Green Roofs Are So Last Year; Rooftop Farms Are The Growing Thing
 

As a quick side note, I hate the 'so last year' saying! I'm only reusing it because its the title of the article....

Never the less, the article is interesting. Not just having a green roof, but using it as an area to farm and produce crops. One of the examples is even a restaurant who obviously uses the produce for business.

Green Roofs Are So Last Year; Rooftop Farms Are The Growing Thing : TreeHugger

http://www.treehugger.com/uncommon-ground.jpg

I'm pretty partial to green roofs of any description - as a grower of many different Sedum that is my specialty, but any kind of green roof wins my approval.

I cant wait to have my own house so I can get a nice garden started and do some modding.

If you're in the US, you need to read this blog on bill H.R. 2751 - this is a totally scary thought that there is now a law against raising your own food! What's next? Gun control?
Interesting Times: Sad Day for Food Freedom

I'm pretty sure quickly scanning this that backyard producers are exempt and even small scale farmers selling at roadsides and farmers markets are exempt.

Well, I don't live in the US, so I still plan on growing as much organic garden as I can - it's just a scary thought that they can actually legislate this kind of thing. What if they can't uphold their promise (implicit in this type of law) that they can provide wholesome food to the masses?

If this is legislation that requires high volume sellers of food to meet FDA or some other standards, I'm in favor of this type of legislation. If you sell more than a certain volume, bring yourself up to spec or close down.

That food safety bill also has a provision requiring vegetable seed sold for planting to meet the same cleaniness standards required of seed sold for human consumption. So the seed houses will need to have expensive seed cleaning equipment and maintain a separate line of cleaning equipment for each vegetable they sell. The big seed companies like Monsanto and Burpee that sell mostly GMA or hybrid seed would have no problems absorbing the cost of this equipment, but small seed companies like The Cook's Garden and Pinetree Gardens selling heirloom cultivars would not. So this is yet another way for the big guys to shut down or take over their smaller competition. If they decide to enforce the provisions of this bill to the hilt, it could make it very difficult to buy non-hybrid and heirloom seeds as the companes selling them go out of business.

They already have a precedent case in the courts for shutting down your home vegetable garden. In 1940, they went after a farmer who was raising wheat to feed his chickens. At the time the federal government were trying to limit wheat production to support its price. They used the intrastate commerce clause to prosecute the farmer. The argument went thus. Since he was raising his own wheat to feed his chickens, he wasn't buying wheat on the open market to feed them. Therefore his action of growing his own wheat was affecting intrastate commerce (which is regulated by the federal goverment) and so could be regulated by the federal government. They fined him and made him burn his wheat.

This same argument could easily to turned to prosecute home gardeners. Raising your own vegetables and livestock means that you aren't buying them from the grocery store, thus affecting intrastate commerce. So it could be controlled by the federal government, forcing you to destroy your home veggies and seed and buy all of your (FDA and USDA approved) food from your local grocery stores. So the legal mechanisms are already in place. All they have to do is decide if and when to enforce it.

Very scary!

Looks like something Frank Lee from EcoModder would start a thread on.

It really is scary.