ئەکادیمیا قوتابی

The human population will probably increase by nearly a third by 2050, and we had better prepare urgently for that situation. We have only quite small amounts of land and water to produce the food we will need. And the first danger is that we will reduce these limited resources further as we try to get more from them. If, for example, land is overused and not farmed sustainably, it will often turn into desert.

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Another danger comes when we create new farmland. Take the ‘Oklahoma Dust Bowl’ in the American ‘Great Plains’. Over a century ago, this enormous region’s ancient grassland was replaced by two crops – corn and cotton – which were grown very intensively. Then came the hot droughts of the 1930s. The crops died. Worse, the light, dry soil became dust, and without either crops or grassland to hold it down, millions of tonnes were carried away in dust storms that spread south and east. Much of it finally fell into the Atlantic. The land became useless, and 2.5 million people had to move away – many west to California

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Those dust storms would never have happened if the grassland had remained. And if only the farmers had used less intensive techniques, the disaster might also largely have been avoided. We could and should have learned from that. Today, though, similar things are happening in China, Australia and Africa

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So what are we going to do to produce more food – and not less? Many believe the answer is ‘GM’ – genetically modified crops. Scientists can now add useful genes from one plant to another to create something new: something that may, for example, produce more fruit, resist disease better and use less water than its natural parent. However, there are worries that weeds could reproduce with artificial GM crops, take their ‘wonder’ genes and then take over the whole land.

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Hydroponics offers a different solution. It starts from the fact that soil itself is not important to plants. They will grow as long as they get the soil’s nutrients. When plants are grown in liquids which contain these nutrients and also lots of oxygen, they actually grow better and faster than plants in ordinary soil.

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If humans ever lived in deep space or on Mars, they would grow their crops this way. Here on Earth, too, hydroponics might be the solution. We could grow our crops in a million places without soil – even in huge containers out at sea. As long as we started very soon to use hydroponics on a very large scale, it really could be the answer to my question.

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