The Future of Agriculture?

Rapid Population Growth and Food Insecurity  If supply does not meet demand, we have a situation called food insecurity.  The greatest demand will come from the cities by 2050 almost 3/4 of population will be urban CIA: “the number of malnourished people will increase by more than 20 percent...” U.N. -agricultural production will have to grow by 70% to meet urban demand.

 Population pressures have already resulted in overuse of land in some places, stripping the soil of its ability to grow crops.  Soil erosion > new soil formation every year, wind and rain carry away 25 billion metric tons of rich topsoil.  Cities and suburbs are expanding onto land once used to grow food.

Unconventional Solutions  Vertical (Skyscraper) Farming -build a glass skyscraper made up of many floors of fields and orchards, with a yield that could feed 50,000 people. temperature, humidity, airflow, lighting, and nutrients would be controlled to create the optimum conditions for plant growth. A conveyer belt would rotate/move crops on vertically-stacked trays around the windows to ensure an even amount of natural light.

Unfortunately, plants farthest from the windows would receive less sunlight and grow more slowly. Thus additional light would need to be provided artificially to prevent uneven crop growth energy required for this lighting is expected to significantly increase food production costs.

 The Vertically-Integrated Greenhouse should require less artificial lighting, because it limits the use of the built environment to where exposure to sunlight is greatest.  Plants would rotate on a conveyor system in a narrow space between two layers of glass that have been built around a building’s perimeter.

This “double-skin façade” greenhouse can be made part of a new exterior design or a retrofit for existing office buildings. The greenhouse is expected to reduce the entire building’s energy use up to 30%.

 Another vertical approach is to grow crops on top rather than up the sides of a building. A 15,000 sq. ft. commercial rooftop greenhouse in Brooklyn, New York, built by BrightFarms and operated by Gotham Greens, sells 500 pounds of produce every day. The facility relies on automated sensors to activate lights, fans, shade curtains, heat blankets, and irrigation pumps that use captured rainwater.

 To minimize other costs (transportation and storage), the greenhouse was intentionally located near the supermarkets and restaurants who will receive the produce the very day it is picked.

 The VertiCrop System, dubbed one of the world’s top inventions by Time magazine, grows lettuce crops for animals at Paignton Zoo in Devon, England. Its single-story greenhouse requires less supplemental energy because plants are surrounded by sunlight from the sides and above.

 A VertiCrop system with four-meter towers was built on the roof of a downtown Vancouver, Canada, garage. It produces 3500 lbs of greens/week As much as a 5 acre farm with 92% less water and no pesticides.

 The Science Barge, a floating farm prototype in Yonkers, New York, meets its energy needs from sunlight, solar panels, wind turbines, biofuels, and evaporative cooling. It makes use of insects rather than chemical pesticides, and gets water by harvesting rainwater and desalinating harbor water.

The Farm of The Future  All of these systems use an existing but less traditional agricultural technology, hydroponics, which does not require arable land. With hydroponics, a plant’s roots are continuously bathed in a solution of water mixed with essential nutrients. Hydroponics is said to produce lusher plants in half the time.

In Summary emphasize sustainable food production. ○ minimal use of herbicides, fungicides and pesticides. Environmental damage and crop loss due to soil erosion and runoff are eliminated. Efficient building design takes advantage of natural sunlight ○ use of renewable clean energy technologies will reduce dependence on fossil fuels. hydroponic farming requires only a fraction of the land and water resources consumed by conventional agriculture.

 Since hydroponic farms will grow food right where the people live, costs for transportation and spoilage should also be minimized. Reduced resource and operating costs, and greater profits year round from greater yield, should help the greenhouse recoup the initial expense for automated and renewable energy technologies.

 The promise of hydroponics and a controlled interior climate is that nearly any kind of crop can be grown anywhere, year round, shielded from weather and seasonal extremes. Yields are claimed to be times greater than conventional farming. These innovative developments bring the farm to the city, where the people live, and if implemented on a large scale, could go a long way toward improving food security.