June 29, 2019

Reinventing agriculture with more knowledge


On the first look the topic of food production on mass scale is not very interesting because humans are using agriculture since hundred of years and everything is researched already. Surprisingly only the general idea of producing food is known already what is unclear is how to reduce the costs in doing so. A common myth about plans and agriculture is, that most researchers are unsure about the importance of the sun. The only thing what flowers really need is direct sunlight. For a human person it would be deadly to take a sunbath for 3 hours in the high noon sun, in contrast the plants on the farm are doing so each year.
In a typical region for agriculture the sun is shining up to 16 hours a day and no kind of sun protection is there. That means, plants have a natural desire for Ultraviolet radiation and for large amount of energy from the sky. They are using sunlight to produce leaves.
Another misconception for agriculture is the importance of water supply. Farmers in the past never used additional water on the field because water is an expensive good or they utilized garden sprinkler in the summer but can't afford it on the long run. The answer to the problem of water supply is called a drip irrigation system. This reduces the amount of needed water to a minimum. The main feature is, that it will takes many hours until a small amount of water is put onto the farm, which means that a typical drip system will only allow 0.5 litre per hour as a throughput to the field. Additionally the time is important in which the system is active to reduce the amount of waste of water.