Elon Musk’s Brother Wants to Pioneer The Future of Agriculture
Vertical agriculture internal farming method where crops are grown in layers, often without soil. This practice is becoming more popular and important as urban populations grow enormously and the available plots decrease.
While vertical farming is not a new concept, These eco-friendly farms are expanding rapidly.
Little brother Elon Musk, Kimbal Musk, Named the 2017 Global Economic Entrepreneur of the Year, the “Global Social Entrepreneur,” Square Roots started an in-house urban agriculture company based in Brooklyn. The mission of Square Roots is to bring fresh local produce to nearby cities. making the world young generation involved in urban agriculture.
“When I was a kid, the only way I could sit down and connect with the family was cooking a meal,” Musk, founder and chief executive of Square Roots, told CNN Business in an email.
“Getting involved on the internet, especially in the late 90s, was very exciting and I wouldn’t change anything about those experiences, but my passion has always been food,” Musk said. “The time Elon and I were selling Zip2, our first internet company, we knew I wanted to get food and become a trained chef.” He moved to New York and enrolled at the International Cooking Center.
Musk said the company plans to open Square Super Promotional “Super Farm” (25 climate-controlled containers, cold storage, biosecurity infrastructure, and everything else to scale a vertical farm) in at least three months.
Since its inception, Square Roots has grown more than 120 crops, including greens, vegetables, and strawberries.
The company is not the first of its kind. Startups like Silicon Valley’s Plenty, founded in 2013 and sponsored by Jeff Bezos, the space is also beginning to dominate.
“Environmentalists, urban farmers, architects, agronomists, and public health experts have joined forces with this revolution to save the scarce future of ultra-urbanized food,” Kheir Al-Kodmany, professor of sustainable urban design at the University of Illinois at Chicago said in a report.
It involves a variety of techniques, such as hydroponics, which uses solutions containing mineral nutrients in a water solvent; aquaponics, which uses aquatic creatures (such as fish and snails) and plants in water; and aeroponics, which grow plants in the air.
In terms of job creation, rapid climate change will keep millions of traditional farmers out of business, but vertical farmers will not be affected, according to the microbiologist Dickson Despommier, emeritus professor of public health and environmental health at Columbia University.
Although vertical farming originated in the early 1900s, Despommier has recently become popular. More than 20 years ago, she began teaching in the Columbia class called Medical Ecology.
Despommier spent a decade with his students growing indoor cultivation. “Ten years ago, there was no vertical farm,” said LED grow lights, which have dramatically improved the efficiency of agriculture over the past five years, making indoor growing cheaper and more reliable.
“People want local food because they have lost confidence in the industrial food system, providing thousands of miles of high-calorie, low-nutrient foods for whom with little transparency and how,” said Peggs Square Roots director. .
At the same time, the world’s population is growing rapidly and urbanizing. Peggs said it threatens climate change-related food supplies as it forces the industry to find new ways to grow food quickly.
Peggs is optimistic about raising money for vertical farming. “A lot of smart money and capital comes into the space,” he said. “The quality of food that can be produced in these indoor systems is at least the same as the best food you can buy.”
Despommier said cities will eventually be able to grow “everything they eat” from farms within city limits. “If an outside farm fails, the farmer will have to wait until next year to start again,” he said. “Domestic farms also fail, but indoor farmers can start again within a week.”