Agriculture’s impact 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 outweighs the remaining wild populations. Every day more primary forest falls against the tide of crops and grazing, and every year an area as large as the UK is lost. If humanity wants the hope of addressing climate change, we need to re-imagine farming.
Covid-19 also exposed weaknesses with current food systems. Agricultural scientists have known for decades that farm labor can be exploitative and hard, so it should come as no surprise that farm owners had trouble importing labor to keep farms going, as they struggled to ensure food workers were free from the virus remains.
Similarly, food supply chains are “just enough, just in time” effective, but they offer little redundancy. And by pushing the agricultural land into nature, it connects people with reservoirs of viruses that – when they enter the human population – are devastating.
To address these challenges, new technologies promise a greener approach to food production and focus on more plant-based, annual, local and intensive production. Done right, three technologies – vertical, cellular and precise agriculture – can change the relationship between land and food again.
3. Farming in a box
Vertical farming – the practice of growing food in stacking bins – is not new; innovators have been growing crops indoors since Roman times. What is new is the efficiency of LED lighting and advanced robotics with which vertical farms today can produce 20 times more food on the same footprint as is possible in the field.
Currently, most vertical farms only produce greens, such as lettuce, herbs and microgreens, as they are fast and profitable, but within five years many more crops will be possible as lighting costs continue to fall and technology develops.
The controlled environments of vertical farms can make the use of pesticides and herbicides carbon neutral and recycle water. For cold and hot climates where soft crop production is difficult or impossible, vertical agriculture promises an end to expensive and environmentally intensive imports, such as berries, small fruits and avocados from regions such as California.
Cellular agriculture, or the science of producing animal products without animals, heralds an even greater change. By 2020 alone, hundreds of millions of dollars have flowed into the sector, and in the last few months, the first products have hit the market.
These include Brave Robot “ice cream” which involves no cows and Eat Just’s limited release of “chicken” that never went claw.
Precision agriculture is another big frontier. Soon self-driving tractors will use data to plant the right seed in the right place, giving each plant exactly the right amount of fertilizer, reducing energy, pollution and waste.
Together, vertical, cellular and precision farming should give us the ability to produce more food on less land and with less input. Ideally, we will be able to produce any crop, anywhere, anytime of the year, eliminating the need for long, vulnerable, energy-intensive supply chains.
2. Is agriculture 2.0 ready?
Of course, these technologies are no panacea – no technology ever is. To begin with, although these technologies are rapidly aging, they are not quite ready for mainstream use. Many remain too expensive for small and medium-sized farms and can cause the consolidation of the farm.
Some consumers and food theorists are cautious and wonder why we can not produce our food like our grandparents did. Critics of these agricultural technologies call for agro-ecological or regenerative farming that achieves sustainability through diversified, small-scale farming that feeds local consumers. Regenerative agriculture is very promising, but it is not clear that it will enlarge.
Although these are serious considerations, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to food security. Alternative small-scale farms with mixed crops, for example, also suffer from labor shortages and usually produce expensive food that does not have the capacity of lower-income consumers. But it does not have to be an ‘either / or’ situation. There are pros and cons to all approaches and we cannot achieve our climate and food security goals without also embracing agricultural technology.
1. Agriculture’s hopeful future
Through the best aspects of alternative agriculture (namely the commitment to sustainability and nutrition), the best aspects of conventional agriculture (the economic efficiency and the ability to grow) and new technologies as described above, the world can create an agricultural revolution that – in combined with progressive policies around labor, nutrition, animal welfare and the environment – will produce plenty of food while reducing agriculture’s footprint on the planet.
This new approach to agriculture, a ‘closed loop revolution’, is already flourishing in countries (and laboratories) from advanced greenhouses in the Netherlands and the indoor fish farms of Singapore to the cellular agricultural companies of Silicon Valley.
Closed loop farms use few pesticides, are land and energy efficient and recycle water. It can allow local production all year round, reduce repetitive manual labor, improve environmental performance and animal welfare. If these facilities are in line with good policy, we should see that the land that is not needed for farming is returned to nature as parks or game sanctuaries.
Today’s world was 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 with our food system on the front page, but the long-term outlook for this old and important industry is ultimately good news.
This article was originally published on The conversation by Lenore Newman and Evan Fraser by UCL. Read the original article here.