Gardening: Urban Agriculture and New Technologies

This gardening stuff is cool and all, but what if I live in a city? How does this affect me? I don’t have room to participate in gardening even if I wanted to!

Urban agriculture is advancing at an amazingly fast pace and growing healthy, local, nutritious food in non-traditional locations is getting easier and easier to do.  We can grow a lot of food with minimal water in small spaces!

Amazing fact, did you know that currently New York City with its rooftop space alone could produce twice as many green vegetables and meet the demands of the city? And, this is without even considering more efficient usages of space or other, newer technologies!

Urban farming not only addresses questions of food. It also has been shown to increase community health and happiness, cut down on energy waste in food production, decrease carbon emissions, help decontaminate soil, reduce noise pollution and help marginalized communities who often have a severely limited access to healthy foods.

So, what are some of the advances in agricultural technology making this possible? Let’s take a look.

Rooftop farming

With rooftop farming, all that unused roof space on apartment and corporate buildings is replaced with crops. This not only is a smart use of space but it also helps further insulate buildings, resulting in less of a need for heating and cooling.

Vertical Farming

Vertical farming is growing up instead of on a flat piece of ground. Growing up presents a lot of challenges currently. However, some of the most well-run vertical gardening farms have been up to three hundred times more productive than traditional farming methods in relation of crop production to space usage.

Hydroponics, Aquaponics and Aeroponics

Hydroponics, aquaponics and aeroponics all work on similar principles - they cut out the need for soil and focus solely on delivering nutrients to plants. With hydroponics, plants are only in water and get nutrients delivered to their root systems. Aquaponics operate almost exactly like hydroponics. However, in an aquaponics system, one also raises fish and the fish excrement provides the nutrients for the plants. Aeroponics use neither soil nor water! In an aeroponics system, nutrients are delivered to plant root systems via misting. 

While all of these systems are technically more complicated than traditional farming, the possibilities are quite great. As of now, a 385 square foot aquaponics system can produce roughly 460 pounds of fish and up to almost 5000 pounds of vegetables every year! Furthermore, these systems lend themselves very well to vertical farming and can thus be even more space efficient. Even NASA is looking towards aeroponics as a potential solution for space colonies and travel! Learn more here.

While there are many problems in the world today and things to fret over, the future of urban agriculture is very bright.

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