HEY THERE, COW BUOY

摘要

Karma, Courage, and Sustainabetty are special heifers. They have uninterrupted views of Rotterdam harbor, poop on a poop deck, and walk that gangplank to a pasture. They and 31 other Meuse-Rhine-Issel cows clomped aboard the world's first floating dairy farm last May. "It's the best milk in the world," says Peter van Wing-erden, founder of the Dutch property development company Beladon, which built the barge. In 2012, hearing that floods from Hurricane Sandy had crippled New York City's food distribution system, he imagined that water-borne urban farms could boost food security. Why Rotterdam? A quarter of the Netherlands is below sea level. Why 1,500-pound bovines? "If we could put big animals inside the city on a floating barge, we could do anything."