Ezekiel Nyoni

Soon after finishing my masters in mechanical engineering degree in 2015,I had a chance to be involved in a trade project between The Netherlands and South Africa. The project was dubbed #CoCreateSA, I was ropped into the Agriculture team which had four members, three from institutions in Holland and one from SA and I was the only member from a South African Institution. The problem we were given to solve was to create a solution to hamper the food insecurity in the City of Johannesburg. The reason I penned for this mission was that I needed something to keep me busy whilst I try to look for a job in the manufacturing industry and brainstorming for a PhD topic. What I did not know is that this was the beginning of realizing a passion that was buried inside me for a longtime – agro-processing technology.

The main key for the solution provided by the agriculture team was focused on urban agriculture as the city had systems in place for communal urban farming but were under utilized or just dormant. After the project, my area of focus quickly took an interesting shift. During my masters studies I was crazily passionate about the 3D- printing of metals hence my research topic was based on laser metal deposition. Now with a sudden shift I found myself researching on different technologies which were inline with urban farming.

The world is having a sharp increase in population hence space is becoming an issue as governments need to provide accommodation for their citizens and with the rise in the urbanization of rural areas the availability of space is becoming less and less. Furthermore, there is also need to provide food for these massive populations and it is taking a toll on commercial farmers  as there is also an issue of global climate change due to heavy carbon dioxide emissions. Although it might not seem to be a burning question to ask  for many right now,  but the truth is that its time is coming and we have to be prepared to give a satisfactory answer. The big question is How does the agriculture revolve with the changing and increasingly advancing environment?

The first step which has been increasingly getting more attention for the past few years is urban farming. Most people if they hear farming the first thing that come to their mind is an arable piece of land that lies on the ground on an open space surrounded with trees and some times a fence or trenches on the side. However, the concept of urban farming is changing the way we going to be viewing farms in the future. Rooftop gardens have been a big talk in the cities. I regard them as the first evolution step to urban farming together with vertical farming and use of greenhouses. With recent extensive research being done on LED lighting systems, hydroponics and aquaponic systems the evolution of urban farming has been increasingly becoming more technological than natural. These systems combined with vertical farming they have been able to advance indoor farming to a whole new level. This is has earmarked the rebirth of urban farming.