World first: Desalination farm

World first: Desalination farm using seawater and solar power opens in Australia

Talk about state of the art agriculture!

World first: Desalination farm

A desert region in southern Australia has become the world’s first farm to grow tomatoes without using soil, fresh water or fossil fuels.

Sundrop Farms launched the first “commercial-scale-facility of this calibre in the world” earlier in this month. The farm supplies 15% of the country’s crops and only uses solar power to desalinate seawater and operate greenhouses in order to grow more than 15,000 tons of tomatoes each year.

The project has been years in the making and included a five-year pilot project followed by 18 months of construction. After a lot of scepticism, the company finally opened a commercial greenhouse.

Farmers Weekly reported that the $150 million farm focuses sunlight from 23,000 mirrors onto a tower to produce energy that drives a desolation system, sucking water from the nearby seaport on the Spencer Gulf, which produces about one million litres of water a day.

http://www.sundropfarms.com/
http://www.sundropfarms.com/

In a statement released to Al Jazeera, the farm said the “cutting-edge technology” will save significant amounts of natural resources and avoid pollution – about 26,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year would be avoided to be exact. In addition to that fresh water and two million litres of diesel can also be saved within a year. They see it as a potential model for countries low on natural resources.

The question is, though, if this idea could be applied globally. Mike Dixon, director of the Controlled Environment Systems Research Facility, a department at the University of Guelph in the Canadian province of Ontario told Al Jazeera that it comes down to money.

“This business plan will last only as long as its profit margin is in the black … if the company can economically use seawater. It is not a business case that can be made everywhere … [It] depends on how costly the water treatment is in each area. Each business case has to be looked at as its own business model.”

Well, there you have it, folks.