Emerging Alternatives to Mitigate Agricultural Fresh Water and Climate/Ecosystem Issues: Agricultural Revolutions

Abstract

Fresh-water food production/agriculture for both plants and animals utilizes some 70% of the planets’ fresh water, produces some 26% of greenhouse gas emissions and has a longish list of other societal-related issues. Given the developing and extant shortages of arable land, fresh water and food, along with climate/ecosystem issues, there is a need to greatly reduce these adverse effects of fresh-water agriculture. There are, especially since the advent of the 4th Agricultural Revolution, a number of major frontier technologies and functionality changes along with prospective alternatives which could, when combined and collectivized in various ways, massively improve the practices, adverse impacts and outlook of food production. These include cellular/factory agriculture; photosynthesis alternatives; a shift to off-grids and roads/back-to-the-future, do-it-yourself living (aka de-urbanization); cultivation of halophytes on wastelands using saline water; insects; frontier energetics; health-related market changes; and vertical farms/hydroponics/aeroponics. Shifting to these and other prospective alternatives would utilize far less arable land and fresh water, produce far less greenhouse gases and reduce food costs and pollution while increasing food production.

1. Introduction

Fresh water is among the far too many serious-to-existential climate and ecosystem issues now affecting society. Too many people lack quality drinking water. Simply put, current agricultural practices, population increases and pollution have caused increasingly serious fresh water shortfalls [1]. An obvious approach to resolving these shortfalls at scale is to address the by far largest fresh water user—agriculture. Some 70% of available fresh water is utilized for fresh-water agriculture [2], with estimates that some 60% of it is wasted due to faulty irrigation systems. Agriculture is an obvious target to address the increasing need for fresh water for direct human uses. Some half of all habitable land is used for agriculture [2]. Agriculture also produces some 26% of greenhouse gas emissions [2], a major climate issue. In addition to agriculture water issues, due to land conversion, urbanization and erosion, arable land for farming has decreased by 33% over the past 60 years [3], with such losses continuing. All this while the ever-expanding population increases the amount of food required and climate change is creating droughts and more worrisome storms. Agricultural chemicals have also produced serious pollution on both land and sea. In addition, aquifer withdrawals have been extensive enough over time to become increasing saline, salinating irrigated farmland. These agricultural issues, concerns and increasing shortfalls have resulted in what has been termed the 4th Agricultural Revolution [4]. Much of such efforts, enabled by companion revolutions in technology is focused on the optimization of the current historical agricultural constructs, involving the utilization of photosynthesis, plants, fresh water and arable land. Components of the 4th Agricultural Revolution in this regard include regenerative agriculture, no-till farming, computational agricultural ecology, AI/automation, disease and insect resistance, sensors, drones, genetics, crowd-farming and precision agriculture.

In addition to these advanced efforts to optimize conventional farming, there are an increasing number of non-historical, non-conventional approaches to producing food which would collectively greatly reduce the utilization of arable land, fresh water and sunlight and produce much less pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, these approaches are veritable shifts away from fresh water/arable land agriculture to other means of food production including utilization of the other 97% of water [saline/salt water] and the other 44% of land [deserts/wastelands/dry lands] not currently employed for farming. References for these and more are given in the Results sections. This article uniquely summarizes these non-conventional fresh water/arable land “farming” practices and market alternatives, whose developmental progress and revolutionary nature have led some to already deem the future of fresh water/arable land agriculture as non- or not agriculture. These approaches have differing benefits and impacts, utilize different resources and will be collectively employed going forward, depending upon additional considerations. A serious shift toward these approaches should also reduce costs/increase profitability of food production and reverse the current issues of fresh water/arable land agriculture. The collective revolutionary nature of these emerging approaches concerning food production could conceivably result in what the increasing profits for renewable energy and storage is producing, namely, truly major favorable changes, mitigation of climate and ecosystem damage, but this time along with serious mitigation of increasing shortages of arable land, fresh water and food production.

2. Materials and Methods

Fresh water food production/agriculture for both plants and animals utilizes some 70% of the planets’ fresh water, produces some 26% of greenhouse gas emissions and has a longish list of other societal-related issues. The objective of this paper was to conduct a creative detailed study and summary of nascent, developing food production alternatives that could return much of the 70% of the fresh water used in agriculture to direct human use and reduce agricultural land use, food costs and climate/ecosystem impacts for both plant and animal food production. The materials reviewed were those that explicated applicable frontier technologies with potential for large to major mitigation of the many current food production shortfalls and climate and ecosystem impacts, as well as enabling related systems and impacts in other areas.

3. Results

3.1. Synopsis of Results Section

The many current fresh water food production issues, several alternatives to photosynthesis, halophytes, insects, food market changes, shift to off-grid living/personal food production, vertical farming/hydroponics/aeroponics, frontier energetics.

3.2. Synopsis of Current Fresh Water Agriculture/Food Production Issues

As stated, fresh water agriculture utilizes some 70% of the available fresh water, with the result that, with an increasing population and increasing pollution, there is an increasing dearth of adequate fresh water for human use [1]. Arable land is decreasing due to alternate uses/urbanization along with erosion and salinization from pumping increasingly saline aquifers. With the changes and inefficiencies in agriculture, including transportation/storage issues, there is significantly increasing hunger. As stated, agriculture is responsible for an estimated 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions, including methane from animals and rice cultivation and nitrous oxide emissions [296 times as potent as CO₂ in terms of climate forcing] from fertilized fields and animals. Fresh water agriculture is also affected by increasing droughts and storms, lowering water tables and temperature increases. Agriculture is responsible for land and sea pollution from fertilizer and insecticide usage and the runoff of livestock effluents. There are major agricultural losses of products during transportation, and current agricultural practices result in a loss of biodiversity and increased monocultures and deforestation.

3.3. Cellular/Factory Food Production

Cellular agriculture [5,6,7] utilizes a mix of cell culture, tissue engineering, bioreactors, molecular biology, protein engineering and synthetic biology to thus far produce, without photosynthesis, plants and animals. It is also possible to produce/utilize combined animal and plant cells which could utilize photosynthesis. This method of producing food, very different from conventional farming, has thus far concentrated on meats writ large, seafoods writ large, milk, rennet for cheeses, eggs, chocolate and coffee. The potential savings provided by this “non-farm”/non-animal raising approach for these foods are astoundingly large: 53% to 96% less greenhouse gases production, 83% to 95%% lower land use [pasturage is a large portion of current agricultural lands] and 82% to 96% less fresh water use. The major reason this food production approach, which is sorely needed to address animal methane production and reductions in agricultural fresh water usage for these foods, is not developing faster is due to the usual impediments to such revolutionary changes—cost and market development. The now obviously major-to-existential adverse societal climate, water and ecosystem issues/requirements should expedite efforts for this technology to reduce cost and promote market development. Reference [5] indicates major energy inputs are required, and the development of energy sources that are green with decreasing costs are discussed in a later section.

3.4. Other Alternatives to Photosynthesis for Food Production

The basic requirement is the conversion of CO₂ into biomass. The chemosynthesis process [8] uses chemoautotrophs, inorganic compounds that extract energy from inorganic compounds [e.g., glucose, hydrogen sulfide], to produce edible biomass. Edible microorganisms include bacteria, yeasts and some fungi. This does not require energy from sunlight [photosynthesis]. The food produced is sometimes referred to as “dark food” due to the absence of photosynthesis. Another alternative uses electricity as an energy source to convert CO₂ into acetate, which is then fed to microorganisms [yeast, some fungi, green algae] [9,10]. This is often referred to as “food from the air” or “electro-agriculture” due to the substitution of electrical energy for photosynthesis. Compared to the ~1% solar efficiency of photosynthesis, this process, if PV is used as the electrical source, is 4% efficient, thereby significantly reducing the food-producing land requirement by an estimated 88%. There are other even more efficient energy sources which would reduce costs and requisite land requirement even further. This process has produced foods such as cowpeas, rice, canola, protein powder and green algae and green peas. Green algae is an excellent source of lipids and protein. This photosynthesis alternative is of interest for Martian colonization, the Martian regolith has perchlorates and Martian sunlight is weaker. This is in addition to reducing the land and fresh water requirements and mitigating the climate/ecosystem impacts of conventional fresh water agriculture.

3.5. Halophytes

Current/conventional farming utilizes much fresh water and arable land, both of which are in decreasing supply while food requirements are increasing. There is an alternative profitable agriculture “universe” which utilizes neither fresh water nor arable land but is still “agriculture”. This alternative agricultural universe is composed of halophytes [salt plants], plants that grow in saline and seawater, cultivated on dry lands [deserts, wastelands, some 44% of the land on Earth] using saline/seawater, some 97% of water on Earth [11]. There are halophytes that grow in the ocean which are food sources [algae—rich in oils and protein], and some 6000 varieties of halophytes that grow on land using saline water. These land halophytes mimic most fresh water plants, and many are food plants. There are many dry lands near salt water bodies, and there are many large saline aquifers on dry lands. Many of the dry lands are sunny, providing inexpensive green energy to pump the saline/seawater. The potential halophyte biomass/food capacity is massive and could literally “Green the Planet”. Switching to saline agriculture would produce all the food people want to eat and free up arable land; moreover, seawater contains most of the trace minerals used in fertilizers, and at scale would free up the 70% of the fresh water used for conventional agriculture and provide biomass for all the biofuels people want to use. In addition, halophytes sequester some 18% of their CO₂ uptake in deep roots, sequestering, at scale, some 4 gigatons of CO₂. Iron fertilization of the ocean can greatly increase algae growth for food and increased fish production and could sequester some 10 or more gigatons of CO₂ in the ocean bottom. Doing both land and ocean halophyte “farming” could therefore massively mitigate the portion of climate driven by CO₂ emissions. This is especially important because climate change has now become so serious that it is deemed necessary to not only stop emitting CO₂ but to also remove it from the atmosphere. Halophytes are the least expensive approach, at scale, to facilitate this removal. Overall, halophytes could greatly mitigate land, water, food, energy and climate issues. Ref. [11] contains references summarizing the extant state of halophyte agriculture development.

3.6. Edible Insects

Insects are a very nutritional food source with a small production footprint and produce far less greenhouse gases than animals do [12]. Insects can be fed on organic waste, addressing the problem of what to do about food waste. Edible insects include caterpillars, crickets, grasshoppers, beetles, ants, wasps, bees, etc., altogether some 2000 edible species. Estimates indicate some 2 billion humans dine on insects already. Common foods produced using insects include flour, nutritional bars, bread/pastry, “milk”, and so on. Production of insect-containing foods is a regulated, developed industry in many parts of the world. Their overall nutritional content is excellent.

3.7. Market Changes

Studies indicate that ‘life styles” [exercise, smoking, alcohol and nutrition] are responsible for some 80% of disease and early death [13]. The current diet has much unhealthy “processed” food and there are studies indicating the adverse health effects of red meat. There are foods known to have anti-carcinogenic, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant activities. Disease prevention, aided greatly by the ready availability of nutritional information on the web, is altering consumer food choices and thus what is grown and sold. All this indicates potential market-change-driven shifts in agriculture going forward, which could conceivably favor other food production approaches than fresh water field agriculture, approaches utilizing far less fresh water and arable land.

3.8. Shift to Off-Grid Living

A major portion of the population currently, primarily initially for employment opportunities and lifestyles, live in urban areas. However, urban areas are prone to high costs of living, poverty, pollution, crime, deforestation and environmental degradation, as well as loss of habitat, increasing traffic and noise, congestion and increasing infrastructure issues. Before the Industrial Revolution, a major percentage of the population lived on, and off of, the land. Huge job growth was a product of the needs of the Industrial Revolution, with concomitant shifts from family farming to industrial farming. There are a major set of developing frontier technologies which have instigated a population shift “back to the future”—back to the land, including off-grid living [14]. Developing rapidly, in certification, are increasingly affordable/safe autonomous personal electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. Having these, it is no longer necessary to live on roads, and with distributed energy generation [rooftop solar/storage], people can live off-grid. IT connectivity can be maintained via satellite. Tele-everything has developed over these past decades—tele-work, tele-shopping, tele-medicine, tele-education, tele-commerce, tele-travel, tele-socialization, etc., and on-site tele-printing is developing. The massive shift to tele-everything during COVID-19 using early days equipment was surprisingly successful. Some 36% of the workforce is in the gig economy, much of it operating via “tele” modalities. Overall, an increasingly high-tech “do it yourself” living/homesteading culture, including water and food production, is forming. Many of the alternative food production approaches with the low land and water requirements discussed herein could probably be developed for individual, distributed production. Off-grid homes use 80% less water than traditional homes [14]. For water, wells are commonly drilled, surface water is utilized if available and rain is captured. There is recent progress in removing water from the atmosphere in usable amounts [15]. Water is also purified/recycled, and ‘waterless” appliances are often used. If the water is saline, halophyte agriculture can be practiced.

Overall, such a population shift would reduce current markets for industrial, fresh water agriculture and utilize much less land and water to produce food while having greatly reduced adverse climate and ecosystem impacts.

3.9. Vertical Farming/Hydroponics/Aeroponics

Other approaches to greatly reducing requisite land and water requirements for food production are vertical farming and hydroponics/aeroponics [16]. Hydroponics utilizes a water-nutrient solution to grow plants, with no soil. The yields are higher, with faster growth and year-round production. This method is scalable to individual, off-grid living. The related aeroponics is even more efficient, where the roots are exposed to a mist of nutrient solution. Aeroponics has fewer issues with water logging, has higher yields and uses less water than hydroponics and overall 95% less water than conventional agriculture. Both can be grown in greenhouses or under lights. Both hydroponics and aeroponics approaches can be used in vertical stacks to further reduce the requisite land area.

3.10. Advanced Energetics for Food Production

Significant levels of energy are used in producing food. If energy was less costly, it could be used for agricultural-level water desalinization and wastewater treatment. Also, several of the alternative food production approaches discussed herein require energy, as does conventional agriculture. Water and nutrient solutions require pumping, crops can be grown under lights, some yields can be frozen for preservation and some require drying. A wide array of farm, processing and production equipment requires energy. There is currently a general shift to overall electrification. To mitigate climate change, this energy needs to be green and renewable. There are many such energy sources, including the renewables plus storage approaches, which include solar PV and thermal, wind, geothermal and hydropower energy. These approaches are currently the least expensive available. Also, there is a new approach under development in Japan: a weak force nuclear battery that has no radiation, is some 15 times lighter than a reactor and far cheaper, lasts for over a year with inexpensive refueling and scales from watts into high kilowatts thus far [17]. This new approach appears to be potentially more useful overall than renewables plus storage, does not require energy storage and is small/light; however, the cost of these new nuclear batteries is not yet determined. If their cost is lower than renewables and storage, whose costs are still dropping, then they could perhaps solve climate change sooner than renewables would—to be determined.

4. Concluding Discussion

There are increasingly serious shortages of fresh water. Some 70% of the fresh water on the planet is used for fresh water agriculture. Fresh water agriculture also produces very significant climate and ecosystem issues. Animals make up a significant portion of fresh water food production, employing large amounts of land and generating large climate impacts. There is a bevy of alternative food production approaches which, collectively, should greatly reduce the amount of fresh water and arable land needed to produce food going forward, and in the process mitigate climate, fresh water, food and ecosystem issues. As these approaches and market changes develop further and reduce their costs, enabled by frontier technologies, the nature of agriculture would change significantly, become more “distributed” and less centralized, and probably involve less animals, even becoming more do-it-yourself again—veritable “Revolutions in Agriculture”. Society is in a time of major and rapid change, due to the many frontier technological developments and the climate and ecosystem changes wrought by the throw-away nature of society since the Industrial Revolution. Industrial fresh water agriculture/food production was a part of those industrial-age developments. Food production, like much else going forward, appears to be slated for decentralization, and in the process, this should largely solve the current fresh water and food shortfalls. Most current agricultural research and improvement efforts are focused upon conventional fresh water agriculture. The serious need for major improvements in the litany of serious current issues facing fresh water agriculture and the various nascent “revolutionary” approaches to them proffer major improvements/mitigations, strongly recommending further study and research, increased investment and further evaluation of food production alternatives.

In particular, major challenges, government support and rural development can be speculated upon based on the experience of the rapid ongoing development of renewables and storage to replace fossil fuels. Utilization of fossil fuels for electrical generation was a major portion of national econometrics, as is conventional fresh water agriculture. Development of renewables and storage was very slow until their costs were driven below that of fossil carbon, and they are now greatly below that cost. Once that happened and there were healthy profits, the development of renewables/storage has been very rapid, driven by profits [and climate]. There were and still are concerns about “stranded assets”, major econometric changes, employment changes, political ramifications, etc. As renewables/storage have continued to undergo rapid development, most of the major initial concerns with such a shift are being addressed in a positive to very positive manner. If the various replacements and their impacts upon food production produce strong profits, then they will happen far faster than if just required by governments. Yes, altering food production from conventional industrial fresh water agriculture has major wide-ranging societal impacts. Because this is early days, there is not sufficient real-world/practical information about such alterations to seriously speculate regarding their wider societal implications and impacts. However, with regard to the other major/ongoing successful climate mitigation approaches, namely renewables and storage, positive impacts have developed. Given the rapid development of the serious broad and negative societal impacts of the continued pursuit of conventional industrial fresh water agriculture, including animal farming, serious consideration of alternatives is more than justified.