Carbon-Negative Farming: Can Hydroponics Help?
In 2018, traditional agriculture accounted for about 10% of US greenhouse gas emissions.
The Problem: Traditional Agriculture and Carbon Emissions
Agriculture is a massive contributor to carbon emissions. According to the EPA, in 2018, agriculture accounted for about 10% of US greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions often come from livestock such as cattle, agricultural soils, and rice production. But the problem is so much bigger than this number suggests.
In traditional agriculture, the emissions involved on the farm are only the start of the story. After the harvest, crops may be transported long distances to reach grocery stores in areas where there isn’t much agriculture or certain crops are out of season. A long transportation chain means even more greenhouse gas emissions related to the shipping process.
Fortunately, our engineers are aware of the problem, and actively working toward a greener future by doing whatever they can to reduce our carbon footprint within our vertical farming systems. The goal is carbon-negative farming. But what is it, and how does it work? Read on to find out.
What Is Carbon-Negative Farming?
At its heart, carbon-negative farming, sometimes simply called carbon farming, is any farming method that absorbs more carbon than it creates.
The basic cycle of organic carbon production and absorption in our world works like this:
People and animals exhale carbon dioxide every time we breathe.
Plants take in carbon dioxide through photosynthesis.
Plants absorb plenty of carbon each year, but most of it winds up cycling back into the atmosphere because of over-tilling and erosion.
In reality, carbon itself is not the problem. It’s a vital element that all life on Earth needs to survive. The damage comes when too much carbon makes its way into the atmosphere, where it absorbs the sun’s heat. Rather than releasing carbon into the air, one of the best places for it is in the soil.
Unfortunately, every time traditional soil-based farmers turn over our soil, we lose carbon into the air. Over-tilling also accelerates the surface degradation of organic matter in the soil, which would otherwise release its carbon back into the ground as it decays. Add to this the effects of wind and water erosion of our top-soil, and we have a large-scale crisis on our hands.
In short, carbon-negative farming practices seek to reverse this problem, storing carbon in the soil rather than kicking it out into the air.
How Does Carbon Farming Work?
The exciting thing to remember is that agriculture is our best option for not just slowing down carbon emissions but reversing them. Carbon-negative farming involves using best practices that pull more carbon out of the air than the farm puts into it. If we can do this efficiently, we could effectively reverse one of our world’s most significant dangers.
One common means of accomplishing this is through the practice of composting. Compost increases the amount of carbon stored in the soil, improving our precious topsoil’s quality and creating carbon storage as deep as two meters from the surface. Astoundingly, it does this when applied to only the top foot of soil, meaning that much of that carbon storage is safe from erosion and tilling.
Another practice that carbon farmers are exploring is grazing. This seems counterintuitive since grazing cows and other livestock are some of the biggest producers of carbon emissions in agriculture. But the reason this problem exists is that we’ve been going about grazing all wrong. With rotational grazing strategies, cows and livestock can actually improve their grazing land and soil.
Hydroponics May Be an Answer
A third option involves not tilling the soil at all to produce crops. How is this possible? By growing plants without soil, by leveraging hydroponic systems.
Hydroponic farming absorbs carbon from the air without disturbing the earth because plants are grown directly in water, with no soil required. Not only that, because hydroponic farms can grow indoors with relatively little space required, farms can thrive in urban environments or areas where farming conditions are not ideal for traditional methods. Indoor urban farms solve the challenges of both transportation and eliminates soil erosion.
In fact, hydroponics is an incredibly sustainable way of growing the food needed to feed a growing population. Because hydroponic plants are grown indoors, they can exist in areas where traditional farms wouldn’t work. This means we can bring local crops into communities where fresh crops are scarce, lowering the carbon emissions produced by transporting our favorite produce across the country or around the world. The process even uses far less water than traditional growing methods, since the water used in the system can be recycled time and time again.
While vertical farms still need carbon and produce carbon to farm successfully, is there a way to sequester it from other entities to reuse carbon? And is hydroponic farming, and carbon farming in general, the key to solving the climate change problem? The truth is, we’re still in the discovery phase. But even if it isn’t the ultimate solution, carbon-negative farming and hydroponics is, at the very least, a step in the right direction.