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If 2022's floods, fires and droughts weren't warning enough, corporate agriculture is being sent a message – invest in protected cropping now or risk the future of food.
Key points:
- Protected cropping involves growing food under or within structures, which could reduce climate change-related challenges to farming
- Experts say agriculture needs to act now to secure future food
- Scientists are working on creative solutions to challenges to the rapidly expanding food-growing system
While costs and design were still a barrier, Australian scientists said if large companies did not start spending on new technology soon, the rising costs and risks from growing food outside would continue to threaten food security.
At the Future of Food Summit in Brisbane, climate scientist and plant physiologist David Tissue said the pressure on household grocery bills would only continue unless a significant shift happened.
"It's like ignoring some health issue that you have, you could wait six months, a year, two years," the Western Sydney University professor said.
"It might be too late by the time you go to the doctor."
He believed the answer was protected cropping, which involved sheltering the crop from nature using a cover.
"If things are under cover there can be some damage, but we can also recover much more quickly," he said.
"We can also put these protected cropping facilities near population centres, reduce the carbon footprint, use less water, use less nutrients and get fresh vegetables to people."
Protection beyond cropping
While the systems, mostly developed in Europe, still needed to be adapted to the Australian experience, there had been progress.
Dr Alex Soeriyadi from Luminescent Light Emitting Agriculture Film (LLeaf) has made a red film for glass houses and polytunnels, engineered for the harsh Australian sun.
He said it was a material that absorbed light, then emitted it again at a different wavelength.
"We do light engineering of natural sunlight and improve it to a light that it's more beneficial for plants to grow," he said.
Dr Soeriyadi said the red light had consistently increased yield by 15 to 30 per cent, and the team was now exploring other colours and what vegetables benefited from them.
Executive officer for Protected cropping Australia Sam Turner said while traditionally not a large contributor to the overall food system, protected cropping was rapidly growing in Australia.
While water use and other inputs such as fertiliser, pesticides, herbicides were much lower in a protected cropping system, other barriers were a disincentive for investment.
He said access to trained horticulturalists who could operate the technical structures and systems, and suitable local planning laws were key barriers that needed to be addressed.
But in some cases technology had already stepped in to solve problems, like using autonomous drones and robots for pollination.
"Traditionally, we have growers walking around hitting plants and spreading the pollen around physically, which is not as an efficient way to do it and the bugs are much better at it than we are," he said.
Shifting minds, shifting diets
While protected cropping could offer security for traditional food supply chains, scientists were also working towards other nutrition sources, such as algae and plant protein, to feed future populations.
Research and commercialisation director of Future Food Systems Cooperative Research centre Cordelia Selomulya said consumers wanted more choices and more diverse options.
"It will be great for the environment, but also for people's diet and nutrition and health as well," she said.
"If you are creating a plant based product that is mimicking the animal protein, for example, we don't end up adding too many additional ingredients that might not be entirely good for you.
"I think that's something that's still a challenge at the moment, how do you formulate this product so that they will have the the same taste and texture as their animal counterpart but without compromising the nutritional quality and this is a challenge in terms of formulation but also processing as well."