May 13, 2011, by brzjch
Mixed farms and vertical farming for food security
Food and commodity prices are going through the roof but there are reasons to believe that university researchers and the agri-food industry can respond to these market signals.
Once upon a time almost all farms were ‘mixed’, ie the farmer had a mix of crops and livestock, and sometimes field vegetables, as part of the enterprise mix on the farm. But as farms became more specialized and ‘developed’ – and machinery and buildings became more economic with larger scale – farms increasingly turned into single enterprise units or, at least, rigidly separate enterprise activities. Large-scale pig and poultry farms, beef feedlots and specialised dairy farms, and cropping farms are the result of the economic pressure to achieve scale and thus lower costs.
However, it may be that rising food prices and the pressures to answer questions about sustainable agriculture and food security will reverse this trend – or, at least, modify it significantly. Two recent overseas experiences support this view.
In March I was in Chengdu, in the Sichuan province, China, with colleagues from the University. One of my colleagues on that trip, Dr Chungui Lu, from the School of Biosciences, was also able to visit the Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture (China-Japan Agricultural Research Center) in Beijing. He saw developments in ‘vertical farming’ for horticulture crops and some (traditional) field vegetables that promise huge increases in yields and productivity – and this is likely to lead to new research work at Nottingham.
Just over eighteen months ago, when I visited Denmark, I was given a presentation on how pig farms might look in the future. In the future pig unit there will be no such thing as waste. No wasted heat, no wasted CO2 or methane, and no wasted nutrients or energy use in any form because the future farm will take all the outputs of pig production and use them to produce horticultural crops simultaneously alongside the production of live pigs. This is a new farm building typology that looks more like a ‘mixed farm’ and is potentially very positive for the environment.
The connection with food security is obvious – mixed farming in a new farming typology / system, and new vertical farming operations offer major improvements in productivity. The provision of safe supplies of food using novel technical approaches that are both low carbon and can take place in non-traditional environments is of great and growing importance to the global economy. What is needed now is much more research into new farming structures and economic systems that can harness the efficiencies that modern science can deliver in a farming economy – and that suit 21st century population and urbanization trends. You can be sure that the University’s food security effort will play its part in this research activity.
John Strak is Special Professor of Food Economics in the School of Economics at The University of Nottingham, Editor of Whole Hog Brief, Managing Director of FoodEast Ltd and (previously) Managing Director of North Highland Products.
[…] John Strak, special professor of food economics at Nottingham University, advised this approach in his research blog last month. Just over eighteen months ago, when I visited Denmark, I was given a presentation on […]