Sowing the seeds of change requires an environment that is ripe for change. Especially if the agricultural practices used are grim reaping.
For years, Canada and many other high-income countries have heavily relied on fresh produce imports and stable sunnier climates in order to eat fresh vegetables and fruits year round, at an affordable price. More than 80% of the Canadian fresh fruit market is supplied through imports.
Many of the countries that supply fresh produce imports have already begun experiencing extreme weather events and water stresses, exacerbated by climate change and overstretched resources. While current agricultural practices are contributing to climate change, agriculture itself is suffering because of climate change. At this current rate, disruptions in the supply chain are likely to continue and worsen in the future, signifying the need for homegrown innovations to grow fresh produce.
That’s why the Homegrown Innovation Challenge is being run: to support new solutions that reduce Canada’s reliance on imported fresh produce, build the resilience of food systems and help Canada deal with future uncertainty – starting with creating new technologies that let crops grow out of season. Solving that challenge needs breakthroughs in developing growing mediums and ensuring the plants have the exact nutrients and water they require, no matter the weather.
The importance of soil preservation
Future-proofing food production is becoming more essential and the solutions needed are likely very broad. With a large majority of arable land being degraded by desertification, pesticides, flooding, deforestation and urbanisation, our global soil health is suffering and it is difficult to open up new fertile farmland without destroying natural biodiversity. This means growing food for our growing populations is of major concern. Soil is considered a non-renewable resource, which means its loss is not recoverable during a human lifespan; it can take 500 years or more for an inch of topsoil to form.
The rate at which topsoil is lost varies among geographies. Although stark headlines have repeated that the world has only 100, 60 or even 30 years of harvests left, there is no scientific basis to them. Yet, while the claims are overblown, soil erosion is an important problem because it is the main ingredient in how and where we reliably grow food. In the process of competing in the Homegrown Innovation Challenge, teams will have to grapple with the challenge of growth media. One of the outcomes of this could be the development of different soil mediums that we can use to replace topsoil after flooding or in snowy conditions. Alternatively, this Challenge may open up the development of other “soilless cultivation” approaches – solid or liquid, with organic or inorganic substrates.