Last month, I presented at the National Soils Conference in Canberra, and asked 400 colleagues a simple question: do you think soil will play as significant a role in food production in 100 years as it does today?
A sea of hands went up: the consensus was clearly yes . I demurred, saying I'm not so sure.
Gasps rippled across the room. Why say that? You're a soil scientist! Are you crazy?
A century is a long time. Most of our scientific horizons seem no more than a decade or two away. But how we manage food and our environments needs very long-term, inspired thinking.
Within my concern about whether the future of food production is on terra firma, there is also a hope.
That hope rests in the desire that there will be adequate, quality food for all of the 10 billion, 15 billion or 20 billion people in the future. To achieve that, perhaps we don't need to rely on the our planet's thin skin of soil after all.
Future farming We already see the advance of vertical and hydroponic farming, and the potential for growing meat-like protein in the lab. Synthetic biology is one way forward.
We have seen the advances of hydroponic farming. www.shutterstock.com, CC BY Also read: SAB brings agriculture to the city with rooftop farming
So will we have the technological know-how, and will we be able to afford the infrastructural investment to produce all our food away from natural soil within a century?
Technologically we would like to think this is possible. But will we have the need? Do we have the will?
There are two predominant modern movements in relation to food. The first is the ethical and environmental movement, which holds that food should be produced without harm to the environment or perhaps even to animals. Soil is an important - and non-renewable - part of the environment. This raises the crucial question of whether it can continue to sustain the world's growing population.
Alongside this is the slow food movement, with its concern for the production of high-quality food of known provenance. It's sometimes called paddock to plate or field to fork .
Already, modern food production techniques to manage energy and water use can potentially give 10 times the yield per unit area that normal field conditions provide. This could be transferred to vertical growing spaces, 100 units high.
That alone means we would need just 0.1% of the land area we use now for food production. This could free up huge tracts of land to allow soil to recover from degradation, restoring ecosystems across the planet. It would represent a high-tech answer to the question of environmental ethics.
Returning areas of soil currently used for food production back to native vegetation could help us conserve wildlife, defend against floods, and provide natural buffer areas that can filter water and cycle nutrients. Locations may include soils in rainforests with copious biodiversity and voluminous water-cycling capability, or wetlands upstream of cities prone to flooding.
In Australia, the decline of carbon in cropping lands, soil erosion and nutrient imbalances continue largely unchecked and unabated. www.shutterstock.com, CC BY This approach is not necessarily incompatible with the slow food movement. Indeed, it could actually help the movement achieve its goals, because it would take the pressure off the world's soils, thus ensuring there is enough high-quality soil left to pursue high-quality ethical production.
More food for more people The United Nations Food & Agricultural Organisation predicts a need to double agricultural production by 2050 to meet the demand of an estimated population of 9.5 billion. This must be done while simultaneously maintaining functioning ecosystems; therefore securing soils and their life-supporting functions have never been more crucial.
In Australia, while soil care has improved, it is not yet sustainable. Widespread soil acidification and the decline of carbon in cropping lands, soil erosion and nutrient imbalances continue largely unchecked and unabated. With the new approach the appropriate soil and terroir could be dedicated to high-quality sustainable bespoke food and wine production.
The great loessial soils of North America, Russia and Ukraine are often regarded as the best in the world - they could be managed sustainably for the production of cereals for centuries to come. Even some of these most food-productive soils could be returned to their former pre-agricultural state. In Australia our famous red-brown earths might be more useful for forestry than being pressed into service for cereal production.
That said, the infrastructural costs of producing food entirely without soil will be enormous. It's more likely we will land on a blended solution that combines highly engineered growing spaces and under the sky soil-based agriculture.
Over the coming century, our challenge will be to move away from our almost total reliance on soil - that mutable and vital thin skin of the earth - to allow large tracts of our most vulnerable soils to repair. Healing our wounded soils will be an important step on the road to global sustainability.
Originally published by Alex McBratney on The Conversation. Also read: The next green revolution: A new dawn in agriculture technology
Tags: South Africasustainability
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
01/06/2026
Designed to solve a common problem in broadcasting, the automated workflow detects, identifies, removes, and documents copyrighted music
AudioShake has introdu...
01/06/2026
The sports-analytics company combines its data with proprietary AI to help leagu...
01/06/2026
Category line-up & sponsors announced
Photo: Paul Clarke
The Production Music Awards (PMA) have announced that submissions are now officially open ahead of...
01/06/2026
New hybrid sample/synthesis instrument revealed
Excite Audio have just released the latest instalment in their Evolve series, which has been developed in co...
01/06/2026
Latest TONEX expansion captures three rare vintage amps
The newest addition to IK Multimedia's ever-growing TONEX line-up introduces a set of three incr...
01/06/2026
Musically intelligent soft synth gets upgraded
Scaler Music will be probably be best known to many for their music theory tools, but their product range al...
01/06/2026
SBS confirms its broadcast sponsors for FIFA World Cup 2026
1 June, 2026
Media releases
SBS has secured Hyundai, Hisense, Macca's, Rexona, bet365, Com...
01/06/2026
Rohde & Schwarz Satellite Industry Days 2026 guided by the motto From Earth to ...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Marshall Electronics is showcasing a comprehensive lineup of next-generation POV cameras, purpose-built to power today's connected AV environments, at InfoC...
01/06/2026
Adobe Announces Concept to Vector
Deepa Subramaniam June 1, 2026
0 Comments
One of the biggest frustrations we hear from designers is how difficult it...
01/06/2026
Vampire Feature Night Patrol Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton June 1, 2026
0 Comments
Colorist shapes dark, gritty tone for horror thri...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Mardi 2 juin 14h00
FilmLight (ARRI), 10 rue Ren Boulanger, 75010 Paris
Rejoignez-nous pour d couvrir comment FLAPI (l'API FilmLight) peut transformer e...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
31/05/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Wins 15 Awards at the Canadian Screen Awards - See Pho...
31/05/2026
Taiwan is home to more than 500 NVIDIA ecosystem partners. More than 1 million N...
31/05/2026
As factories move from isolated automation to plant-wide intelligence, manufacturers need AI systems that can connect live machine signals, quality systems, wor...
31/05/2026
The NVIDIA AI Cloud ecosystem is accelerating the global buildout of AI factory infrastructure. Partners are expanding capacity to meet growing demand from ente...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
Last month, I presented at the National Soils Conference in Canberra, and asked 400 colleagues a simple question: do you think soil will play as significant a role in food production in 100 years as it does today?
