Soil-less farming: the future of agriculture

Fertile soil is disappearing fast because of climate change and intensive farming, just as the world needs to feed more people. Hydroponics, or soil-less farming, may change the face of agriculture by providing a more sustainable and productive alternative to traditional cultivation.

food plants

They may be delicious, but there doesn’t appear to be anything out of the ordinary about the leafy greens and vegetables on offer at a Whole Foods supermarket in the Gowanus neighbourhood of Brooklyn, New York.

The crisp butterhead lettuce, redoak leaf, baby kale, and vine-ripened tomatoes are what you would expect to find in any of the city’s quality food outlets.

However, there is one big difference. The vegetables here are not grown in a farm located hundreds of miles away, but right above the store in a roof top greenhouse – and in a way that could change agriculture for good.

The 20,000 square-foot site uses a revolutionary hydroponic system which feeds plants with nutrient-rich liquids instead of soil. It is the first commercial soil-less greenhouse integrated into a supermarket in the US, one of four commercial hydroponic farms operated by Gotham Greens.

A lot is riding on soil-less agriculture. Currently, nutrient-rich soil is the most widely used substance in farming, producing around 95 per cent of food we consume today.

how a soilless farm works

But with a third of all the world’s land already given over to food production, using more could damage the planet’s biodiversity.

Farming soil – the top layer that allows plants to grow – is already disappearing fast because of climate change and intensive farming. The planet is losing the equivalent of 30 soccer fields of the stuff every minute. And it is not easy to replace, either. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), it takes 1,000 years to generate just three centimetres of topsoil.

With the global population rising, the amount of arable and productive land per person could shrink to just a quarter of the level seen in 1960s, the FAO says. That is where the liquid-only method used in the Brooklyn store comes in.

soilless farming field

Gotham Greens says its system uses 10 times less water than traditional techniques because there are no soils or weeds to compete for water with crops. It also requires fewer pesticides and chemicals by better controlling potential diseases. What is more, a programmable indoor environment allows for year-round harvests, whatever the weather.

teeming soil

The company says it produces 20-30 times more crops than traditional soil-based farms, and its Gowanus site grows over 200,000 pounds of fresh leafy greens, herbs and tomatoes each year. The greenhouse was also able to harvest and ship produce after Hurricane Sandy battered many traditional farms in the state.

Sustainable produce seems to sell better, too. Studies have shown consumers prefer and will pay more for locally produced food as it has better nutritional quality and longer shelf-life and requires minimal transportation.

“This project takes the discussion from food miles to food footsteps,” said Viraj Puri, co-founder of Gotham Greens.

The company is now taking on the challenge of snow blizzards as it opened its 75,000 square feet rooftop greenhouse above a cleaning product manufacturing plant in Chicago in late 2015.

lettuce

Broccoli with an IP address

Soil-less farming comes in other forms.

Caleb Harper is an unlikely farmer growing food in an unlikely place: in a computer lab in the heart of Cambridge, MA.

An architect turned research scientist, Harper leads a group of engineers and programmers at the MIT Media Lab where they develop what they describe as a crowdsourced soil-less agriculture platform.

This platform, or Food Computer, is a specialised growing chamber for plants which uses technology to monitor and adjust climate, energy and plant growth. Users can download successful environments or digital “climate recipes” that have been coded by others and apply that using robotic systems within the computer.

In his high-tech 60 square feet lab, each plant has about 15 sensor points. Harper’s broccolis even have IP addresses so that they can send progress reports online and ping the team when they need watering or harvesting.

The Food Computer is easy to scale up; the Food Server is the size of a standard shipping container which can produce enough food to feed about 300 people once a month. This will appeal to small-scale cafeteria and restaurant operators who can grow food onsite. Harper’s Open Agriculture Initiative (OpenAg) plans to expand its technology to warehouse-sized units capable of industrial production, in what will be known as the Food Datacenter.

“We start sending information about food, rather than sending food. This is not just my fantasy; this is where we’re already deploying. Food Computers, Food Servers, soon-to-be Food Datacenters, connecting people together to share information,” Harper explains in a recent TED talk.

The ultimate goal of the OpenAg is create more farmers, each growing food in a sustainable way, he says.

“The future of food is about networking the next one billion farmers and empowering them with a platform to ask and answer the question, ‘what if?’”

About

Mega

Mega seeks to energise and enrich the debate over how to create a better-functioning economy and society.

Megatrends are the powerful socio-economic, environmental and technological forces that shape our planet. The digitisation of the economy, the rapid expansion of cities and the depletion of the Earth’s natural resources are just some of the structural trends transforming the way countries are governed, companies are run and people live their lives.

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