Today’s micro- and mega-farms have taken on increased importance, partly because of world hunger, which will increase as the population grows.Īdd increasing urbanization that is gobbling available agricultural land in many countries, mix in climate change and the scramble for water to grow crops - as much as 70% of the world’s water is used for agriculture - and the planet may be at a tipping point.įor one thing, not all crops are viable. The farms’ proximity to larger markets means produce can be delivered quickly to consumers, whether they’re grocery shoppers, airline passengers, students or communities in need or restaurants, an industry that has been devastated in the last year. Department of Agriculture’s Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production. Such controlled-environment agriculture is part of the larger trend of urban farms, recognized last year by the May opening of the U.S. “We started this company because we realized the world needed more fresh fruits and vegetables.”Īs different as hydroponics growing systems are, most have this in common: The plants thrive because of the nutrients they receive and the consistency of the environment and can produce crops of fresh leafy greens and other vegetables, various herbs and sometimes fruits. “Americans eat only about 30% of what they should be eating as far as fresh foods,” he said. “It’s a super vibrant community with a rich agricultural history,” Nate Storey, a cofounder of the vertical farming company, said of the Compton facility.
The company hopes to open a farm in Compton this year that’s expected to be about the size of a big-box store and will grow the equivalent of 700 acres of food. Plenty, for instance, has a South San Francisco hydroponics growing facility where a million plant sites produce crops, some of which are sold through area grocery stores. Those spikes resulted, he said, from the need for entertainment beyond Netflix and jigsaw puzzles, a desire to minimize trips to the grocery store and the promise of teachable moments for kids now schooled at home.Īt the other end of the spectrum are large urban farms. “As soon as the pandemic was declared in mid-March and the quarantine took effect, we saw immediate growth spikes, unlike anything we’d ever seen before,” he said. Some of the growing popularity of those units may be connected to the pandemic, according to Paul Rabaut, director of marketing for AeroGarden, which produces systems for in-home crop production. They might be as simple and compact as an in-home system that’s about the size of a couple of loaves of bread stacked on top of each other. (Historians disagree on that as well as where the gardens were.) Then, as now, technology is a key to giving growers, not Mother Nature, more control over production. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, dating to the 6th century B.C., may be a precursor to today’s hydroponics, if they existed.
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