Sustainable Development Goals
The FarmTech Society (FTS) Supports the Sustainable Development Goals
This is how we think Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) can help with each of these goals, but we recognise that all of them will require engagement with wider frameworks, networks and stakeholders. We invite the latter, who would be interested in working with us on any of these SDGs, to get in touch with us.
FTS represents an industry that can significantly contribute to avoiding global hunger in light of population growth. Not only can it produce nutritious and diverse crops towards meeting basic human dietary needs, but CEA also offers the opportunity to develop new varieties of seeds with enhanced crop resilience for better climate adaptation.
FTS coordinates the CEA industry’s efforts towards reclaim our food: wholesome and nutritious for all. On-going depletion of soils’ organic matter and genetic selections have impoverished food quality and reduced its diversity by favoring few marketable breeds. CEA allows for tight nutrient management throughout the growing process, towards producing nutrient-rich, healthy food.
FTS helps with the growth of an emerging industry that not only creates decent, well-paying secure jobs but also replaces hazardous low-wage labor. CEA improves food production from an economic and social perspective, as it attracts skilled talents from STEM backgrounds and improves the image of the farming profession.
FTS represents an industry that is founded on innovation and advanced sustainable infrastructures in food production. As resource efficiency, food safety and food security are the main drivers for CEA, FTS members spend 20% plus of their annual revenue in research and development. This allows CEA to take the lead in agriculture, achieving climate-resilient primary production in plant, protein, alternative protein and fiber.
FTS represents an industry that could significantly enhance cities’ economic, social and environmental development. Growing food in urban CEA can act as an economic catalyst for greater and lasting resilience, and the creation of non-relocatable jobs. It can also build cross-sectoral synergies with other actors, like optimizing waste recycling and bio-economy, or with local residents for their own economic and social development (i.e. community-supported agriculture).
FTS unites various organizations that are devoted to raising awareness about and promoting responsible consumption and production, in the name of preserving planetary life-supporting conditions and human welfare. CEA allows for cultivating chemical-free plants and other organisms with less space, waste, water usage, along with fewer risks associated.
FTS represents an industry that is offering climate adaptation and mitigation action through CEA. CEA allows for guaranteeing food security, yields and quality in increasingly unstable and polluted environments, by relocating growing practices into indoor spaces. Production capacities and supply chains, both within the CEA industry and more broadly across food systems, will be decarbonized, thanks to the high use of renewable energies, in order to reduce the farming sector’s vulnerabilities and GHG emissions.
FTS represents an industry, that is offering solutions in Controlled Environment Agriculture, which is a circular-based practice engaging cross-sectorial expertise from the manufacturing, engineering, biological- and economic sectors as valid partnerships the development of this emerging segment, thus connecting CEA solutions to common challenges and achieving goals in partnership.