There's no actual official job title for the urban farming technologist. This role is so fresh and new, it is postulated by economists, agriculture experts and professors, and undertaken by people who have skills so unexpected that it's hard to believe their lives revolve around crops and farming. Designers, engineers, technologists, chemists and the occasional biologist populate the job of urban farming technologist and bring multiple skills into a rapidly growing environment. The urban farming revolution is being held in underground mines, bomb shelters, rooftops, tunnels, homes, and city farms. It's part millennial revolution, part climate crisis solution, and part overwhelming shift in dietary habits and population feeding management.

“Urban farming has become a very high priority in terms of a whole lot of issues around growing food closer to where people live and work and spend their leisure time,” says Michael Rudolph, head of the Centre for Ecological Intelligence at the University of Johannesburg. “It's also being driven by limited space for human and material resources and a need for different methods and systems to grow food in the inner city.”