When having dinner tonight think about how the food got on your plate. Original outdoor farming makes use of a lot of acres of land and is at the point of becoming old school. The first large warehouses with indoor vertical farms using water as basis for growing have been built.
Let’s take a look at what is currently happening in the agricultural industry. First of all due to an elevated increase in population, expected growth of 33 percent, we will need to produce 70 percent more food by 2050 according to the World Government Summit[1]. At the moment innovation in the agricultural industry is very scarce. At the same time urbanisation is also increasing meaning less availability of land to use for food production.
Secondly, current farmland is degrading which makes the land unsuitable for farming. Already 25 percent of the farmland has been rated as ‘highly degraded’ [2]. While natural resources are being stressed due to multiple reasons. For example; deforestation of unsuitable land, overcutting vegetation, improper crop rotation, unbalanced fertiliser use, etc.
Luckily disruption[3] of this industry is on its way:
- Hydroponics; growing crops without soil. Using nutrient solutions solved in water to feed plants. Not only does this way of farming not require land it is possible to integrate solar power, generation of electricity, production of freshwater and farming. With hydroponics it’s easier to use sensors for the water and track the exact consequences of changes in the composition of this new ‘soil’.
- Urban farming; farming on top or inside city buildings. This is often combined with vertical farming and hydro- or aeroponics. This way of farming is highly efficient due to stacking crops and thus using less space with a higher output.
- Data drive farming; analysing and combining data about weather, seeds, quality of water or soil. This helps farmers to make more informed decisions.
- Use of drones; soil and field analysis, crop monitoring and spraying, health assessments. Using drones helps to analyse the farmlands and make farming more efficient.
Change is inevitable to increase farming outputs with 70 percent by 2050. This old-fashioned industry has been staying behind until now. Hydroponics is even possible at your home and is a lot of fun. So don’t have a garden or a rooftop take a look at hydroponics.
[1] United Nations World Population Prospect 2017, https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/
[2] Agriculture 4.0: The Future of Farming, World Government Summit, https://www.worldgovernmentsummit.org/api/publications/document?id=95df8ac4-e97c-6578-b2f8-ff0000a7ddb6
[3] Five ways agriculture benefit artificial intelligence, https://www.ibm.com/blogs/watson/2016/12/five-ways-agriculture-benefit-artificial-intelligence/
Thanks for your interesting post! I just want to add on to that by introducing the German startup “infarm”. They are already disrupting the farming industry in Berlin. Their goal is to put a vertical farm in basically every supermarket thereby eliminating the distances crops often have to travel to be sold and also increasing the nutritions in crops. They make use of various technologies e.g. AI which helps to analyze the crops and make them grow faster. If you want to learn more about infarm check out this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-YTyt-3ZLc or visit their website https://infarm.de/#what-we-do. I think it is a really interesting startup with a lot of potential to disrupt.