Those greenhouse roofs look like the perfect place to mount a field of solar panels that could power the lighting and nutrient circulation. More experience with this type of farming will be helpful for supporting a Mars colony, since self sufficiency will be absolutely necessary for off world colonies.

Artificial seafood farming is about to grow, by moving farming to deep water, where natural nutrients are more available. That move is necessary to relieve pressure on wild resources.

Is this the start of another "green revolution?" Human creativity and productivity shows the doomsayers wrong repeatedly.

We who practice and teach the Square Foot Gardening method may be a bit ahead of the curve. Using SFG, one can grow 100% of the crop in 20% of the space, and fertilizer generally is unnecessary. Also, there's no digging or tilling, and very little weeding.

This might be the only way we grow food for the next 70 years or so during The Grand Solar Minimum. Every Town, City and Country in the world needs to do this.
Use all the [so called] fossil fuels you like...all those plants are gona need the carbon to breath during the day.

What a great article this is the new future of agriculture. Thanks Dino.

I appreciate the thought and science behind the increase in efficiency. I try to apply it to everything I do. However, my instinct tells me that these crops will lack nutrients and other essentials, becoming "filler" which could be said about much of our mass produce. The absolute best tasting and vibrant vegetables I ever eat are from my mother's small garden, completely organic and watered by the unpredictability of what the weather holds. It could supply five families in any given year. My mother started it 45 years ago. Yield varies year to year, but the flavor and taste make one frown upon almost any store bought food. One can try to control nature, but it rarely has a positive outcome.

A tiny patch of dessert called Isrel has also illustrated how to make Prosperity come forth from hard work and the use of technology. We have known for many years that the planet can provide food for all humanity at present and for the higher populations of the future. The time will come when space exploration is not an adventure but a necessity. But not today, or the foreseeable future.

sorry for the late response ...just back from 6 months in Yellowstone...no cell phone service, no internet...

"Capitalism" is the best fighter of "hunger"...

Thirty years ago when I worked for my father's engineering company back in New Jersey the company received a design contract to supply a sea water pumping system for an abalone farm. The concept was to use a reconditioned VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier) to create the farm. If turned out to be successful other mollusks would have been farmed. When the plan was submitted to the EPA for environmental impact study it was killed after a month. It just shows how far a gov't agency will go to stymie innovation. The EPA was created 37 years ago.

Amazing article, too immense tho', overloaded my computer LOL. I was hoping to learn just how much of all that was paid for by Government, no luck, tho.

That is totally cool !! I wonder why this isnt done in the USA. We have definitely lost our edge in innovation, and I think its because of the socialist tendencies of our government. It would probably take a lot of getting around regulations to do this here.

Awesome article. Thanks for sharing. People are complaining that we're running out of arable land. This just shows the advances that can be made to eliminate that argument. What is also interesting is that this can be applied in mountainous regions as well if combined with the terracing seen in ancient Mayan cities.

I always have serious doubts about these green miracle stories, they are usually fueled by incredible government funding and do not survive on their own. Solar farms are a prime example. I know a maintenance director at a large corporation that installed a major installation. If you take their investment even after the obscene government funding and tax breaks they received....the installation DOES NOT EVEN MAKE ENOUGH REVENUE TO PAY THE DEBIT SERVICE ON THE INSTALLATION! Which by the way will wear out in like 20 to 25 years.

However...that said...given the apparent vast scale of this there may be a possibility that this is the real deal. Usually these hopey changey green projects last like 3 years, which is how long the government money holds out.