Vertical farming grows high and cheap
The future of food production can be witnessed at an England’s Paignton Zoo, where the fodder to feed the animals is grown right on the premises in hydroponic vertical structures. The growing space is equivalent to 12 times the land area it occupies. It consumes 1/6 the amount of water in comparison to typical gardening methods. Large food companies and governments around the world have been visiting and exploring the methods used at Paignton Zoo, to see if there is a sustainable business model that can be adapted from the zoo’s growing system.
Scientists launch global scheme to boost rice yields while reducing damage to environment
Millions will escape hunger and poverty in a widening campaign to achieve global food security and deliver major environmental gains within 25 years
The Crawford Fund: One of the world’s largest global scientific partnerships for sustainable agricultural development has launched a bold new research initiative that aims to dramatically improve the ability of rice farmers to feed growing populations in some of the world’s poorest nations. The efforts of the Global Rice Science Partnership, or GRiSP, are expected to lift 150 million people out of poverty by 2035 and prevent the emission of greenhouse gases by an amount equivalent to more than 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide.
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If GMO genes escape, how will the hybrids do?
American Journal of Botany: GMOs, or Genetically Modified Organisms, may raise concerns of genes escaping from crops and having unknown effects on natural, wild species. But what is the real risk that traits associated with GMOs will actually migrate to and persist in their wild relatives? Interest in plant ecology, crop production and weed management led John Lindquist and his colleagues from the University of Nebraska and USDA-ARS to investigate how gene flow from a cultivated crop to a weedy relative would influence the ecological fitness of a cropwild hybrid offspring. They published their findings in the recent October issue of the American Journal of Botany.
Grain sorghum (Sorghum bicolor subsp. bicolor) is an important food and feed crop throughout the world. The reduced digestibility of sorghum seed relative to other grains makes it a less efficient resource, even though it is highly adapted to growth in semiarid environments common to Africa, India, and the Southern and Western Great Plains of the United States. There has been considerable interest in modifying the quality traits of grain sorghum using GMO technology to enhance its nutritional value to both humans and animals raised for human consumption.
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Are we having another food crisis?
New Scientist: The world food price index is at its highest since 2008, when food prices rocketed and millions of people suffered. This year the crisis seems to be happening again. Prices for the staple grains that underpin the world’s food supply soared after forecasts for the US and Chinese maize harvests fell in October, Pakistan lost its wheat to floods, and crop losses to drought and wildfire led Russia to ban grain exports until 2011. Food prices have soared in India, Egypt and elsewhere and are being blamed for riots in Mozambique.
Are we having another food crisis?
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EarthTalk: What are the benefits of “hydroponic” growing of lettuce and other crops? and can pollution affect my child’s IQ?
Dear EarthTalk: What are the environmental benefits of the hydroponic growing of lettuce and other crops?
– Bruce Keeler, Oakland, CA
While organic agriculture is all the rage, growing by leaps and bounds to meet increased consumer demand for healthier food, another option that’s less well known but just as healthy is hydroponics, whereby plants are grown in nutrient-fortified water-based solutions without a soil substrate whatsoever. Besides not needing chemical fertilizers or pesticides (most of which are toxic as well as derived from petroleum), hydroponics also take up much less space than traditional agriculture, meaning that even an apartment window can yield impressive amounts of food throughout the calendar year.
Hydroponic growing not only eliminates
the need for chemical fertilizers and
pesticides but also takes up much less
space than traditional agriculture,
meaning that even an apartment window
can yield impressive amounts of food
throughout the calendar year.
Photo credit: Ars Electronica,
The Window Project
In traditional forms of agriculture, soil facilitates the process of providing the mineral nutrients that plants need to grow. Organisms in the soil break down the nutrients into inorganic basic forms that the plants can then take up accordingly and put to use photosynthesizing. Of course, some of the organisms the soil attracts are unwelcome, and not every speck of soil is ideal as a growth medium, so we have come up with ways to kill off unwanted pests (pesticides) and pump up the ground’s productivity (fertilizers).
But growing fruits and vegetables hydroponically obviates the need for fertilizers and pesticides — let alone soil — altogether. “Without soil, there is little to no microbial activity, so the plants depend on direct nutrients from nutrient solutions,” reports Alexandra Gross in E – The Environmental Magazine. “And because hydroponics occur in a highly controlled space and microbial activity is at minimum, pesticides, insecticides and herbicides are not needed.”
In most hydroponic systems, the nutrient solutions include inorganic salt fertilizers and semi-soluble organic materials such as bat guano (manure), bone meal and fish emulsion. Since growing hydroponically does not require chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the method is inherently “organic,” although the federal government doesn’t recognize it as such officially. Hydroponic farmers are trying to get the U.S. Food & Drug Administration to take soil out of the equation when it comes to defining organic so that their products can bear an organic certification label on store shelves and appeal to a quickly growing segment of green-minded consumers.
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Large-scale fish farm production offsets environmental gains
Pew Environment Group: Industrial-scale aquaculture production magnifies environmental degradation, according to the first global assessment of the effects of marine finfish aquaculture (e.g. salmon, cod, turbot and grouper) released today. This is true even when farming operations implement the best current marine fish farming practices.
Dr. John Volpe and his team at the University of Victoria developed the Global Aquaculture Performance Index (GAPI), an unprecedented system for objectively measuring the environmental performance of fish farming.
“Scale is critical,” said Dr. Volpe, a marine ecologist. “Over time, the industry has made strides in reducing the environmental impact per ton of fish, but this does not give a complete picture. Large scale farming of salmon, for example, even under even the best current practices creates large scale problems.”
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Restaurant customers willing to pay more for local food
Penn State: Not only are restaurant patrons willing to pay more for meals prepared with produce and meat from local providers, the proportion of customers preferring local meals actually increases when the price increases, according to a team of international researchers.
A recent study of how customers perceive and value local food shows that restaurant patrons prefer meals made with local ingredients when they are priced slightly higher than meals made with non-local ingredients, said Amit Sharma, assistant professor, School of Hospitality Management, Penn State. The research will appear in the fall/winter issue of the International Journal of Revenue Management.
In the experiment, researchers first set prices for both non-local and local selections on the menu of a student-led restaurant at $5.50. When the price was the same for non-local and local food, customers showed no significant preference for either option. However, when the local food selection was priced at $6.50, or 18 percent higher than the non-local option, a higher proportion of the customers picked the meal made with local foods and ingredients, said Sharma, who worked with Frode Alfnes, associate professor, department of economics and resource management, Norwegian University of Life Sciences.
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