Around half of the habitable land on the planet is now used for agriculture. A millennium ago—or more recently, in the case of many countries—it was mostly wilderness. Soon, technology could reshape that balance again, bringing back acres of trees as tools to fight climate change.
A new project from the global design firm Stantec looks at how ancient forests and other ecosystems could come back, through “rewilding,” if we produce food differently.
Vertical farming
Jonathan Riggall, the director of energy and natural resources at Stantec, researched how technology might enable rewilding in the U.K. and Europe. Now, he argues, the fourth industrial revolution—from genetic engineering to robotics and artificial intelligence—could make it possible to change land use at a large scale. Vertical farms, including systems that plant, grow, and harvest food autonomously, can use as little as 1% of the land that a conventional farm would use to grow the same amount of food.
The systems are still at a relatively early stage and expensive, but beginning to prove that they can be profitable. Right now, vertical farm companies focus on leafy greens, which make the most sense financially, but berries and vine crops will soon follow. Other indoor agriculture facilities, like a large, state-of-the-art greenhouse now growing tomatoes in Appalachia, use one-thirtieth of the land used in traditional farming. A new vertical wheat farm grows as much in 850 square feet as could normally grow on 30 to 50 acres.
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