Can hydroponic farming save the world?

Hydroponics is upending the conventional approach to farming and the good news is that you don’t even have to get your hands dirty.

By removing soil from the process and placing the roots directly in nutrient-rich water, food can be grown in almost any controlled environment, allowing for precise adjustments to key growing factors while using 70 to 90 per cent less water than conventional farming.

The word “hydroponic” is of Greek origin — “hydro” meaning “water” and “ponic” meaning “work”.

The idea is that the water does the work on its own.

Bahjat Sawalmeh cuts the leaves of tomatoes grown using aeroponics at Faisal Farm in Jerash, Jordan. All photos: Reuters
Mr Sawalmeh, who is farm manager, says aeroponics save 90 per cent of water resources, compared with traditional farming methods.
Jordan is considered to be one of the poorest countries in terms of water resources.
The country's agricultural sector consumes 52 per cent of its scarce water resources.
Experts have called for tougher regulations on the types of crops grown, in addition to encouraging farmers to make use of water conservation systems.

Driven by innovation, investment and an idealistic new breed of tech-savvy farmer-entrepreneurs, the number of hydroponic crop-farming businesses in the US has nearly doubled over the last decade.

Easier being green

Investors forked over close to a billion dollars towards controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) from 2019 to 2020, Pitchbook Data reported.

In effort to bring jobs back to the impoverished Appalachia region of the US, the Morehead, Kentucky-based AppHarvest is banking on the next generation of farmers with its AgTech Educational Outreach Programme, focusing on young people who may not have previously considered working in agriculture.

“This is an opportunity to build a long-term career in a [sector] that's growing,” said Travis Parman, chief communications officer for AppHarvest.

The five-year-old company also plans to open three new indoor hydroponic farms this year, while expanding their workforce from 500 employees to more than 1,000.

Hybrid hydro

AppHarvest uses large greenhouses with natural sunlight and rainwater collected from their own roof, which is stored in a reservoir the size of 70 Olympic-sized swimming pools before being funnelled into a closed-loop irrigation system.

This set-up allows for a high level of precision and control when it comes to giving plants the optimum conditions for growth.

The company estimates that, given the advantages, its original flagship farm will produce more than 18 million kilograms of tomatoes this year.

“We're able to get about 30 times the yield using about 90 per cent less water than traditional agriculture on an acre-per-acre basis,” Mr Parman said.

“With climate disruption and changing weather patterns, it's becoming increasingly difficult for farmers, in an open-field environment, to have reliable growing seasons.

“Some of them are suffering extreme drought, some are suffering from wind shear that decimates crops, some are suffering from floods … we need to be able to control the environment much more and farm many more months out of the year.”

Couch potatoes

Mr Parman said that when people realise that they can actually farm using their phone or iPad with real robots and no dirt, agriculture takes on a whole new meaning.

“We have a robotics programme as well, where we're doing some prototype testing with robotic harvesting,: Mr Parman told The National.

“It's creating an ecosystem here so that we can really build a hub in the US for controlled-environment agriculture.”

Urban hacks

Connor Harbison recently founded Atlas Urban Farms in Boston. The start-up engages in advocacy and education, hosting unique, hands-on hydroponic experiences for people interested in urban farming hacks — like how to turn a recycled yoghurt container into a self-watering hydroponic device.

His seedling company also brings hydroponic farming directly to the consumer by installing small hydroponic systems in homes, on college campuses and even in workplaces.

“I kept coming back to this idea of an urban food supply,” Mr Harbison said.

“My thinking was, if we use vertical farming, where you can have a very small footprint but grow a tonne of food, why don't we just build one of those in every single neighbourhood, and then we won't have food deserts and we won't have to emit a ton of carbon to get food from A to B.”

The ultimate key to success is getting food as close to the consumer as possible.

“That's how agriculture has been done for most of human history,” said Mr Harbison.

Among olive groves that were once a front line between ISIS and Iraqi forces, Yunis Salman and a few fellow farmers are harnessing what they believe should be the future of Middle East agriculture: the power of the sun. All photos: Reuters
Solar panels installed last year between his family's 1,500 olive trees help to power water pumping and irrigation, providing enough for production and several hours of electricity each day for their home.
Mr Salman believes solar power should be the future of agriculture and energy in the Middle East, where stifling summers are getting longer and hotter.
Fighting around Mosul in 2016-2017 destroyed vast amounts of infrastructure, including in this rich agricultural area where buildings have been flattened by air strikes.
Water sprinklers on a farm that uses solar panels.
At little cost beyond the initial solar panels set-up, his farm produces 40 tonnes of olives a year.

Rain on the parade

Crop ecologist Heiner Lieth, a professor at the University of California, Davis, agrees that the future of hydroponics and CEA in the US is technological innovation, increased efficiency and continued growth, but says that traditional field production is here to stay.

This is due to the relatively lower production costs, which result in a cheaper product when compared to superior-quality hydroponically grown fruits and vegetables.

“They’re both going to be here,” Dr Lieth said.

“There are always going to be some people who are purely driven by price, who will pay as little as they can because their economic status is keeping them there.

“And there are always people who are doing really well who say, ‘I want pesticide-free, I want it to taste great, I want a lot of it and I don't care what it costs.’”

This story appeared in our Weekend section on March 11.

Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts

Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.

The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.

Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.

More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.

The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.

Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:

November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.

May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.

April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.

February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.

December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.

July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.

May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.

New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.

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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.

Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.

“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.

“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.

Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.

From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.

Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.

BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.

Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.

Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.

“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.

“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.

“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”