The world’s population is set to reach almost ten billion people in 2050. Two-thirds of these people will live in cities. With the population growing at a rapid rate, the demand for food follows this trend. The question however is where we will get all the food to feed all these people. The agriculture industry is verry innovative and is trying quite hard to combat this question.
One of the companies trying to solve this issue is Bowery farming. The company is moving produce from the field to the factory. From the outside of the building no one can guess crops are being grown and harvested inside the building. The firm is combining different technologies to optimally grow crops. It uses artificial lightning, advanced individual plant monitoring, and vertical growing. At the centre of all this tech is an AI-powered algorithm constantly learning what the best conditions are. The inside of the factory has no direct sunlight as each individual crop receives just the optimal amount of light through LED lightning. No water is wasted as well, only the individually calculated amount of water is given to a crop. The factory is closed from the outside and has a very strong policy on hygiene, because of this there are no pesticides necessary. Another concept Bowery uses is vertical growing, the factory has multiple floors where crops can grow. A system of robots moves the boxes of produce around the building. This makes the output per square meter much higher than traditional farming on land.
All these applications make the process of farming much more efficient, Bowery uses relatively harmless ways of improvement. More improvements are possible, but ethical questions can then be asked. Is genetic mutation ethically right? One thing is sure, the production of food has to increase. No matter what.
Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2018-09-20/this-high-tech-farmer-grows-kale-in-a-factory-video
