In many ways, meat production and climate change are entwined. Worldwide, livestock accounts for from 14.5 percent to 18 percent of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions and, each year, the amount of forested land that is cleared — in part to create pasture land for cattle — releases emissions equivalent to driving 600 million cars.

But Back of the Yards Algae Sciences, The Plant’s newest tenant, said that algae could be the bedrock of a sustainable, largely plant-based food industry.

“I mean, what really excites me in this building is that it was operating for almost a hundred years,” Leonard Lerer , founder of Back of the Yards Algae Sciences, said. “The meat of hundreds of millions of pigs was probably processed in here. And soon we will be able to make a burger that is 100 percent algae-based and cruelty-free.”

And urban farming is growing in places like New York, Paris, Shanghai, Singapore and Tel Aviv, for good reason.

A 2018 study suggested that urban farming could ameliorate some environmental problems in cities by increasing vegetation cover, removing atmospheric carbon dioxide and offering a habitat for bees and other pollinators. It could also help increase food security and reduce food waste, said Matei Georgescu, one of the study’s authors and an associate professor of geographical sciences and urban planning at Arizona State University.

“Because society largely depends on food grown elsewhere, the ‘out of sight out of mind’ mentality has led to nonsensical quantities of food waste,” he said. “Reconnecting people to the food they eat is likely to lead to decreased waste.”