The thirst for an agricultural revolution
Author: Sudhanshu Sarronwala, Chief Impact Officer at Infarm
In my previous post, “Modern tools for a modern food system”, I addressed one of humanity’s biggest challenges: producing more food in the next four (now three) decades than we had in the previous 8,000 years, within planetary boundaries. This time I want to talk about one of the strictest boundaries - the limited amount of freshwater on the planet.
Nature has a brilliant system for reusing water, called the water cycle. A similar system, called the Water Recovery System, is in charge of recycling water on the International Space Station. Sending one gallon of water to space costs more than USD80,000. That’s why every drop of wastewater is captured, filtered, and then reused. Or as the astronauts put it: “today’s coffee is tomorrow’s coffee”. Aboard the ISS, there are only seven crew members. Imagine this number constantly growing and the implications.
Now put this in the context of planet earth. Where the population has grown from 1 billion in 1800 to 7.7 billion today - and where ‘shipping’ more water to is not possible. Desalination, touted as a solution to the world’s freshwater crisis, is prohibitive from a cost, emissions, and environmental damage perspective.
Water is a limited, finite resource. That means Planet Earth had the same amount of water when Tyrannosaurus Rex roamed the earth and during the Roman Empire. The very same amount of water as what we are going to have in 2050. The main difference is that only about 300 million people lived on our planet during the Roman Empire. The same amount of water will have to satisfy the needs of almost 10 billion people in 2050.
So let’s talk about freshwater
Carbon emissions are front and centre whenever there is a discussion over sustainability. Freshwater should be on par. So why isn’t it?
Is it because there is nothing more straightforward for many of us than to go to the tap and pour ourselves a glass of water? Is it because 71% of the earth’s surface is covered in water? Or is it because, as with other misfortunes in life, “you don’t get it, till you get it”.
So who gets it? Perhaps the 4 million residents of Cape Town, which was (almost) the first major city in the world to run out of water. Or Bangalore, which is on a similar dangerous trajectory. Or, perhaps the 2 billion people who live in water-stressed countries. Sooner or later, there will be no need to ask ‘who else?’. We are all going to “get it”.
In less than five years, more than half of the world’s population will likely face water shortages, a fact that spawns disturbing headlines like “Water set to become more valuable than oil”.
How did we get here?
It is not commonly known that only 3% of the world’s water is freshwater and that only one-sixth of the freshwater is available to us. Agriculture uses 70% of this tiny half per cent. Of this, 60% is wasted due to various factors like growing crops in unsuitable environments, leaky irrigation systems, and so on.
Of course, climate change is another major contributing factor with varying precipitation levels and induced drought. Apart from agriculture usage and climate change, freshwater is contaminated by industrial waste, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides. All this is in addition to the rapid growth of the world’s population.
What can we do about it?
There is evidence to say that by changing our personal habits at scale, we can impact water consumption significantly. For instance, it takes 2,700 litres of water to produce a single t-shirt, and producing one pound of beefsteak requires almost 7,500 litres of water.
The only issue with passing the buck to the general population is that it will only enable us to live longer while managing the symptoms. It will not cure the disease.
Since agriculture is both the largest user and a significant polluter of freshwater, the answer to the water scarcity crisis lies in technology and next-generation farming. In other words: we have an urgent and desperate need for an agricultural revolution. One that we believe has already begun.
Vertical farming is one of the modern tools that address this gigantic problem of water usage in agriculture. For example, at Infarm’s growing centres, the plants are nurtured through groundbreaking closed-loop water cycle systems. Thanks to these systems, we are using up to 95% less freshwater compared with open farming (yes, we are looking at saving over a billion litres of water by 2023 for an equivalent amount of food production). Apart from recycling and using minimal amounts of water, Infarm contributes, even more, to address the water problem by using no chemical pesticides.
Inside the vertical farming sphere, we are not alone, just as the vertical farming industry is not alone in revolutionizing agriculture and farming as we know it. Novel, innovative technologies are being developed as I write. From cultivated meat to vertical insect farming. From app-based plant disease detection to dairy alternatives and protein substitutes.
These pioneering technologies are helping to invent next-generation farming.
Wanted: miracle workers
No single person, company, or even industry will provide the solution to the water crisis.
Lawmakers, governments, AgTech companies, and basically everyone who is currently living on planet earth all have to come together and work miracles.
We need to regulate water pollution better, improve our wastewater treatment, employ better water recycling techniques, and most critically, work on new groundbreaking technologies, reinvent the farming industry, and wake up before it’s too late and too dry.
Sadly, for so many, it already is. It doesn’t have to be for the rest.
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References:
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