Mother Earth has been a hot mess lately, and our agricultural practices are a big reason why.

We’re using too much freshwater, losing biodiversity and knocking our oceans’ chemical balance out of whack…to name just a few.

Despite these challenges, there are some pretty cool opportunities, many of which center on growing food locally and embracing principles of circular economics, where waste is regenerated into nutrients and new resources.

Here are innovations being explored by the startup world that have potential to change the food system.

Recycling food waste.

Of all the veggies and fruits that are imported into big cities, a decent amount goes bad or gets discarded before it can be sold and eaten. Instead of tossing leftovers into the trash, food recovery companies are getting creative. 

• Imperfect Foods takes that quirky looking avocado or apple that is still good quality and sells it directly to consumers.  

• Replate leverages a scheduling web app to match organizations with surplus food with communities that are food insecure. 

• Re-Nuble takes produce that would’ve otherwise ended up in the landfill and repurposes it into nutrients for hydroponic systems.  

Indoor agriculture + hydroponics

In New York, indoor agriculture allows fresh greens to be grown locally (rather than shipping it 3,000 miles from California), including fresh basil from Brooklyn. These goods are produced using hydroponics in a controlled environment, and LED lights instead of the sun.

The everyday person is getting more and more familiar with hydroponics, a method of agriculture that doesn’t involve soil. Instead, plants are grown in a porous material like rockwool or coconut fiber, then water and nutrients are cycled through the beds. During the pandemic, it was trendy to purchase smaller hydroponic systems for homes, enabling people to grow kale and peppers in their living rooms.

Bigger cities are welcoming similar types of urban farming, especially controlled environment agriculture (CEAs) that leverage hydroponics, because leaders recognize that growing fresh food nearby not only cuts down on transportation and guarantees a local food source, it’s a new way to alleviate food deserts. There are a growing number of companies in this space. On the greenhouse tech side, check out Gotham Greens and AppHarvest. On the vertical farming side, AeroFarms and Bowery Farming. 

Hydroponic carbon capture.

One interesting concept still in the preliminary research phase is hydroponic carbon capture. You may have heard of carbon capture, the primary method of reducing carbon dioxide by capturing it from the air and burying it under the ground. Now academic research is exploring ways hydroponics (which are part of the CEA world) can be leveraged to capture more CO2 in the atmosphere as part of its normal growing process. This could be a more beneficial method of capturing greenhouse gasses, giving CEAs something else to offer our planet.

Let’s hope all these missions synergize productively and efficiently! Mother Earth can’t wait much longer.