BIG IDEAS: Dickson Despommier's Vertical Farming

Eccentric town, Todmorden, growing ALL its own veg By Vincent Graff Updated: 16:31 GMT, 10 December 2011 Admittedly, it sounds like the most foolhardy of criminal capers, and one of the cheekiest, too. Outside the police station in the small Victorian mill town of Todmorden, West Yorkshire, there are three large raised flower beds. If you’d visited a few months ago, you’d have found them overflowing with curly kale, carrot plants, lettuces, spring onions — all manner of vegetables and salad leaves. Today the beds are bare. Food for thought: Todmorden resident Estelle Brown, a former interior designer, with a basket of home-grown veg Well, that’s not quite correct. ‘I watch ’em on camera as they come up and pick them,’ says desk officer Janet Scott, with a huge grin. For the vegetable-swipers are not thieves. The vegetable plots are the most visible sign of an amazing plan: to make Todmorden the first town in the country that is self-sufficient in food. ‘It’s a very ambitious aim. ‘Nothing,’ says Mary. What’s to stop me nabbing all the apples?