No Soil, No Water, No Sunlight : Future of Agriculture and Technology

Despite of our significant scientific and technological achievements, we are still not in a good position to manage natural resources properly. We have failed to reduce hunger and poverty, and we also failed to improve rural livelihoods.

Feeding 9 Billion People

The world population is now growing by 80 million a year and is expected to 9 billion by 2050.

Climate change could make half the world’s current farmland unsuitable; agriculture, ironically, produces a third of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

As we try to meet the growing need for food worldwide, current environmental challenges will become only more pressing — and conventional agriculture model will not work here.

We need to grow more, we need to grow crops more efficiently, and we need to reduce waste.

Drones & Self-driving Tractors / AgTech : Agriculture Technology

Future of farming is all about technology. Precision agriculture is one of many modern farming practices that make production more efficient.

Iseki, Yanmar and other Japanese manufacturers are also working on self-driving tractors. IHI is developing technology to monitor the growth of crops with satellites and share the data with farmers

GIS data, driver-less tractors and drones bring in big data sets that can be used to analyse after every field pass; and bid data analytics can be put to some good use — and the best time is now.

No Soil, No Water, No Sunlight, No Problem

AeroFarming uses indoor vertical farming technology.

No Soil, No Water, No Sunlight, No Problem. Vertical Farming is growing crops in places where traditional agriculture would have been impossible.

Vertical farming gives greater access to fresh, nutritious food-year round, reducing the distance it has to travel to the end consumer.

Vertical farming can defy climate conditions, you get 100 times more crop per square foot than traditional methods, and uses 99 percent less water usage than outdoor fields.

Located 40 miles outside Chicago, this is Green Sense Farms, the largest indoor vertical farm in the U.S. The CEO of Green Sense says

We’re not subject to rain or drought. We control the environment. So the weather is perfect every single day.

Personal Food Computer / Food Data Center

Networked Agriculture/ Open Agriculture (OpenAG) Initiative from MIT’s Media Lab or Harper’s OpenAG Initiative which is an open-source initiative that creates a highly controlled environment using robotic control systems and to automate and actuated climate, energy, and plant sensing mechanisms — designed to optimize agricultural production by monitoring and actuating a desired climate inside of a growing chamber.

Based on Vertical Farming that you can grow in urban areas, and cuts the carbon footprint of transporting crops. Foods also arrive fresher given the shorter trips to consumers’ tables.

These Food Data Centers will be like warehouse/container with vertical farm modules to grow various crops