Kacira describes the electrical energy needs for indoor farming as substantially higher compared to growing crops outdoors. Ventilation fans were on to keep the air fresh. That’s because there are still many challenges growing indoors at a mass scale.ĭuring a recent visit to the university greenhouse, a system of pumps were feeding nutrient-rich water into the irrigation system. “It will be a piece of the puzzle, but it will not replace field agriculture.” Indoor growing will play a more significant role in agriculture as the water crisis grows more urgent, Kacira says. The Tucson campus includes greenhouses and a vertical farm. It’s not stable anymore,” says Murat Kacira, director of the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center at the University of Arizona.
“We are challenged with a dynamic climate out there. He says indoor agriculture will play a significant role as drought puts more stress on the Colorado River. Murat Kacira runs the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center at the University of Arizona. As negotiations drag on, it is clear that major cuts will be coming to the region’s most important water supply. But the state that draws the most from the river, California, didn’t sign it. Six of those states recently gave the federal government a plan to reduce their water use. Between 70% to 80% of the river is allocated to farms in seven Western states. That doesn’t mean vertical farming will solve the dire situation on the Colorado River. For folks that have lost their water resources, this is something to look at.” There are parts of the world where desertification has already taken place and their water resources are gone or depleted. But other parts of the world have already gone through this structural change. “This is like a reckoning for the United States because we have relied on the Colorado River for so long. The company recycles nearly every drop it uses on the farm and as the technology matures, the water savings could get even better. Storey says growing lettuce in a vertical farm uses about 90% less water compared to traditional field agriculture. Plenty will soon open a new indoor farm in Compton, California, that will produce 4.5 million pounds of leafy greens a year.
They’ve popped up in cities like Denver and New York.īy one estimate, there are more than 2,000 of them in the United States, and it’s expected to become a $30 billion industry by 2030. Vertical farms like this one are part of a young but growing industry. Their lives are very short, but they are very good.” “We keep the growth rate at maximum the whole way through. “We bring the plant in and we just say, ‘how do we get the best results, period,’” says Plenty co-founder Nate Storey. By recycling water and capturing it from the air, the company says it can use 90 percent less water than traditional farms. Plenty cofounder Nate Storey at the San Francisco farm’s water filtration system.
0 kommentar(er)
