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PORTSIDE CULTURE

FARMING IN THE DARK  
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Diana Kruzman
January 29, 2025
Ambrook Research
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_ Chemist Feng Jiao and Robert Jinkerson, a specialist in artificial
photosynthesis, contend that their system — known as
“electro-agriculture” — could convert electricity into chemical
energy with four times the efficiency of photosynthesis. _

“Electro-agriculture,” which explores plant growth without
photosynthesis, could revolutionize vertical farming., Jeannette
Ferrary

 

Despite all the innovations that have changed farming over the last
12,000 years, from the introduction of the plow to the development of
genetically modified corn, one fact has remained constant: Plants need
sunlight to grow. It’s been that way since some of the planet’s
earliest bacteria began using photosynthesis more than 3.5 billion
years ago — the same cycle plants go through today. The process
harnesses the energy of sunlight to move atoms from carbon dioxide in
the air to the cells of the plant, building up the biomass needed to
produce a crunchy leaf of lettuce.

In 2017, Feng Jiao, a chemist then working at the University of
Delaware, started to think that it didn’t have to be that way. What
if carbon dioxide could be converted into a chemical that plants could
take up through their roots and then transform into the sugars they
need to grow, rather than relying on photosynthesis to do the same
thing? A few years later, he proved that instead of sunlight,
naturally photosynthetic organisms like algae could feed on acetate, a
chemical compound that can be made from carbon dioxide using a process
called electrolysis.

“If you look at photosynthesis for traditional agriculture — the
energy efficiency is only about 1 percent,” said Jiao, who is now at
Washington University in St. Louis. “We’re trying to take
advantage of these electrochemical systems which can operate at a much
higher efficiency. Then we can overcome some of the shortcomings in
the nature of photosynthesis.”

In a paper published in November in the journal Joule, Jiao and Robert
Jinkerson, a specialist in artificial photosynthesis at the University
of California, Riverside, argued that their system — known as
“electro-agriculture” — could convert electricity into chemical
energy with four times the efficiency of photosynthesis. So far,
they’ve been able to grow algae, yeast, and mushrooms in complete
darkness, and are testing out more complex plants like tomatoes and
lettuce, which they’re not able to grow entirely without light just
yet.

Their goal, the pair argued in the Joule paper, is to demonstrate that
indoor vertical farming powered by electro-agriculture can help meet
the needs of a growing population while reducing the impact of
agriculture — which is responsible for one third of global
greenhouse gas emissions — and make it more resilient in the face of
climate change. Producing the entire U.S. food supply through
electro-agriculture, Jiao and Jinkerson wrote, would reduce land usage
by 88 percent.

Jiao is quick to admit, though, that practical concerns make upending
the entire U.S. food system unrealistic. Aside from the massive
infrastructure buildout required to support the energy drain,
vegetables and leafy greens would likely have to be genetically
modified to accept acetate, a shift that Jiao thinks could be
difficult for the public to accept given the entrenched movement
against genetically modified organisms.

Consumers also might find the very concept of a plant grown without
sunlight to be off-putting, though Jiao said that these fears could be
put to rest once it’s made clear that the crops don’t look or
taste any different. He harvested the mushrooms he grew in his lab
using acetate, and said that their flavor didn’t differ
substantially from the ones he buys from the grocery store. “I
thought it would taste like vinegar, but it doesn’t,” Jiao said.

Even if Jinkerson and Jiao are able to perfect the process of
electro-agriculture for food crops, taking it from the lab to the farm
requires building a whole new kind of enterprise. So far, Square
Roots, the vertical farming company co-founded by Kimbal Musk —
brother of Tesla’s Elon — is the only producer working toward
commercialization. With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, Square Roots dedicated one of its farms in Grand Rapids,
Michigan, to testing out the electro-agriculture method developed by
Jinkerson and Jiao. The company is trying to understand whether and
how this technique could be applied to grow crops on a larger scale,
said Square Roots’ head of innovation and partnerships, John Paul
Boukis.

So far they’ve grown arabidopsis, a “model” plant that’s used
to get a quick read on the effects of an experiment because of its
fast life cycle, as well as tobacco, which provides a better idea of
what it might be like to grow leafy greens. Though they’re still in
the research & development phase, Boukis said that early observations
have been promising; the tobacco plants grown using acetate and
reduced light look about the same as they would in a field outside.

None of the plants currently being grown by Square Roots will be sold
to consumers, and getting there could take years, if it ever does. But
Boukis has high hopes for electro-agriculture as a way to address the
economic problems that have beset the vertical farming industry as a
whole. After promising to revolutionize farming and solve the climate
crisis, a string of early investments from the likes of Jeff Bezos and
Alphabet’s Eric Schmidt spurred an indoor farming boom. But with the
initial hype dying down, multiple operations have folded in recent
years, in part due to the massive amounts of electricity required to
power their operations. Square Roots has also downsized, laying off
most of its staff and closing all but one location in 2023.

But theoretically, if plants could be grown in the dark, vertical
farms wouldn’t have to run LED lights 24/7, instead powering their
acetate production using a smaller amount of electricity derived from
solar panels.

“While electro-agriculture is still early in its development, it
could become instrumental in reducing the lighting energy required for
indoor farming, bringing down costs and removing carbon,” Boukis
told Ambrook Research. “We have high hopes for this technology to
make indoor farming more viable, especially for low- and middle-income
countries disproportionately affected by climate change disruption.”

But while the research on electro-agriculture touts its efficiency
compared to plants grown using sunlight, there are ways to make
photosynthesis more efficient without relying on solar panels, which
themselves require a high energy input, said Amanda Cavanagh, a plant
scientist at the University of Essex in the UK. Her research focuses
on genetically modifying crops to avoid wasting energy while
converting sunlight into sugars, a process that, while not 100%
efficient, is still what she believes is our best option.

However, Cavanagh doesn’t discount the potential of
electro-agriculture altogether. “I think it’s foolish to think
that there’s only one way to produce food,” she said, adding that
she believes it could support more localized food production in places
that aren’t able to farm outside because of harsh or unpredictable
weather, like the Canadian Arctic or desert nations like Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. government is also interested in using electro-agriculture to
grow food in outer space. “Vertical farming or electro-agriculture
can find their niche in those areas and bring consistent food
production to places that historically rely on importing food at a
very high cost and with a large carbon footprint,” Cavanagh said.

Still, she doesn’t think growing plants on acetate will ever be a
realistic pathway to rewilding large swathes of agricultural land.
Most U.S. farmland is either used for animal pasture or dedicated to
growing commodity crops like soybeans, wheat, and corn, which can’t
yet be grown indoors on a large scale. Fruits and vegetables only make
up about 2 percent of U.S. farmland. And although leafy greens and
specialty vegetables are better suited to an indoor growing
environment, even the Square Roots team hasn’t yet figured out how
to grow those completely without sunlight.

“Plants cannot currently be grown to harvest on acetate or in the
dark, and achieving either or both is an absolutely massive
challenge,” said Emma Kovak, food and agriculture analyst at the
Breakthrough Institute, a sometimes-controversial think tank that
studies how emerging technologies can help address major challenges
like climate change. She believes it’s worthwhile to continue
research into electro-agriculture for the chance that it could help
scientists learn how to grow food in hyper-specific environments, such
as during space travel. But she doesn’t believe it’ll ever make up
a “significant component” of crop production here on earth.

“For all the talk of photosynthetic inefficiency, when crops are
grown outdoors, sunlight is a free and abundant energy source,”
Kovak said. “And that’s hard to beat.”

DIANA KRUZMAN

Diana Kruzman is a freelance journalist covering agriculture, climate
change, and the environment, in the U.S. and around the world. Her
work has appeared in National Geographic, Undark, Earther, and other
publications. She lives in New York City.

* farming methods
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* photosynthesis
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* food production
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