Urban Agriculture - Week 8 Entry 1


Reduction in greenhouse gases, carbon emission and footprint, fresher and healthier produce, less water wastage. These are opportunities that urban agriculture is providing as alternatives. A company named Aerofarms have converted multiple old buildings turning them into an agriculture area within cities.
Aerofarms uses old empty buildings and turning the interior into layers of agriculture plots. The produce allows for less transportation and importation time from grocers to farms and cuts out the carbon emissions from the transportation, whilst providing fresher and more nutritious options to consumers. Their technology cultivates the crops by sitting them in oxygenated water. Their system also allows them to use 95% less water compared to a conventional farm. The crops are also grown from a reusable cloth made from reused plastic instead of soil, also replacing sunlight with specialised LED lights. With a controlled agriculture area, their controlled climate system allows crops to grow all year round and cuts the growing time to nearly half.
A huge amount of freshwater contamination and usage attributes to agriculture and at the same degrading the land. New ways of providing sustainable food options are needed and Aerofarms are one of the leading pioneers to do so. These benefits while helping our environment tremendously, also provides food security to consumers.
In conclusion, the enormous amount of benefits to the environment provided by urban agriculture shows a clear direction of where agriculture should be moving towards in the coming decades.

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