Public policy focus on sustainable indoor plant production

Added on 28 June 2023

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Public policy focus on sustainable indoor plant production

Grodan, part of ROCKWOOL Group, wants to increase public and policymaking attention on sustainable, soilless growing to feed and treat the world’s expanding population. The team at Grodan, a leading supplier of stone wool growing media solutions for greenhouse growers, notes that controlled environment agriculture (CEA) is designed to grow food and medicinal crops more resource-efficiently than conventional soil-based cultivation, making it possible to produce higher yields using less water, less land, less fertilizers, and fewer pesticides.

This matters because the global population keeps getting bigger while natural resources shrink. Having reached eight billion by late 2022, the world will add another two billion people in the next 30 years, many of whom will live in urban environments. That means we will need to produce 50% more food than in 2012 to feed the world’s people.

Yet soil is being lost to degradation between 10 and 100 times faster than it is forming, while climate-induced water stress threatens productivity of conventional soil-based agriculture in many parts of the world.