Conventional Agriculture is Ruining the Environment
What’s the problem?
Agriculture is something humans have been doing for some 12,000 years, and we have used the same general method that entire time. The basic process goes something like so: clear cutting the land, tearing up the soil, and planting the crop of choice. This was fine for pre-industrial humans where populations were small, but now, with 7 billion people and rapidly growing, conventional agriculture uses far too much land while creating other problems as well. It is destroying the environment. Expanding farmland destroys habitats, ultimately contributing to the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, which are crucial to human society.
How conventional agriculture harms the environment (and what it is)
Conventional agriculture is what many people think of as “modern” farming, where crops are grown “in soil, in the open air, with irrigation,” and with the “active application of nutrients, pesticides, and herbicides,” as defined by this study from researchers at Arizona State University. These practices cause a plethora of issues that all lead to the decline of biodiversity, which is crucial to human life, and all life on Earth. For those who don’t know, biodiversity is essentially how much variation in life there is. For biodiversity to be maintained, individuals within a population must be genetically diverse, variable in species type, in turn creating many types of ecosystems within a geographical region. These conditions are the healthiest and most stable for the environment, providing what are known as ecosystem services, which are any services that nature provides, including gas regulation, pollination, and raw materials such as lumber. Ecosystem services essentially maintain the Earth, crucial in enabling the propagation of life. One of the leading causes of biodiversity loss is habitat destruction. Although the development of cities contributes to habitat loss, a large portion of habitat loss comes from clear cutting land for farming. Clear cutting land makes it uninhabitable, forcing animals into smaller areas that cannot support them, ultimately resulting in ecosystem collapse. Habitat loss is not the only contributor to the decline in biodiversity, however.
Conventional farming revolves around the use of supplementary chemicals to enhance yields. Since crops are grown in soil and not in a contained area, all the poisonous pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers are carried away by irrigation or rain. These chemicals pollute water sources, which then get dispersed into nearby ecosystems. Fish and other aquatic organisms absorb these chemicals, and are then eaten by predators, where the pollutants become more and more concentrated the further up the food chain they travel. A lot of these animals affected end up sick or dying, especially higher level predators where concentrations increase, resulting in a significant biodiversity loss and the destruction of ecosystem services.
This type of agriculture cannot be sustained
Earth’s population is increasing, and it’s increasing faster than ever before. Currently, there are over 7.5 billion people in the world according to the US Census Bureau. By 2050, which is closer than it may seem, there will be well over 9 billion people. To feed 7 billion people, we use about 50 percent of habitable land, which is about 70 percent of the total land area on Earth, as depicted in the graphic below.
To feed more than 7 billion people using the same methods we have been using, large swathes forest will have to be destroyed (i.e. the Amazon), destroying an extensive amount of habitats. This is simply not sustainable and will have severe effects on global biodiversity, contributing to the ever-threatening, man-made mass extinction event. Something needs to change about how we farm, or risk the consequences of extinction.
Hydroponics as an option
Hydroponics, for those that don’t know, is a form of agriculture that does not use soil. Rather than growing in soil, crops are grown in some nutrient-lacking substrate with nutrients delivered through the water. Typically, it is done in gravel, sand, or just water only, and is commonly done indoors. This allows for high degrees of control over growing conditions, including light levels and wavelengths, temperatures, nutrient concentrations, and more. Linked below is a video from the BBC Earth Lab that elaborates more on what hydroponics really is and how it works.
How does this method of farming actually solve the biodiversity problem? Hydroponics helps in many ways. Firstly, hydroponic farms are vertically scaling and modular like those pictured below. This allows farms to grow upwards instead of outwards, meaning they can use significantly less space to produce the same amount of food that conventional farms can. Although only 23 percent of agricultural land is used for crops, habitat destruction will be reduced nonetheless. Hydroponics can also be highly controlled. Crops can be grown indoors where climate can be kept constant, unaffected by outside conditions, no matter how harsh they are. This is perfect for the future where climate change will be causing harsher and more dangerous weather conditions, like droughts, which would typically cause large scale crop death. If crops were grown indoors, this would not be a problem. Another benefit of hydroponic farming that comes with the control aspect is the lack of chemical runoff. Since growing mediums in conventional farms are not contained, supplementary chemicals can wash away into local water sources. In hydroponics, everything is contained within a growing basin, meaning nothing can get out and pollute the surrounding area, preventing local water sources and ecosystems from being poisoned by fertilizers. This reduces a significant amount of the environmental harm that conventional farming causes. Hydroponics is clearly a strong environmentally friendly alternative to current farming methods, given its plentiful benefits, but there is the question of viability. How does hydroponic farming compare to the productivity of our current methods?
This question has been studied before, and there are some interesting comparisons to be drawn that are quite telling of the viability of hydroponic agriculture as it stands today. In a study from 2015, a group of researchers from the Arizona State University explored three points of comparison between conventional and hydroponic means of lettuce production, including yield (kg/m²/year), water usage (L/kg/year), and energy usage (kJ/kg/year). It was found that hydroponic lettuce yields were approximately 11 times more than conventional methods per square meter, indicating that hydroponic agriculture is definitely capable of meeting global food needs. The data collected did not even take into account vertically scaling farms, which would increase the productivity considerably. Surprisingly, hydroponic lettuce used about 13 times less water per kilogram produced in comparison to its conventional counterpart. Since all water is contained within a closed system, it cannot be lost to run off or evaporation, as it is not subject to the water cycle caused by outdoor conditions. This means that hydroponic farms are not significantly limited by availability of water, meaning they can be implemented almost anywhere and be successful. Droughts, which will be more common in the future due to climate change, will not negatively impact the ability to farm productively. Despite these benefits, there are drawbacks to soil-less agriculture. The only category in which hydroponic farming is inferior to conventional farming is its energy usage. The researchers found that the hydroponic lettuce used over 80 times more energy per kilogram of product than the conventional farm. This makes sense, considering heavy climate control is required to maintain optimal yields. The data was collected in Yuma, Arizona, which maintains an average temperature of around 60 °F in winter and over 90 °F in summer, requiring the growing facility to expend generous amounts of power. More moderate climates will not need to use such an absurd amount of energy to maintain ideal temperature conditions. Also, all light used is artificial, meaning farmers need to power large amounts of light panels the entire time the plants are growing, which consumes a significant amount of energy. Unfortunately, the abhorrent energy use puts a major dent in the viability of hydroponic farming. The fact of the matter is, it really is not viable at a large scale because of this. The energy expenses are simply too much to be implemented. There is still hope, however. Every year, technology progresses a great deal, and humans are discovering new and innovative ways to solve problems. Hydroponic agriculture is a field that, when perfected through research, can be significantly more viable than it is today, replacing conventional methods that are so destructive to the planet.
Conclusions and what should be done in the future
Hydroponics as it stands currently is by no means a solution to the biodiversity crisis resulting from conventional agriculture, but it can be. It is better than conventional agriculture in every way except energy usage and the resulting costs. If this issue was resolved, hydroponic agriculture would be entirely viable and beneficial to employ over conventional methods, greatly reducing the environmental damage it causes. Through research, hydroponic processes and technologies could be refined to cut energy usage, making it cheaper and more accessible for farmers around the globe. If we really care about the harm that conventional agriculture does, governments need to fund or otherwise incentivise research on hydroponics to facilitate change. Our current methods of agriculture cannot be sustained forever, and if we don’t change soon, there are bound to be consequences. Change starts with the individual, so please, at the very least, understand this: conventional agriculture is problem, and the biodiversity crisis to which it contributes will cause a mass extinction if nothing is done. Remember this the next time you hear about another species from the Amazon going extinct from habitat loss.
