This New Method of Farming Could Change Where Our Food Comes From
Caleb Harper, founder of the CITYFarm Research Project, and his team at MIT's Media Lab in Cambridge, Mass. appear to have found a way to grow food four times faster than it does in nature, using a new farming method called "Aeroponics.", Unlike regular hydroponics, a growing method that uses water instead of soil, the plants at CITYFarm do not sit in still water, but rather have their roots suspended in a "fog chamber" which sprays a nutrient-rich mist. The CITYFarmers take great care to monitor each aspect of the plants' growth, to see which conditions work the best, including a technique of limiting light to red and blue. "This is the spectrum of light that the plants need to grow extra plant material," Harper explainsand the rest of the spectrum besides red and blue only serves to provide heat. Harper believes that Aeoroponics not only grows fuller, more developed plants, but could be a solution to local farmers looking to provide sustenance to booming city populations. "We all know the phrase, the best X comes from X'", he explains, instead proposing that "the best X comes from the environment that created it.", "There is a new way to think of using fabrication space, especially if you look at a city like Detroit.", By building a similar set up, which requires no soil or great tracts of land, "it could be that the best strawberries in the world come from Detroit."