Farming in the Future

By Dr. Sherwood B. Idso

The prophet Isaiah had many great visions of the future. In one of them, he exulted that “the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose” (Isa. 35:1); for he said that “in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert [shall produce] grass with reeds and rushes” (Isa. 35:6–7).

Perhaps a goodly portion of that prophecy was fulfilled with the colonization of the arid southwestern United States by the early Mormon pioneers and the return of the Jews to Israel. Both groups truly turned deserts into gardens by means of irrigation. But there may be more to it than that.

Consider the small island of Sadiyat. Up until 1970 it was an essentially barren mound of sand in the Persian Gulf, uninhabited except for the families of fishermen who occupied twenty-three palm frond huts. Then, under the direction of the University of Arizona’s Environmental Research Laboratory, a futuristic farming system was installed on the island in response to a request from Sheikh Zaid Bin Sultan Al-Nahayyan of the Sheikdom of Abu Dhabi of the United Arab Emirates. Best described as a large-scale power-water-food plant, the facility is run by diesel-electric generators whose waste heat is used to desalt seawater for growing high-quality vegetables on five acres of sand enclosed by plastic greenhouses. The facility produces about a ton of food every day, making the Abu Dhabians self-sufficient in terms of many vegetables they once had to import.

Then there is the Mexican shrimping fleet town of Puerto Peñasco. Where once it was possible to obtain shrimp only from the sea itself, the desert now produces this important source of animal protein too. In air-inflated plastic greenhouses, much like those employed on Sadiyat, long shallow tanks filled with seawater and supplied with oxygen by algae are used as raceways for millions of California brown shrimp. Someday they may find their way to your dinner table.

Will enterprises such as these be typical of the farms of tomorrow? Maybe so. At least that’s what the people believe who are constructing an experimental prototype community of tomorrow (EPCOT) in Orlando, Florida, where 200 acres of land are dedicated to telling the story of our potential future in several subjects related to such activities.

It may sound farfetched, but did you know that farmers have already been using laser beams to help them level their land for several years? It’s true. And before we know it, many of these techniques may be commonplace too. As one scientist has said, “Instead of farming by the square foot, we’re doing it on a volume basis by the cubic foot.”

Whether or not such scenes as these were ever shown to the prophet Isaiah is not really important. What is important is the fact that Heavenly Father has said that in the latter days He will send forth His Spirit upon the earth and greatly multiply the knowledge of mankind. What better use can we make of this knowledge than to enlist it in the great effort to adequately feed the billions of people who inhabit our planet? Farming in the future will definitely be an exciting and rewarding experience on the frontiers of science.

Photos by Ray Manley Photography, Inc., used by permission of Environmental Research Laboratory of the University of Arizona, Tucson.

1. Natives on the island of Sadiyat walk their camels past the controlled-environment greenhouses that supply them and their countrymen with vegetables.

2, 3. Workers harvest tomatoes and cucumbers in greenhouses where plants are rooted in sand and fed a solution of nutrients in irrigation water supplied through plastic tubes.

4. A native Abu Dhabian samples distilled water from the ocean alongside one of the air-inflated greenhouses that produced the sampling of vegetables shown before him.

An air-inflated aquacell is used for raising shrimp at Puerto Peñasco, Mexico.

Illustrated by Dick Brown