eggs per day and a million crops per year.”

With a hurricane-resistant design, the floating farm is the first to be installed in an urban setting, yet those associated with the project suspect that such a scheme is only the beginning.

"Rotterdam is a perfect test location for this alternative farm, but the real demand is in Asia and Africa, continents that are still rapidly growing and have a demand for alternative food production,” Wingerden added.

As populations grow and life expectancies increase, food growth in urban settings will need to be entirely overhauled, according to experts, and Floating Farms is just one solution to the problem.

"We do many other water projects in big cities. We were recently invited to exhibit our projects in Singapore and also work together with the Olympian committee, to supply fresh local products to the athletes during the Summer Olympics in 2020 in Tokyo. And we were approached by the government of Nicaragua to clean up the polluted city lagoon in the capital in a sustainable way," said van Wingerden.