I think we have a lot of big surprises in store.
Controlled Environment Agriculture: What You Need to Know About CEA
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It seems like everybody’s talking about controlled environment agriculture (CEA) these days. Investors are drooling over it. Research and development firms love its applications in their field. Food producers love how it keeps contaminants out for a safer food supply. And its ability to grow food in harsh climates and protect crops from dangerous conditions like storms and floods make it an increasingly useful method in our ever-changing world.
What is CEA?
Let’s start with the basics. CEA stands for controlled environment agriculture. According to the University of Arizona’s Controlled Environment Agriculture Center:
“Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) is the production of plants and their products, such as vegetables and flowers, inside controlled environment structures such as greenhouses, vertical farms and growth chambers. By using CEA, we can produce high-value crops at maximum productivity in an efficient and environmentally friendly way.”
Within the world of CEA are two technology-driven growing methods, hydroponics and aeroponics. Hydroponic growing means plants are grown in water rather than soil. Nutrients are then added to the water to ensure healthy plants with maximum output. Aeroponic growing means plants are grown with their roots exposed to the air. The roots are then misted regularly with water and vitamin solutions, which they can then absorb.
Why Is CEA Important?
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There are a number of arguments for the importance of controlled environment agriculture. It uses less water, doesn’t rely on increasingly degraded soil for its production, and can grow plants year-round, regardless of climate or weather conditions. Additionally, controlled environments allow farmers to precisely control conditions and keep pests and contaminants at bay.
Michael Barron, of AeroFarms, sums it up rather well:
“With the increased control you can produce more, and you can also have it be higher quality. You can change the nutrition of it. There is a lot more you can do. It gives you a lot more control over the crop and the production of the crop.”
How CEA Could Help Shape the Future
According to a report titled Controlled Environment Agriculture Market Insights, Trends, Opportunity & Forecast (Includes Business Impact of COVID-19), the market for CEA is growing exponentially. The authors state:
“Conservation of water and nutrients is one of the many advantages of controlled environment agriculture over conventional farming methods. These advanced farming techniques such as hydroponics, aquaponics, and other soilless farming methods are effectively preventing wastage of water and overuse of nutrients. In a controlled environment, the plants have better health and faster growth, which reduces the need for pesticides and other supplements. Owing to their good health, CEA grown produces are noticeably better in both size and quality then soil-grown crops.”
More CEA farming means greater production of healthy greens and other plants, as well as locally-available crops year-round, even in urban settings or harsh climates.
In an article published in the Journal für Verbraucherschutz und Lebensmittelsicherheit, author Dickson Despommier, Ph.D., found that “controlled environment agriculture carried out in tall buildings would create greater food safety and security for large urban populations.” He goes on to say that:
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“Greenhouse technologies are well-established and guarantee a safer, more reliable food supply that can be produced year round, and they can be located close to urban centers. By ‘stacking’ these buildings on top of each other in an integrated well-engineered fashion, we can greatly reduce our agricultural footprint, and the vertical farm concept can then be applied to every urban center, regardless of location.”
Even the federal government is getting onboard with CEA. According to Greenhouse Grower,
“USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture has provided a grant of nearly $500,000 to two horticulture experts in Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ School of Integrative Plant Science will help design new CEA training programs to build a skilled workforce pipeline for the industry.”
