Agriculture is responsible for twenty-five percent of the world’s carbon emissions.
Despite extreme advancements in most other fields of technology, our methods of growing food at scale have remained stagnant for much of the past century. Wide, open fields stretch into the horizon, growing crops which demand watering once a day. Once harvested, these crops are loaded into heavy diesel trucks and driven thousands of miles before they are finally purchased and consumed. This practice is expensive, highly polluting, and altogether unsustainable.
Food does not have to be grown hundreds of miles away from where it is consumed. Technology such as hydroponics and aeroponics allow for vertical farming in controllable environments and at far higher efficiencies than is achievable through conventional farming. Growing food near where it is consumed reduces transportation emissions, improves freshness, and cuts cost. The Hydroponic Agriculture Cell (HAC) is a modular system which can help make this vision into reality.
The Hydroponic Agriculture Cell is an Internet-of-Things connected automated hydroponic farm which automatically controls all aspects of a plant’s growing environment. The farm gives the plant the necessary amount of light, automatically measures ambient temperature and humidity, waters the plant, and uploads all information to a cloud database for ease of access. The HAC uses is more efficient and produces higher quality crops than conventional farming techniques. Hydroponic watering systems have been shown to reduce water usage by up to 95%. Because every factor of the plant’s environment can be controlled and monitored, hydroponic farms are able to grow crops more quickly and efficiently than conventional farms.
This version of the hydroponic agriculture cell was intended to serve as a proof-of-concept for a single module within a system that could be expanded to support multiple plants. As such, it was designed to minimize cost and re-use materials. The outer frame of the cell re-used wood material from an old bed frame, supplemented with various thicknesses of interior-grade plywood.
The cell incorporated a number of electronic components to automatically grow a variety of crops. All functionalities are controllable wirelessly via a web-app, allowing the user to modify the plant's lighting cycle, monitor temperature and humidity, and change watering times. The farm contains an aquarium pump, a number of aeration stones to oxygenate the water, an automated LED grow light, and built-in ventilation in the form of computer cooling fans.
The bottom section of the farm holds all of the electronics, while the top section houses the plant and all growth equipment. The entire farm is mounted on wheels for mobility.
The farm was upcycled from parts of an Ikea bed frame and interior grade plywood:
The Hydroponic Agriculture Cell presented here has potential to drastically impact urban sustainability by moving the source of production closer to consumption. This modular, expandable framework is vertically scalable and compatible with many crops, making it perfect for urban environments. Hydroponic solutions use 95% less water than conventional agriculture, and because a farmer can control every factor of the plants' growth, plants can grow significantly faster than existing farming methods. There is perhaps an elephant in the room regarding the crops I decided to demonstrate this device with. This project was my final project for an electronics course at my university, so I decided to plant something with more "wow factor" than tomatoes or basil would have provided, as I knew that I would be presenting this device to my professor live. My professor took the project in stride, and found the choice of crop quite humorous. My project partner and I ended up getting 100% on the project. I do not intend for my choice of crop in this regard to detract from the impact that sustainable agriculture practices could have on a much wider scope of crops which could be grown by a cell like the one I have shown above. I believe that the ongoing climate catastrophe must be addressed from all angles, including agriculture.
Thank you for reading, and please feel free to check out my other projects! :-)
