Throughout our history we have modified most of the natural environments to provide food for humans, especially through agriculture. According to FAO, this primary activity occupies approximately 38% of the world’s surfaceabout 5,000 megahectares.
“As the world’s population grows, and with the number of people in the world more than doubling between 1961 and 2016, there is greater demand for food. And the pressure on land, which is a limited resource, has also increased,” noted the FAO at the beginning of the decade.
To solve this problem, a group of bioengineers has planted the seed of what could be a revolutionary new way of producing food: electroagriculture. But what does it consist of? What are its advantages?
Fields by multi-story buildings
As explained in an article published in the magazine Joule of Cell Pressthis new agricultural approach could reduce the amount of land needed for agriculture as we know it by between 88 and 94% thanks to renewable energy. Visually, the idea would be replace extensive agricultural fields with multi-story buildingsin whose interiors the cultivation would take place.
But this would not be the only benefit it could provide. “By improving efficiency and reducing land use, a large part of the Earth’s surface could recover its natural state to restore the ecosystems that support natural carbon capture. Additionally, electroagriculture systems can be deployed in extreme environments, such as deserts, cities or even on Mars, where it is otherwise difficult to grow food.”point out the researchers, based in various universities in the United States.
Likewise, this cultivation method would help avoid food price spikes, since It would not be so linked to climatic factorsand would allow production to be located, for example, near big cities. Because, indeed, electroagriculture would not require vast expanses of land or sunlight, but could be grown, for example, inside a building – in a similar way to what is known as vertical agriculture – but in the absence of light. .
“I think we need to take agriculture to the next phase of technology, and producing it in a controlled way and detached from nature has to be the next step,” he says. Robert Jinkersona bioengineer at the University of California and one of the authors. But how would all this be possible? Mainly, thanks to advances in genetic engineering, improvements in CO2 electrolysis and renewable energy.
Electrolysis and acetate
Let’s return for a moment to the previously mentioned multi-story buildings. Solar panels housed on or near them would generate renewable energy, which would drive a chemical reaction between CO2 and water to produce acetatea molecule similar to acetic acid —the main component of vinegar—.
This acetate would be, in addition to water, the only ingredient necessary to make plants growgrown hydroponically. That is, they would not need land, nor sunlight. But to get to that point, we would first have to genetically engineer plants that feed on acetate.
For genetically design plants that feed only on acetateresearchers are taking advantage of a metabolic pathway that plants, during their initial germination stage, use to break down the food stored in their seeds. This ability is deactivated once the plants germinate and are capable of photosynthesis, but when activated again they could use acetate as a source of energy and carbon. In short, they are trying to reactivate in adult plants a capacity that they had in their young stage naturally but that, along the way, they lost. “It’s analogous to lactose intolerance in humans: when we’re babies we can digest lactose from milk, but in many people that pathway is turned off when they grow up. It’s pretty much the same idea, just for plants,” Jinkerson exemplifies.
Currently, the team responsible for this study focuses its research on genetically modifying tomatoes and lettuce for this purpose, although they also plan to do it with other crops with high calorie content, such as cassava, sweet potato and cereals. At the moment, they have not managed to do without photosynthesis, although they have managed to design plants that can use acetate in combination with photosynthesis.
“In the case of plants, we are still in the research and development phase to try to use acetate as a carbon source, because plants have not evolved to grow in this way, but we are making progress,” says the bioengineer. “However, today you can grow fungi, yeast and algae this way, so I think those applications could be commercialized first and the plants will come later.”he states.
A not so crazy proposal
If you’ve made it this far, this probably all sounds very dystopian to you. However, the mere fact that it has been published in a scientific journal of the rigor of cell It invites us to believe that, indeed, it could be viable. However, this is not the first time the idea of electroagriculture has been discussed. As the researchers include in their bibliography, “many recent works have sought to push electroagriculture technology toward commercialization.” One of the most relevant examples was awarded by the POT in its Deep Space Food Challenge, a competition based on finding formulas to supply its astronauts with food. Another example can be found in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundationwhich has recently partnered with the Novo Nordisk Foundation to accelerate the commercialization of electroagriculture.
Although its authors are optimistic, they are aware that electroagriculture has various limitationssuch as the lack of technological development, the enormous amounts of electricity that it would demand or the high price of current electrolyzers. “This innovative approach to food production offers the opportunity to reimagine the global food system to make it more sustainable,” they conclude.
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