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The impact of agriculture on the planet is massive and relentless. About 40 percent of the Earth’s suitable land area is used for cropland and grazing. The number of domestic animals far exceeds the remaining wild populations. Every day more and more primary forests fall to a tide of crops and pastures, and every year an area as large as the UK is lost. If humanity is to have any hope of fighting climate change, we must rethink agriculture.
Covid-19 has also revealed the weaknesses of current food systems. Agricultural scientists have known for decades that farm labor can be exploitative and tough, so it should come as no surprise that farm owners find it difficult to import labor to keep farms running so that they were fighting to keep food workers safe from the virus.
Likewise, “just enough, just in time” food supply chains are efficient but offer little redundancy. And growing farmland in the wild connects humans with reservoirs of viruses that – when they enter the human population – prove to be devastating.
To meet these challenges, new technologies promise a greener approach to food production and focus on more plant-based, year-round, local and intensive production. Well done, three technologies – vertical, cellular and precision agriculture – can remake the relationship between land and food.
3. Farm in a box
Vertical agriculture – the practice of growing food in stacked trays – is not new; innovators have been cultivating crops indoors since Roman times. What’s new is the efficiency of LED lighting and advanced robotics that today allow vertical farms to produce 20 times more food on the same footprint as possible in the field.
Currently, most vertical farms only produce green vegetables, such as lettuce, herbs and microgreens because they are fast and profitable, but within five years many more crops will be possible as the lighting cost continues to drop and as technology develops.
The controlled environments of vertical farms reduce the use of pesticides and herbicides, can be carbon neutral, and recycle water. For cold and hot climates where field production of tender crops is difficult, if not impossible, vertical farming promises an end to expensive and ecologically intense imports, such as berries, small fruits and avocados from regions such as the California.
Cellular farming, or the science of producing animal products without animals, heralds an even bigger change. In 2020 alone, hundreds of millions of dollars poured into the industry, and in the past few months, the first products have hit the market.
This includes the Brave Robot “ice cream” that doesn’t involve any cows and the limited version of Eat Just’s “chicken” that never chuckles.
Another big frontier is precision farming. Soon, autonomous tractors will use the data to plant the right seed in the right place and give each plant exactly the right amount of fertilizer, reducing energy, pollution and waste.
Taken together, vertical, cellular and precision agriculture should allow us to produce more food on less land and with less inputs. Ideally, we’ll be able to produce any crop, anywhere, any time of year, eliminating the need for long, vulnerable and energy-intensive supply chains.
2. Is Agriculture 2.0 ready?
Of course, these technologies are not a panacea – no technology ever is. On the one hand, although these technologies are maturing quickly, they are not quite ready for mainstream deployment. Many remain too expensive for small and medium farms and can lead to farm consolidation.
Some consumers and food theorists are cautious about why we can’t produce our food like our great-grandparents did. Critics of these agricultural technologies are calling for agro-ecological or regenerative agriculture that ensures sustainability through small-scale, diverse farms that feed local consumers. Regenerative agriculture is very promising, but it is not certain that this will evolve.
While these considerations are serious, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to food security. For example, small-scale mixed farming operations also suffer from labor shortages and typically produce expensive foods that are beyond the means of low-income consumers. But it doesn’t have to be an “one or the other” situation. There are pros and cons to all approaches and we cannot meet our climate and food security goals without also adopting agricultural technology.
1. The bright future of agriculture
By taking the best aspects of alternative agriculture (i.e. commitment to sustainability and nutrition), the best aspects of conventional agriculture (economic efficiency and the ability to scale) and new technologies such as those described above, the world can embark on an agricultural revolution that – when combined with progressive policies around work, nutrition, animal welfare and the environment – will produce food abundant while reducing the footprint of agriculture on the planet.
This new approach to agriculture, a “closed loop revolution”, is already blooming in fields (and labs) from the advanced greenhouses of the Netherlands and from the inland fish farms of Singapore to the cellular farming companies of Silicon Valley.
Closed-loop farms use few pesticides, are economical in land and energy, and recycle water. They can enable local production all year round, reduce repetitive manual labor, improve environmental outcomes and animal welfare. If these facilities come with the right policy, then we should see land not needed for agriculture returning to nature as parks or wildlife refuges.
Today’s world has been shaped by an agricultural revolution that began 10,000 years ago. This next revolution will be just as transformative. Covid-19 may have put the problems of our food system on the front page, but the long-term perspective for this old and vital industry is ultimately good news.
This article was originally published on The conversation by Lenore Newman and Evan fraser at UCL. Read it original article here.
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