Growing crops in the dark using “electro-farming” could revolutionize food production and free up more than 90 percent of farmland.

Two major challenges facing food production are its dependence on weather conditions and the need for large tracts of arable land. But new research offers a glimpse into a future where we may not need either.

Researchers have developed a method called electric farming that uses renewable energy and carbon dioxide to grow crops indoors. This innovative approach could change agriculture as we know it, and perhaps even allow astronauts to grow food in space.

If we grew all the food in the United States using this approach, the need for farmland could drop by 94 percent, the researchers say.

“This technology makes it possible to produce food in vertically integrated systems, reducing the need for land to grow traditional crops. For example, if electric power were fully adopted in the US, it could potentially reduce agricultural land use from 1.2 billion acres to just 0.14 billion acres,” said Feng Jiao, one of the study’s authors and a professor at Washington University in St. Louis. (WashU). ), said ZME Science.

Such a sharp reduction in agricultural land will free up vast areas for restoration of ecosystems and carbon sequestration.

Electrofarming versus photosynthesis

Most edible plants produce food through photosynthesis, a process in which they capture sunlight and use its energy to convert carbon dioxide from the air and water from the soil into glucose, a type of sugar that provides plants with energy. However, the main photosynthesis problem The fact is that it is a highly inefficient method of food production, converting only about one percent of sunlight into glucose.

“Photosynthesis inherently has a low efficiency in converting solar energy into food, typically only about 1%, which limits the productivity of traditional agriculture,” Feng said.

Moreover, traditional farming takes up almost half inhabitable land in the world, contributes to high greenhouse gas emissions and is sensitive to climate conditions. This makes it difficult to maintain food production through photosynthesis in the face of changing weather conditions.

Electric farming, on the other hand, uses renewable energy from sources such as solar panels to convert CO₂ (from air) into acetate. Plants can use this acetate to meet their carbon and energy needs without relying on sunlight or large areas of land because the process can be scaled vertically.

“Electro-agriculture can be integrated with plants by feeding them acetate produced by electrolysis of CO2. Genetic modifications may be required to optimize plants’ use of acetate, allowing them to bypass photosynthesis and use acetate for energy and biomass production through the glyoxylate cycle,” Feng added.

The glyoxylate cycle is a process that many bacteria, fungi and plants use to cook food in the dark. According to the researchers, real-world testing showed promising results; for example, an experimental electrofarming system demonstrated a fourfold increase in energy efficiency compared to photosynthesis.

Are we ready to change agriculture?

If you live in a developed country, chances are you are bearing the brunt of food inflation and widespread pesticide pollution. If you are a farmer from an underdeveloped part of the world, you are probably feeling the pain of climate change.

However, if electric agriculture is implemented on a large scale, it can help solve most of these problems. This could make food production more sustainable by significantly reducing impact of agriculture on the environment. Moreover, it could stabilize food prices by making food production less dependent on weather conditions, thereby increasing food security, especially in regions with harsh climates or limited arable land.

However, this approach is not ideal and has some limitations. For example, this will require significant energy consumption and uninterrupted power supply. This can be a very difficult task in a world where technologies such as artificial intelligence quantum computingand electric charging stations compete for energy.

Large-scale adoption of electric agriculture will also require the creation of giant vertical farms, which will require large upfront investments and a lot of development time. But before any of that happens, researchers need to show that the method is 100 percent feasible and scalable.

“The level of readiness of electric agriculture is not yet sufficient for large-scale commercialization, since additional work is needed to improve the stability of CO2.₂ electrolysis systems and improve metabolic pathways in plants,” Feng said. ZME Science.

However, the concept promises to be promising. With further research, electric agriculture could become a critical tool in achieving more sustainable, efficient and safe food production in a world facing a rapidly changing climate.

study published in the magazine Joule.