Agriculture has come a long way through the centuries of time, developing the nomads to the civilization by creating a settlement. This particular industry has been the sole livelihood for most of the people. In fact, this is one of the most important aspects of life on earth. The agricultural sector is going to face enormous challenges in order to feed the 9.6 billion people that the FAO predicts are going to inhabit the planet by 2050: food production must increase by 70% by 2050. What is the solution for this problem?
Urban farming is the perfect solution for this problem. Square roots is a New York-based firm which is trying to bring this into reality by taking the initial steps. They have ten shipping containers, each 320 sq ft. yields the equivalent of a two-acre outdoor farm while using 80 percent less water. They select ten entrepreneurial farmers who grow genetically modified organism (GMO) free greens all year round under the climate controlled environment. These farmers produce greens at a centralized place to feed on an average of fifty customers. At the beginning of each week, each farmer personally hands in the greens to their customers. Square roots are currently growing 78 different varieties of delicious greens and they hope to start producing blooming plants like tomatoes and strawberries. They supply to hundreds of customers who demand healthy fresh food and want to know from where and how it comes.
The limitation of this concept is that vertical farming is restricted to a particular place and a number of people. It is building a group of people called urban farmers. It is good that people are using the minimal resources to its fullest but to make urban agriculture a revolution, it should be taken into a wide scale where each and everyone builds their own farm growing vegetables in a controlled environment in their homes. People wouldn’t like to spend much time in growing the plants but would surely like to eat healthily. So, urban farming should be developed to a level where it is fully automated and can be controlled at their disposal like setting the temperature at which the plant grows and watering the plants by using a mobile app. It should be compact as people can’t afford to use up much of their space growing plants.
This can be the best solution for the rising food prices, avoiding chemicals in our diet, saving resources and meeting the upcoming food insecurity due to the population growth where the supply doesn’t meet the demand.
Bibliography:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brooklyn-farm/an-urban-farm-grows-in-brooklyn-idUSKBN18X19I
http://www.alive.com/food/parking-lot-plate/
https://www.thoughtco.com/urban-farming-future-of-agriculture-1435763
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170405-how-vertical-farming-reinvents-agriculture