The Building-Farm Synergy Loop
Buildings hand farms space, warmth, and carbon dioxide they'd otherwise vent to the atmosphere; farms hand buildings fresh food, cleaner air, and, when the loop is closed properly, a measurable reduction in climate-control load.
Synergies between host buildings and integrated farms. Adapted from: Porter, et al., 2014.
This is the foundational model the report builds from. BIA is framed here not as "farming that happens to be in, on, or around the building," but as a genuine two-way exchange between two systems that have been designed in isolation from each other.
Every chapter that follows in the report (policy, market economics, ecological impact, technical design) is really asking the same question from a different angle: how do you make this exchange tighter, more reciprocal, and more reliable at scale? These loops tend to be aspirational in most current projects, few case studies achieve every connection shown, which is part of why it's presented up front as a target, not a status report.
From the Report:
Part I, "How Buildings and Farms Work Together."