National Geographic recently featured alternative methods in farming and food production proposed by scientists and agriculturists in order to address food security and global warming, which is expected to reduce crop yields, worsen food shortages and increase food prices.

Global warming will revolutionize the way we farm and grow food, according to several biotechnologists and agriculture experts.

It will trigger the diversification of crops and force farmers all around the world to adjust from the traditional homogenized crop farming. Because global warming changes rainfall patterns, temperature and carbon dioxide concentrations in the air, farmers must adapt to these changes.

Plant geneticist Stephen Jones of Washington State University is a proponent of diversification. He indicated that while homogenization has expedited the volume of food grown on larger tracts of land, it has also become difficult for farms that implement this strategy to adapt to the changes effected by global warming.

According to Jones, what is needed is a variation that the environment can work on.

There is a need to maximize land area in order to grow crops to feed an exponentially growing population. There are already existing hi-tech greenhouse gases that grow crops through hydroponics, a technique that uses nutrient-enriched water and minimal area. Basing on these concepts, some scientists are proposing the so-called “vertical farming,” which puts farming staple grains and greens at the heart of urban centers in high-rise buildings.

Dickson Despommier of New York’s Columbia University believes that vertical farming could grow enough food for billions while reducing greenhouse gas emissions that come from cross-continental shipping of agricultural produce.

Vertical farming as an idea has been criticized Bruce Bugbee, a crop physiologist at Logan’s Utah State University, who thinks it is too expensive since it can utilize gigawatts of power for growing the crops indoor. However, Despommier revealed that architects are currently creating buildings that can harvest natural light at the maximum level.