3 Sustainability Tips for Your Micro-farm
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Micro-farming is quickly becoming an eco-friendly hobby for those with a green thumb but with limited space. Cropping up (sorry) in urban and suburban areas all over, these very small scale but high yield farms offer people of all ages and indeed families to get stuck in with growing their own produce either for consumption or as a source of income.
But at the heart of any farming project is its sustainability which if not managed well can lead to an excess of waste and an increased carbon footprint as well as suboptimal farming efficiency. Just like sustainable living, the concepts of sustainable farming are complex and take time to learn but for a micro-farm there are 3 things that you should begin with, and these are:
Renewable Fuel
Hydroponics
Crop Diversity
In an advancing world of electric vehicles and efforts to reduce energy consumption the use of renewable fuels is a hot topic while hydroponics offers the ability to quickly grow produce in a very small area with minimal effort and crop diversity is a fundamental aspect of farming that every farm, no matter the size should implement.
Renewable Fuel
At the heart of many environmental discussions at the moment is the use of renewable fuels that are better for the environment by being either less polluting, sustainable or both. Such fuels, also known as biofuels are developed from waste products such as fats, oils and grease to develop sustainable diesel as created by Geoff Hirson of Renewable Fuels LLC.
The reason renewable fuel is important to farming is because of the amount of diesel that farming requires, which highlights any farmer’s responsibility to be as eco-friendly as possible. A typical farm will use around 2.5 gallons per acre of fuel and although the average micro-farm is less than 5 acres, diesel is required nonetheless at a carbon production rate of 2,600 grams compared to 12,000 grams from traditional diesel per gallon, a dramatic reduction in carbon emissions.
Hydroponics
One of the main goals of micro-farming is to produce crops as quickly as possible at as high a yield as possible on as little land as possible, especially if you are doing it for profit. Because land might be limited, the use of hydroponics might be necessary and if installed correctly can yield some surprising results.
First of all, the technology requires no soil at all and works by feeding plants all the minerals that they require through an aqueous solution in which they sit and feed while providing light either in a greenhouse or artificially with UV or LED lamps. The main advantage of a hydroponics system is that it can be set up vertically rather than planted sequentially in the ground and can save a lot of space. The controlled nature of a hydro system also means that certain crops can be grown very quickly but the initial installation costs can be quite high.
Crop Diversity
One of the cornerstones of farming, crop diversity is at the heart of agricultural sustainability. Essentially, the modern world demands that more food be produced on less land which means that micro-farmers have a golden opportunity to develop creative and sustainable ideas that fit with the micro-farming ethos. Introducing a wide variety of the same crop that is able to grow quicker and adapt better to changing external factors can be experimented with on the micro-farm, ready for implementation in the wider farming community.
In order to adapt to changing and unpredictable climate conditions, new varieties of crops are needed and while there are vast seed banks at certain locations all over the world that seek to preserve species of crops that are being lost, micro-farms provide an excellent opportunity to analyse whether plants will adapt ex-situ in a new environment where they may hopefully thrive better than a local genus.
