The Future of farming

The future of farming

Controlled Environment Agriculture

Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) is the practice of growing plants under fully controlled conditions inside buildings.

Unlike greenhouse growing, which relies on sunlight, CEA uses full-spectrum LED lighting to provide different wavelengths specific to each different crop and growth stage. Nutrients, water, temperature, humidity and acidity are also all carefully calibrated to optimise growth.

Crops grow all year round in sheltered mini-ecosystems, with UV lighting to remove bacteria and no risk of contamination by pests and diseases. This means there is no need for harsh chemical pesticides or herbicides.

CEA growing usually produces stronger, healthier crops at a much faster rate than conventional farming methods. It also offers tangible solutions to the many threats posed to the natural environment by conventional agriculture practices.

AEROPONICS

Aeroponics is the practice of growing plants with their roots exposed to the air and sprayed intermittently with a fine, high-pressure mist of water containing nutrient-rich solutions. There is no need for soil in aeroponic systems.

The roots of plants grown this way are free to absorb the maximum amount of oxygen, without the restrictions of soil compaction. This allows the plants to generate the oils and sugars that give them their flavour much more efficiently, creating strong, vigorous crops that taste delicious and grow much faster than with conventional methods.

Because any water not absorbed by the plants’ roots is simply recycled through the growing system (rather than evaporating, draining away or getting soaked up by soil), aeroponic systems use a tiny fraction of the water required by conventional growing.

Aeroponics is a particularly useful method for plant scientists and researchers as plant roots are easy to see and access. This means that plants can be regularly observed and tested without impacting plant growth or killing the plant by uprooting it.

Vertical farming

Vertical farming is the practice of growing plants vertically to produce "significantly higher yields per unit of floor space" compared to conventional farming (Verticalfarming.com, 2022).

As the global population soars, there are ever more mouths to feed and ever less space in which to grow food. Vertical farming is the solution to this crisis. Because it involves growing upwards rather than outwards, vertical farming practices are ideally suited to densely populated urban environments where space is at a premium. This means that food can be grown close to retail premises or end consumers, reducing food miles and the carbon costs of transportation.

Vertical farms can have a transformative effect on underprivileged urban areas, creating their own ecosystems of employment and better nutrition wherever they are installed. In Detroit, for example, a burgeoning urban agriculture scene in abandoned warehouses has revitalised once-impoverished neighbourhoods.

World Population to Reach 9.9 Billion by 2050 (International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2020)
To feed this growing population, food production must increase by at least 70% (IBM, 2021)
One-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted between harvest and retail globally. This amounts to about 1.3 billion tons per year (World Food Programme, 2020)
72% of global water withdrawals are used by conventional agriculture (UN-Water 2021)
Approximately one-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, forestry and other land-use (GOV UK, 2021)
As a result of intensive agriculture, 33% of the Earth's soils are already degraded and over 90% could become degraded by 2050 (FAO and ITPS, 2015; IPBES, 2018).