Grow Boldly: Space Agritech Shapes Farming on Earth

The effects of climate change they are impossible to ignore, especially when record-breaking temperatures, tides and weather events wreak havoc across the planet. Around the world, 12 million hectares of valuable agricultural land are lost each year, and world agricultural production will have to increase by 70% to meet the demands of an expanding population.

Not surprisingly, we are seeing steady growth, investment and most importantly innovation in the agricultural technology market, including the space industry.

NASA claims that the return on its investment in the US economy is more than three times its annual budget. From cellular data and hurricane forecasting to robotics and health science, many aspects of our lives are much easier, more efficient, or more enjoyable thanks to advances and utilization in space.

We now see enormous research and technological advancement potential for agricultural technology in space, with applications that will allow for long-term extraterrestrial habitability in the future, as well as improved agricultural practices here on Earth.

Developing sustainable and scalable food sources for astronauts will be critical to our ability to successfully establish and expand new destinations in space. Some commercial companies, such as Voyager, are actively developing new commercial space stations to replace the International Space Station (ISS), and with these new destinations comes the need to provide nutrient-dense food for their inhabitants.

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As the space environment presents us with challenges that we don’t have to face here, researchers are forced to think outside the normal bounds of what is possible to devise solutions that often lead to game-changing innovations here at the earth. For example, NASA helped develop a bio-targeted LED technology to help plants grow indoors.

This idea arose from initial research into the effects of long-duration spaceflight on the human body. From 1997 to 2017, the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) received grants from NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston to study light sources and how they change brain activity. The researchers found that blue light affected the way the body produces melatonin, a hormone essential for keeping astronauts’ biological clocks on time. This discovery led NASA to replace the fluorescent lighting on the space station with LED.

They used less power, gave off less heat, and changed color, temperature, and intensity to reflect the astronauts’ circadian rhythms. The ability to change these characteristics was also relevant to growing plants indoors, as LEDs provided the right wavelengths for photosynthesis.

Impact of space agrotechnology on terrestrial agriculture

At about the same time that NSBRI began its research, Dr. Dickson Despommier, Professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University, and his 105 graduate students devised the vertical farm, “a multi-story building on in which layers of plants are grown on each plant”. In addition to climate controls, the NASA-developed LED lights were a game changer for terrestrial vertical farming, as they can be easily programmed to emit crop-specific wavelengths for optimal growing conditions.

Vertical farming is impressive for many reasons. First of all, vertical farms have a much higher yield than traditional ones. One acre of vertical cultivation can produce the equivalent of four to six acres of soil, depending on the crop. Secondly, vertical farms offer a vegetative period throughout the year, free of inclement weather or pests. Third, vertical farms are much more sustainable, both for the crops themselves and for the Earth. They operate without the need for pesticides or herbicides, and because they do not require farm machinery, they use (and produce) a minimum of fossil fuels.

Vertical farming is one of the fastest growing sectors within agriculture today, with many entrepreneurs inspired by the prospect of reducing the water and land required to sustain crops. The next generation of vertical farms is expected to focus on staple crops such as wheat, corn and soybeans, which take up most of the planet’s agricultural land and demand vast resources.

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The first moon landing also helped set standards that affect how our food is produced and kept safe today. Outbreaks of food poisoning from packaged foods in supermarkets are now extremely rare, thanks to near-universal industry adoption of the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) system.

This system was created for astronaut food in the early days of the Apollo program, with three guiding principles: perform a hazard analysis, identify hotspots and determine how hazards can be prevented, controlled, or eliminated, and monitor those hotspots with measurements frequent. This same system now enables food companies to consistently supply safe, quality food to consumers..

This export of know-how and hardware developed through space solutions, or “technology transfer”, has the potential to catalyze dramatic changes to current farming practices, as our planet’s resources continue to dwindle. Today, world hunger affects almost 10% of the world’s population and 40% of the Earth’s plant species are on the verge of extinction. Unfortunately, our solutions to these challenges fall short, even though an important new agreement to protect biodiversity was reached at COP15 in December. We need to keep exploring new tools that allow organisms to keep pace with a rapidly changing climate and our growing population.

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The new seeds are another great opportunity for agrotechnical innovation in space. NASA is already working on adapting the seeds transported aboard the space station so that they develop better in that environment. With seed film – a water-soluble polymer embedded with seeds – multiple seeds can be stored, handled and monitored at once, and nutrients could be added to the seed film solution to stimulate growth. NASA hopes to incorporate nutrients into the seed coat to protect plants from microgravity stress or enrich it with microorganisms to stimulate growth. If successful, seed film could be a viable option for Earth farmers looking to adapt plants to be more resilient against stress factors.

The list of space innovations and technologies that have terrestrial applications is long and will continue to grow as resources and research opportunities increase. Our vision is a future of sustainably grown, affordable, nutritious food for humanity, anywhere in the universe, and space will undoubtedly play a key role in bringing us closer to it.