Future food may come from high-tech agriculture

To feed the 7 billion people on Earth, we have already cultivated 40% of the planet's land, and by 2050 the world population is expected to reach 9.6 billion. Data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization shows that to avoid widespread malnutrition, food production needs to increase by 70%. But there is now little land left to develop. This means we need to change the way food is grown on a massive scale.

The change begins with the growing of fruits and vegetables. The Tabernas Desert in southern Spain is the driest place in Europe, yet it produces more than half of Europe's fresh fruits and vegetables, contributing 1.5 billion US dollars to the local economy and being regarded as an economic miracle. This achievement is due to greenhouse cultivation, where the environment inside the greenhouse is controllable, and the Tabernas model can be replicated elsewhere in the world. From the perspective of the environment and land use, controlled-environment agriculture is a great idea. The yields of vegetables and fruits in greenhouses are far greater than those grown in the open air. In a greenhouse, the weeds, pests and severe weather that cause problems disappear. And a combined set of hydroponic molds can achieve multi-layer cultivation on the same land. As arable land becomes scarcer and the global population continues to rise, developing "vertical farms" becomes our only option. Perhaps in the future most of our agricultural products will come from skyscrapers of steel and concrete illuminated by LED lights. But at present, greenhouse technology is only used for fruits and vegetables, while grains, which provide more than 50% of humanity's calories, cannot profit substantially from greenhouse cultivation. Therefore, controlled-environment cultivation cannot possibly be a strong supplement for grain cultivation.

The action to feed 9.6 billion people may be very simple - modernize agriculture across the entire world. At present, many farmers in less developed regions farm in backward ways, with no crop rotation, almost no irrigation, and even still using animal power to plow the land. Promoting agricultural modernization globally can feed more people. And promoting the diversification of staple crops, by planting beans, potatoes and sweet potatoes, can both greatly increase food production and improve nutritional value. Farms operating with data at their core are rising. As data is collected, farms will become more efficient. In addition, to resolve the contradiction between people's increasing demand for meat and the reduction of arable land, future meat may come from the laboratory. Therefore, it is not a very crazy idea for future farmland to become high-tech laboratories. If humanity can use technology and infrastructure to solve the food problem, an interesting side effect will appear: saving a large amount of land resources. Returning this saved arable land to nature will also have a considerable effect on improving the environment, especially on reversing climate change.