VERTICAL FARMING | Creating the Fertile City

“Without artificial lighting the result will be an uneven crop, as plants closest to the windows are exposed to more sunlight and grow more quickly.”

WHEN you run out of land in a crowded city, the solution is obvious: build upwards. This simple trick makes it possible to pack huge numbers of homes and offices into a limited space such as Hong Kong, Manhattan or the City of London. Mankind now faces a similar problem on a global scale. The world's population is expected to increase to 9.1 billion by 2050, according to the UN. Feeding all those people will mean increasing food production by 70%, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, through a combination of higher crop yields and an expansion of the area under cultivation. But the additional land available for cultivation is unevenly distributed, and much of it is suitable for growing only a few crops. So why not create more agricultural land by building upwards?

Such is the thinking behind vertical farming. The idea is that skyscrapers filled with floor upon floor of orchards and fields, producing crops all year round, will sprout in cities across the world. As well as creating more farmable land out of thin air, this would slash the transport costs and carbon-dioxide emissions associated with moving food over long distances. It would also reduce the spoilage that inevitably occurs along the way, says Dickson Despommier, a professor of public and environmental health at Columbia University in New York who is widely regarded as the progenitor of vertical farming, and whose recently published book, “The Vertical Farm”, is a manifesto for the idea. According to the UN's Population Division, by 2050 around 70% of the world's population will be living in urban areas. So it just makes sense, he says, to move farms closer to where everyone will be living.

Better still, says Dr Despommier, the use of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides can be kept to a bare minimum by growing plants indoors in a controlled environment. Soil erosion will not be a problem because the food will be grown hydroponically—in other words, in a solution of minerals dissolved in water. Clever recycling techniques will ensure that only a fraction of the amount of water and nutrients will be needed compared with conventional farming, and there will no problem with agricultural run-off.

A wide variety of designs for vertical farms have been created by architectural firms. (The idea can arguably be traced back as far as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, built around 600BC.) So far, however, the idea remains firmly on the drawing board. Would it really work? The necessary technology already exists. The glasshouse industry has more than a century's experience of growing crops indoors in large quantities, says Gene Giacomelli, director of the Controlled Environment Agriculture Centre at the University of Arizona in Tucson. It is now possible to tailor the temperature, humidity, lighting, airflow and nutrient conditions to get the best productivity out of plants year round, anywhere in the world, he says. The technology of hydroponics allows almost any kind of plant to be grown in nutrient-rich water, from root crops like radishes and potatoes to fruit such as melons and even cereals like maize.

There are a number of ways to do it, but essentially hydroponics involves suspending plants in a medium—such as gravel, wool or a form of volcanic glass known as perlite—while the roots are immersed in a solution of nutrient-rich water. A constant flow of air keeps the plants bathed in carbon dioxide. Any nutrients and water that are not taken up by the roots can be recycled, rather than being lost into the soil. “You can grow anything with hydroponics,” says Dr Giacomelli.

 He and his colleagues have created the South Pole Food Growth Chamber, which has been in operation since 2004. This semi-automated hydroponic facility in Antarctica is used to provide each of the 65 staff of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station with at least one fresh salad a day during the winter months, when supply flights to the station are extremely limited. The chamber has a floor area of 22 square metres and produces a wide range of fruit and vegetables with little more than the occasional topping up of water and nutrients. It does, however, require artificial lighting because the station is without natural daylight for most of the winter.

And that highlights a big potential stumbling-block for vertical farming. In the Antarctic the need to provide artificial light is a small price to pay for fresh food, given the cost of importing it. But elsewhere the cost of powering artificial lights will make indoor farming prohibitively expensive. Even though crops growing in a glass skyscraper will get some natural sunlight during the day, it won't be enough. Without artificial lighting the result will be an uneven crop, as the plants closest to the windows are exposed to more sunlight and grow more quickly, says Peter Head, global leader of planning and sustainable development at Arup, a British engineering firm. “Light has to be very tightly controlled to get uniform production of very high-quality food,” he says.

 Indeed, even in today's single-storey glasshouses, artificial lighting is needed to enable year-round production. Thanet Earth, a 90-hectare facility which opened in Kent in 2008 and is the largest such site in Britain—it provides 15% of the British salad crop—requires its own mini power-station to provide its plants with light for 15 hours a day during the winter months. This rather undermines the notion that vertical farming will save energy and cut carbon emissions, notes Mr Head, who has carried out several studies of the idea. Vertical farming will need cheap, renewable energy if it is to work, he says.

Some researchers, such as Ted Caplow, an environmental engineer and founder of New York Sun Works, a non-profit group, argue that even using renewable energy the numbers do not add up. Between 2006 and 2009 Dr Caplow and his colleagues operated the Science Barge, a floating hydroponic greenhouse moored in Manhattan (it has since moved to Yonkers). “It was to investigate what we could do to grow food in the heart of the city with minimal resource-consumption and maximum resource-efficiency,” says Dr Caplow.

The barge used one-tenth as much water as a comparable field farm. There was no agricultural run-off, and chemical pesticides were replaced with natural predators such as ladybirds. Operating all year round, the barge could grow 20 times more than could have been produced by a field of the same size, says Dr Caplow.

Solar panels and wind turbines on the barge meant that it could produce food with near-zero net carbon emissions. But the greenhouses on the barge were only one storey high, so there was not much need for artificial lighting. As soon as you start trying to stack greenhouses on top of each other you run into problems, says Dr Caplow. Based on his experience with the Science Barge, he has devised a rule of thumb: generating enough electricity using solar panels requires an area about 20 times larger than the area being illuminated. For a skyscraper-sized hydroponic farm, that is clearly impractical. Vertical farming will work only if it makes use of natural light, Dr Caplow concludes.

One idea, developed by Valcent, a vertical-farming firm based in Texas, Vancouver and Cornwall, is to use vertically stacked hydroponic trays that move on rails, to ensure that all plants get an even amount of sunlight. The company already has a 100-square-metre working prototype at Paignton Zoo in Devon, producing rapid-cycle leaf vegetable crops, such as lettuce, for the zoo's animals. The VerticCrop system (pictured) ensures an even distribution of light and air flow, says Dan Caiger-Smith of Valcent. Using energy equivalent to running a desktop computer for ten hours a day it can produce 500,000 lettuces a year, he says. Growing the same crop in fields would require seven times more energy and up to 20 times more land and water.

But VertiCrop uses multiple layers of stacked trays that operate within a single-storey greenhouse, where natural light enters from above, as well as from the sides. So although this boosts productivity, it doesn't help with multi-storey vertical farms. Even if each floor rotates its crops past the windows so that all plants receive an equal amount of natural light, overall they would get less light, and so produce less biomass, says Dr Caplow. He prefers the idea of the “vertically integrated greenhouse”. This idea involves the integration of vertical farms into buildings and offices, with plants growing around the edges of the building, sandwiched between two glass layers and rotating on a conveyor. Shrouding buildings with plants solves the natural-light problem for agriculture, acts as a passive form of climate control for the buildings and makes for a nice view. But the area available is much smaller.

The immediate opportunity may simply be to take advantage of the space available on urban rooftops, says Mr Head, and to pursue urban farming rather than vertical farming. BrightFarms Systems, a commercial offshoot of NYSW, is working with Gotham Greens, another company to emerge from the Science Barge, to create the world's first commercial urban hydroponic farm in Brooklyn. When it opens in 2011, the 15,000 square-foot rooftop facility will produce 30 tonnes of vegetables a year which will be sold in local stores under the Gotham Greens brand name.

Although this is urban hydroponics, not vertical farming, it is a step in the right direction, says Mr Head. “I wouldn't be at all surprised if we saw large retailers with greenhouses on their roofs growing produce for sale in the shop,” he says. A few examples of this have already sprung up. BrightFarms, for example, together with a firm called Better Food Solutions, began constructing a large single-storey glasshouse on the roof of a big supermarket in October. The supermarket agrees to buy the produce and owns the farm, while Better Food Solutions builds it and runs it. The first fruit and vegetables are expected to go on sale in early 2011.

It is unclear how competitive this will be. Rooftop farming may not be able to compete with other suppliers in a global market unless people are prepared to pay a premium for fresh, local food, says Mr Head. And it is much less glamorous than the grand vision of crops being produced in soaring green towers of glass. But, for the time being, this more down-to-earth approach is much more realistic than the sci-fi dream of fields in the sky.

Source of Article: http://www.economist.com/

Hydroponics - a quick overview

Hydroponics - a quick overview

Truly a wonder of modern science - hydroponic gardens produce bountiful harvests of fruit, vegetables, grains, herbs and flowers in places never before able to sustain growth. Hydroponic gardens produce the healthiest crops with the highest yields and vitamin content thanks to their perfectly balanced nutrient solutions. Modern hydroponic methods provide food for millions of people worldwide and supply you, me and the food service industry with superior produce. In fact, hydroponic cultivation is so effective, NASA has devised an advanced method of hydroponics for use in outer space. The science of hydroponics began with experimentation into deter-mining the elementary composition of plants. These experiments have been dated as early as 1600 A.D., however, records show that plants have been cultivated in soil free mixtures of sand and gravel even earlier. The hanging gardens of Babylon and the floating gardens of the Mexican Aztecs are perfect examples of early hydroponic gardening. Egyptian hieroglyphics have even been found depicting the cultivation of plants in water as far back as several hundred years BC.

The word "Hydroponics" was coined by Dr. W.F. Gericke in 1936 to describe the cultivation of both edible and ornamental plants in a solution of water and dissolved nutrients.

The simple meaning is derived from the Greek "Hydro"- meaning water, and "Ponos"- meaning labor.

In this method of cultivation, plants are provided with the nutrients required for growth by a “nutrient” solution which is basically nutrient enriched mineral water. This nutrient solution can be circulated around the roots by either the passive force of gravity or the active force of an electromechanical pump. Some systems simply bath the roots in nutrient solution and use an air pump to oxygenate the solution from below to prevent stagnation and provide the roots with important oxygen.

Plants grown hydroponically are healthier than their soil grown counterparts since they receive a perfectly balanced diet and do not come in contact with soilborne pests and diseases. Super efficient hydroponic systems like the ones we show you how to build conserve water and nutrients by preventing evaporation and runoff. Arid regions where water is scarce can now grow crops with hydroponics. Since hydroponic systems deliver water and nutrients directly to the plant, crops can be grown closer together without starving each other and healthier plants add to a higher yield. By growing crops in a sterile environment, under ideal conditions, hydroponics saves the costs of soil preparation, insecticides, fungicides and losses due to drought and ground flooding.

In soil, plants waste a tremendous amount of energy developing a large root system to search for moisture and nutrients. When grown hydroponically, the roots are bathed or sprayed with nutrients dissolved in water. This way their energy can be redirected into the production of more foliage, flowers, fruits and vegetables.

Plants grown hydroponically are healthier because they receive a well balanced 'DIET'. They are more vigorous because little energy is wasted searching for water and nutrients. As a result, hydroponically grown produce is generally larger, tastier, and more nutritious than the same produce grown in soil. In order to give the physical support soil would normally provide, a sterile medium such as sand, gravel, rocks, cocofiber or rockwool (or combi-nation of each) may be used. In the case of aeroponics, no medium is used and the plants receive physical support from baskets and in this case, wires suspended from the roof. These plants are rotated through a chamber that supplies their roots with a fine spray of water and hydroponic nutrients.

Oxygen to the roots increases a plant’s metabolism substantially. Some advantages of replacing soil with a sterile medium are:

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1. Elimination of soil borne pests, funguses and diseases.

2. Elimination of troublesome weeds and stray seedlings.

3. Reduction of health risks and labor costs associated with pest management and soil care.

At the Environmental Research Laboratory (ERL) at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Dr. Carl Hodges and Dr. Merle Jensen in conjunction with Walt Disney Productions, have developed new concepts for presenting hydroponic technologies to the public in an entertaining way. The ERL helped create two attractions called "Listen to The Land" and "Tomorrow’s Harvest" - both major facilities at Epcot Center near Orlando, Florida. Hydroponics is NASA's solution to provide a self sufficient food source for future space stations and proposed visitors to mars. The administration has sponsored a research program titled Controlled Ecological Life Support System (CELSS) in order to further develop the technology and carry it into the future. The picture below is of Epcot/ NASA’s Space Agriculture expo as seen from a tour of the Epcot Center attraction. The lighting used in these ex-amples is high pressure sodium or HPS, which delivers an excellent spectrum of color and output in lumens. High Intensity Discharge (H.I.D.) lighting, which includes the HPS and metal halide type lamps, is the best lighting to use when gardening indoors or supplementing natural lighting outdoors due to its efficiency and close representation of the sun’s natural light color and intensity.

A. M. Awan (Author)

About Admin Author:

A M Awan Currently working as Marketing Executive at Oasis Agro Industries Pakistan, and hobbies to read about agriculture, share latest information with others

The Modern Face Of Farming In The UK

John Hutchinson
LPS Special Correspondent

FEW nations have seen such enormous changes in their farming industry as the United Kingdom. Recent decades have not only brought farmers more than their fair share of drought and flood but also powerful new pressures on their livelihoods that their grandfathers, 50 years ago, could never have imagined.

These pressures are generated by the modern world’s economic, environmental and consumer forces that have changed the face of the entire agriculture and food-production industry in the UK.

As a result, the UK’s agricultural and food production and processing technologies have become some of the most advanced and most sought-after in the world. The downside for many farmers is the personal consequences of the inevitable contraction of an industry that once employed millions but now supports a full-time workforce of fewer than 400,000 people.

Today in England, farmers tend an impressive 80% of the country’s 130,000 square kilometres of land and yet the direct economic value of farming in the food they produce is less than 1% of the nation’s gross domestic product.

This tiny proportion hides the real and immeasurable economic value of farming in terms of the raw materials that feed the UK’s major food processing industry, the new generations of energy crops for cleaner fuels, and the enormous benefit for the UK public in the shape of attractive landscapes that provide a fertile field for the growth industry of rural tourism – a sector that today is worth more in economic terms than farming.

Increasingly, these developments are being encouraged not only by government policies in the UK but also by the farming community. Modern farms are getting bigger but profits are dropping and farm incomes are at the lowest levels since the 1930s, while more than 40,000 jobs have been lost in farming in the past two years alone.

Many UK farmers are weathering the storm by becoming more productive. In the past 18 months the total area under crops has increased by 3% to nearly four million hectares, with wheat up by 20% at nearly 1.9 million hectares. At 21 million tonnes, the UK’s wheat and barley harvest marked a 17% increase over 2001.

Cheap grain from the Ukraine has contributed to a drop in grain prices for UK farmers but the UK’s National Farmers’ Union sees a confident future.

The overall wheat market looks promising for UK suppliers, reports a National Farmers’ Union spokesman. World production levels have fallen, especially in the United States, Canada and Australia, while new markets are opening up in north Africa and Asia.

Livestock, overshadowed today by UK’s grain and horticultural sectors, saw reductions of between 2- and 5% in dairy and beef breeding herds. Horticulture, by contrast, is a vibrant and growing feature of UK agriculture, with the UK leading the way internationally in research, development and environmental stewardship. Horticulture output today is worth almost two billion pounds sterling, more than 10% of the total industry.

Farming in UK also contributes strongly to a thriving export business in foodstuffs that rose to more than 4.8 billion pounds in the first six months of 2002 alone.

Defra - the government’s Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs - is striving to help UK farmers survive and prosper, balancing the priorities of ensuring competitively priced food for UK and overseas markets with the need for high standards of safety, environmental care, animal welfare and a sustainable, efficient food chain – while maintaining the essential character of rural communities. Government forecasts point to a 9% growth in farming income this year.

Farmers are also contributing more effectively to government environmental schemes. Direct state ownership of production farms has long since ended but more than 25,000 farmers are now involved in government initiatives and in recent years 400 flourishing farmers’ markets have opened to offer producers scope to sell direct to their customers. Nearly 80,000 farmers and growers are members of farm assurance schemes.

The UK’s leisure and tourist industry, too, is presenting new opportunities for farmers. In the past 20 years an estimated 15,000 farmers have introduced products or services for the leisure market, from big pleasure and educational parks to small-scale facilities for holidaymakers.

Meanwhile the system of state support to food producers is under review with farmers, consumers and the government increasingly anxious to ensure Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) develops as an integrated rural development policy.

Reforms to the policy get the support of UK farmers, although the industry is concerned that changes to the proposed phasing-in of farm support to new member states could affect farmers.

Farmers do not see any major competitive threat arising from the introduction of new member states into the European Union (EU), says the National Farmers’ Union. We broadly agree with the proposed EU position on agriculture in the enlargement talks.

Meanwhile another initiative for UK farmers to grasp is new scope for growing green fuels. Research shows almost one fifth of arable land could be devoted to crops for conversion into bio-fuels.

This promises to be one of the most dramatic shifts in the function of farming in recent history, says the National Farmers’ Union. It will provide new opportunities for farmers and will be excellent news for the environment. With such initiatives, UK agriculture is preparing to look ahead to a cleaner, productive and more stable future.

Source : http://www.agriworld.nl/

Promotion olive Cultivation for economic development in poverty alleviation

Promotion olive Cultivation for economic development in poverty alleviation

The plans to plant olive saplings in KP and the rest of Pakistan can bear fruit

By Tahir Ali

With high global demand and rising prices in the international market and Pakistan’s annual edible oil import bill exceeding $2bn, the rationale of recent olive cultivation initiatives in the country cannot be overemphasized. Olive demand globally is on the rise. Germans are using five times more and British ten times more olive than they did in 1990. In America, olive demand is growing by 6pc annually for two decades now. Olive prices in world market have doubled to $3,400 a ton recently. Pakistan has over 0.8mn hectares of wasteland suitable for olive cultivation. An official of the now defunct Pakistan Oil Seeds Development Board (PODB) had told this writer that by covering the area with olive plants, Pakistan can produce around 1.84mn tons of olive oil. This would fetch over $6bn at the current rate of olive in world market. The Pakistan agricultural research council (PARC) has begun implementing the project “Promotion of olive cultivation for economic development and poverty alleviation” whereby olive plants will be cultivated on 300 hectares in Balochistan, 100 hectares in KP, 300 hectares in federally administered tribal areas and 100 hectares in the Pothohar region of Punjab. The Rs382mn project to be completed in three years is being under the Pakistan Italian debt-for-development swap agreement.

The Punjab Agriculture and Meat Company also plans to develop 10 certified nurseries. These nurseries –being opened through private sector in Attock, Rawalpindi, Chakwal, Jehlum and Khushab districts –would have a catchment area of 27000 acres and would have an impact of $78mn. The potential area suitable for olive cultivation is around 8mn acres in Punjab of which 0.4mn is being targeted though this initiative. Total impact of this land, if covered, would be $1.16bn.

Similarly, in KP’s budget for 2012-13, a Rs100mn project –research and development on European olive and maintenance of model olive farm Sangbhatti Mardan –has been started and allocated Rs15mn this year. As the PODB stands dissolved, Sangbhatti olive farm, one of its assets, has been handed over to the directorate of agriculture research in KP. “The department will provide olive plantlets, grafts and buds produced in the Sangbhatti farm to farmers. Though the production of olive nursery is limited at present, it is nevertheless sufficient for the time being,” says an official of KP agriculture ministry wishing anonymity. “Despite our efforts, mass resort to olive plantation is however unlikely in the immediate future,” the official adds.

Pakistan has been unable to increase its olive acreage and yield for indifference by successive governments, lack of private sector’s interest, focus on other cash crops, security situation in KP and tribal belt, too few olive nurseries and marketing worries. It only has 1130 acres of land under productive olive trees and the crop is yet to be inserted into the cropping system. The question arises: will the new initiatives succeed?

While olive farmers usually grow olive haphazardly, the problem is multiplied by non-availability of standard olive plants and restricted mobility of local and foreign experts in the olive-rich but militancy-hit tribal belt, KP and Balochistan. This explains why there has been of late a shift of focus to other parts of the country. Olive acreage and yield could be increased by providing quality seed, polythene rolls for wrapping round the buds/grafts to save them from cold and moisture, modern training and marketing support to olive farmers. Have similar interventions been planned?

Pakistan has over 0.8mn hectares suitable area for olive but as most farmers on fertile lands prefer other crops, the potential area may be around 0.264mh. Even if a third of this area is brought under olive cultivation, around 25mn olive seedlings would be needed (@250 trees per hectare) over the next few years. Has this been considered? Pakistan need to shift to tissue culture technology, standardise its nursery production and open more germplasm units to provide enough olive seeds, buds and grafts. Olive tree usually bears fruit after 4-5 years. However, Sultan Ali Khan, a farmer from Swat, says his community had grafted around 40000 wild olive trees but only 5000 of them have been successful and have started bearing fruit after 7-8 years. Shafeeq Ahmad from Swari, Buner says an olive plant could bear over 40-45kg of fruit if sufficient care, protection, pesticides and fertilisers are provided to the plants.

“We planted 600 olive plants on a mountain ridge around ten years ago but it is yet to bear plentiful fruit. Bearing of fruit was late and paltry because the orchards could not be looked after well nor were provided sufficient and timely doses of fertiliser and pesticides as the farmers were not given guidance and help,” he tells TNS. Another problem is that very ambitious projects are launched but are later forgotten. For example, there is no mention of the projects of establishment of olive orchards in KP and that of research, development and promotion of olive in KP which were allocated funds in the last two budgets but not in this fiscal and have been left out incomplete. A report on the Malakand olive development prepared by ISCOS, an international organisation, had urged induction of more olive technicians, modern training for them and increase in their salaries, introduction of a system of reward for successful olive farmers, subsidized provision of olive plants, and interaction between all the stakeholders in the olive production chain. The PODB had converted quite a few wild olive plants into fruit bearing trees. That process needs to be continued.

The planners also need to ensure olive production is developed on commercial lines and its enterprises facilitated. Olives are grown by the methods of budding and grafting of wild olive trees or planting of new trees. However, farmers have found the method of grafting most successful. A research showed that around 80-90pc olive trees grown through T-Grafting technique from August to September were successful. The areas with an altitude between 400 and 1,700 meters, slope of 20°, rainfall between 250 mm and 1,000 mm and having a warm, semi arid, winter rain climate are mostly suitable for olive plants. Olive trees can endure low temperature of even -9° C but these can hardly tolerate it at vegetative stage. It however needs a bit low temperatures in winter to be able to produce good amount of inflorescences and flowers in spring. The common diseases in olive plants are trunk decay, sooty mould and peacock spot, which decay and dry up the tree. The olive trees need more nitrogenous fertilizer than phosphorous and potash. The latter two fertilizers should be mixed in the soil before planting of trees at the rate of 200 kg and 300 kg per hectare respectively. Best time of nitrogen fertilizer is pre-flowering and stone-hardening stage.

Reference by: "THE NEWS" (Dated: 07th Sept. 2012)

Green Agriculture—The Next Hot Investment Sector?

Judging by the turnout and interest, green agriculture just might be the next hot investment sector.

Eric Wesoff: March 25, 2010

A surprising number of Silicon Valley investors and bankers gathered in the bucolic confines of the Four Seasons Hotel off of Highway 101 in Palo Alto, California to attend the Agriculture 2.0 Silicon Valley Event. I would hazard to say that the closest many of these folks have gotten to agriculture and soil is the Whole Foods produce aisle or perhaps a vineyard. (I actually had a brief but wildly successful stint as a commercial organic farmer, but that's another story.)

It's a testament to the power of the greentech meme that more than 250 Silicon Valley types came out to learn about sustainable farming, water, GMOs, seeds and biodiversity. In the audience were investors from Mohr Davidow, Greylock, Kleiner Perkins, USVP, Redpoint, Rockport, Khosla Ventures, DFJ, Foundation Capital and many more.

It's possible that VCs can do for agriculture what they've done for online dog food delivery, grocery delivery, and gyroscopic scooters. That is, invest in a field they know nothing about, and totally jam it up.

That being said, and now that I've gotten that last bit of snarkiness out of my system -- there are more than a few venture firms with experience in these specialized fields and a few investment professionals with applicable domain experience. And certainly, many of the investors speaking today have their heart in the right place. It was the first time I heard pro-vegetarian views and tales of yoga practices on a VC panel.

Panelist and Kleiner Perkins partner Amol Deshpande has worked for agriculture giant Cargill, at an indoor tilapia aquaculture firm and co-founded a company exploring germplasm in garlic. He believes that there is an investment opportunity in the agriculture space, but it is "painful and difficult to scale." Since coming to Kleiner Perkins he's been involved in two deals that are "notionally affiliated" with sustainable agriculture -- next generation organic waste management by Harvest Power and APT which is focused on water issues that are largely caused by agriculture. Deshpande describes himself as "very interested in this space."

Certainly the markets are huge. Agriculture accounts for 4 percent of the California economy according to Tom Tomich of UC Davis' Agricultural Sustainability Institute (agriculture also accounts for 8 percent of California energy use, 20 percent of California's land area and more than 40 percent of the state's fresh water use). Tomich also said, "The idea of the dumb farmer is truly a myth -- don't make that mistake," and, "Agricultural innovation responds to market forces."

Despite the size of the market, the big question for investors is: Are VC growth expectations and scaling requirements even feasible in the admittedly huge agricultural markets? Limited partners in VC firms aren't going to lower their expectations in order to invest in farms simply because it's the right thing to do. The hope is just as greentech became mainstream, so can green ag.

According to KP's Deshpande, "At KP we try to be creative, asking how can we change that industry." Along those lines, he mentioned in vitro meat production. (See this article in Beef Magazine and check out the work of Jason Metheny.)

Other investors with a green agriculture focus include Stu Rudick of Mindful Investors. Mindful invests exclusively in the natural, organic and sustainable consumer products and services marketplace. One of their portfolio firms, Organic Girl, sells organic greens and vegetables and had $150 million in sales in their second year of business.

And Jim Schultz of Illinois-based Open Prairie Ventures is also focused on agriculture with offices actually located in the middle of farmlands. One of their portfolio firms, Vestaron, is developing green pesticides based on spider venom.

Issues that can be addressed by green ag investors include water, nitrogen, phosphorous, synthetic fertilizer, local foods, aquaculture, pests, and the move towards organics.

Here is a small crop of examples of green ag companies that presented or exhibited at Agriculture 2.0:

AeroFarm Systems: Calling themselves "The Future of Urban Agriculture," AeroFarm is developing aeroponic technology for growers of "leafy greens" in the $4 billion bag salad market. The design of their farming systems uses no soil, a minimum of fertilizers and water, and can be stacked to maximize space. The company envisions using buildings in NYC to grows salad greens with enormous yields using LED-based lighting. The firm is pre-revenue, has raised $500,000 from The Quercus Trust and 21Ventures and is seeking a $5 million Round A.

Inka Biospheric Systems: Vertical food growing systems and "micro-farms" that support hydroponics -- suitable for urban gardens.

Local Dirt: An early-stage firm that matches producers of locally grown food with buyers.

Marrone Bio Innovations: Environmentally responsible products for weed, plant disease and invasive pest management. Marrone uses naturally occurring microorganisms for Integrated Pest Management -- insecticides, herbicides and products for controlling invasive mussels in waterways.

Open Blue Sea Farms: Open ocean, caged "free-range" fish farmers. Open Blue’s initial species is Cobia, a sashimi-grade, marine white fish, targeted for the gourmet seafood market, the upper 20% of the seafood industry in the U.S.

Pasteuria Bioscience: Nematodes, also known as roundworms, are the most numerous multicellular animals on earth and many of them are parasitic on human agricultural products such as turfgrass and strawberries. Chemical control of nematodes is a multi-billion dollar business and Pasteuria Bioscience has developed a cultivation method for naturally occurring soil bacteria that specifically attack plant-parasitic nematodes.

PurFresh: 20 percent to 40 percent of fresh food is lost to over-ripening or decay. PurFresh has a family of products that spans the food supply chain in pre-harvest, post-harvest, transportation and retail to address this issue. Their transport product "snaps" into marine containers and kills mold, bacteria, viruses as well as eliminates ethylene, which accelerates ripening. The unit also measures atmospheric and physical conditions of the food environment, such as door breach, CO2, and O2, and communicates this information via satellite. The firm has 500 customers and 41 direct employees. They just closed a $10 million Round D. Earlier this month, they made our Top 50 Startups list.

Solum: Solum makes a field-deployable measurement tool that gives immediate answers on soil nutrient needs. Fertilizer amounts to 40 to 50 percent of the operating expense for corn but it is currently applied in an inefficient manner based on average values rather than per-acre needs. Solum allows farmers to apply fertilizer in the right amount, at the right place, at the right time.

Verdant Earth Technologies: Developed at the University of Arizona, Verdant’s system is a controlled-environment high-yield agriculture process that will allow crops to be grown anywhere, with no soil and little water, in shipping-type containers that provide a growing environment for a variety of foods. The system can produce up to many times more food per square foot than conventional farming methods.