Vertical farms in a world of limited resources

Although it looks nothing like the wide open farms in South Africa, this is the headquarters of the famous Bowery Farming that is known for their innovative farming methods and technology.

Bowery Farming is trying to change the future of agriculture. In a time of major climate changes, climate warming, overpopulation, crippling global droughts, water scarcity and restrictions, Bowery Farming offers a solution to one of the biggest threats facing our agriculture industry by offering shelf-ready food grown throughout the year, regardless of the weather, without the use of any pesticides, while using an amazing 95 percent less water.

News of Cape Town's "Day Zero" water crisis in 2018, after three years of extremely low rainfall, ricocheted around the world. People were lining up to collect spring water and were extremely concerned about the day that the city of almost four million people were going to run out of water. There is no doubt that the changing climate is leading to more extreme droughts than in the past - droughts that last longer, are drier, and occur over much larger areas. These droughts are experienced not only in South Africa, but also in Australia, California, south south-west of the US, Mexico, Brazil and many other parts of the world.

The problem of a drier world is compacted by the fact that irrigation for agriculture accounts for 70 percent of water use worldwide according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). While the ever-growing world population demands higher food production, the massive agricultural use of water within a rising global scarcity of water, is alarming. It is calculated that since the 1980s our water usage is increasing by 1 percent or more every year.

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Photo courtesy of iFarm

Source: IOL News