2024-10-29 ワシントン大学セントルイス校
＜関連情報＞
- https://source.washu.edu/2024/10/how-to-grow-food-without-light/
- https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(24)00429-X
電気農業： 持続可能な未来のための農業革命 Electro-agriculture: Revolutionizing farming for a sustainable future
Bradie S. Crandall ∙ Marcus Harland-Dunaway ∙ Robert E. Jinkerson ∙ Feng Jiao
Joule Published:October 23, 2024
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2024.09.011
Context & scale
The demand for food production is intensifying with a rapidly growing population, yet farmers around the world face unprecedented challenges owing to shifting climatic conditions. Controlled environment and vertical farming have emerged as a potential solution to boost resource use efficiency and food output per unit of land while allowing for cultivation in urban and arid regions, but widespread adoption has been hindered by substantial energy requirements. Recent developments in CO2/CO electrolysis as well as advances in genetic engineering and selective breeding have laid the groundwork for the emergence of electro-ag to substantially reduce the energy needs of vertical farming. Fueled by acetate derived from CO2 using renewable electricity, electro-ag enables the heterotrophic growth of food crops. Unlike traditional controlled environments or conventional farming, electro-ag is not constrained by the same efficiency limitations of photosynthesis. Instead, the efficient metabolic pathways of acetate utilization are harnessed to allow for at least a 4-fold improvement in solar-to-food efficiency, with future efforts potentially leading to an order of magnitude improvement in energy solar-to-food efficiency. If the United States food supply was produced via electro-ag, land usage could be decreased by 88% while substantially streamlining food supply chains by decentralizing food production.
There are many advantages of an electro-ag-based global food system. By improving efficiency and decreasing land usage, a large portion of Earth’s land could be rewilded to restore ecosystems supporting natural carbon sequestration. Additionally, electro-ag systems can be deployed in extreme environments such as deserts, cities, or even on Mars where it is otherwise difficult to grow food. Electro-ag can also help avoid devastating food price spikes by reducing the impact of extreme weather and localizing food production. Electro-ag is poised to revolutionize the realm of food production by offering a sustainable pathway toward a more resilient and equitable food system. Future efforts should seek to further improve the energy efficiency of electro-ag while working toward the production of calorie-dense staple crops to help combat global hunger.
Summary
For millennia, humanity has depended on photosynthesis to cultivate crops and feed a growing population. However, the escalating challenges of climate change and global hunger now compel us to surpass the efficiency limitations of photosynthesis. Here, we propose the adoption of an electro-agriculture (electro-ag) framework that combines CO2 electrolysis with biological systems to enhance food production efficiency. Adopting a food system based entirely on electro-ag could reduce United States agricultural land use by 88%, freeing nearly half of the country’s land for ecosystem restoration and natural carbon sequestration. Electro-ag bypasses traditional photosynthesis, enabling food cultivation in non-arable urban centers, arid deserts, and even outer space environments. We offer a new strategy that improves energy efficiency by an order of magnitude compared with photosynthesis, along with essential guidance for developing electro-ag focused on staple crops, to maximize benefits for regions facing food insecurity. This innovative approach to agriculture holds significant promise in reducing environmental impacts, streamlining supply chains, and addressing the global food crisis.
