5 Creative farming techniques from around the world

Some countries aren’t lucky enough to have the perfect weather or huge grassy plains they can turn into lush farmland, and instead are left with terrain that most people wouldn’t even consider using. Here are a few of the most interesting and impressive creative farming techniques from around the world.

Vietnamese rice terraces

Living in a tropical country with lots of hilly terrain would normally mean a lack of farmland, and this is exactly the case for much of Vietnam, but that didn’t sit well with them. If they couldn’t have nice flat farmland to work with, then they’d just have to use what they had. The Mekong Delta is an enormous freshwater system of rivers, lakes, and islands located in the southwestern part of Vietnam, and has over 20 million people living within its reach.

This area is also known as the rice bowl of Vietnam and around 80% of the people who live here work in rice farming. The terraces work in the same way any other rice paddy does, its just they are built up the sides of hills and mountains. This system can only work because the highest terraces have a way to top up and flow down to the lower ones when they need water, which usually comes from a spring or the redirecting of a small stream. Vietnam is currently the 5th largest producer of rice in the world and grows around 45 million tons each year.

The floating rice paddy

This is the same concept as hydroponics farming but without all the pumps and pipes. The rice is grown normally until it is big enough to transfer to its permanent growing pot which sits on a floating surface. The roots of the rice hang down in the water and feed off all the nutrients within it instead of taking them from the ground. This can only work in water that has a high concentration of nutrients, such as water thick with stirred-up mud and decomposing plant and animal matter.

With the lack of direct access to the soil for the roots, a replacement has to be found to keep the water at a level the plants can feed on. A good natural solution to this is to raise ducks on the same body of water, and then fish or crayfish who can stir the water up from underneath. All the animals would create waste to feed the plants, who in turn clean the water and keep it at a level that isn’t toxic for the animals. This technique is quite new and hasn’t been deployed on a massive scale yet, but is more of a way to create farmland from a huge lake or water system you otherwise couldn’t use.

Vertical hydroponics farms

Hydroponics works using a system that contains no soil, and instead, the plants sit in cups with their roots hanging out the bottom. The cups are placed in tubes and the roots hang down into the water that flows through the tube, which contains liquid nutrients that the plants can feed off. This method allows the plants to constantly be fed and watered but they won’t drown because the main body of the plant isn’t submerged.

The amount of nutrients added can easily be controlled to ensure maximum growing efficiency, but because they get everything from water in the plastic pipes they are sitting in, the usual rules of plant spacing do not apply, and neither does the shape of their growing beds. As long as everything in the system has access to direct sunlight then any shape can be used, which allows for a greenhouse or polytunnel to produce over five times the amount of food in the same space.

LED Tower farms

When you combine hydroponics technology with LED lights then you get a way of growing food that could almost solve world hunger if it was used everywhere. Hydroponics can grow food about 25% faster than conventional soil growing, and the LED light speeds up the process even more. It also means that things can be grown in much smaller spaces and all the plants needing access to the sun no longer apply.

A farm using both hydroponics and LED lights that cover an acre will produce at least 25% more food than a farm of equal size using soil growing, but that’s only per level. In theory, you could have ten layers to your farm and for every ton of food grown outside, an LED hydroponics farm could produce 12.5 tons, but they do come with a few problems. The cost of buying and maintaining so many lights is the main problem, followed closely by the requirement of a huge amount of power. They also need special nutrients to feed the plants and some advanced equipment to monitor the pump systems and feed levels within the water. If cost and power weren’t an issue, this method could be used to feed millions.

desert circle farms

Just like in Vietnam, this is a good example of people making what do with what they have. A desert is normally the furthest thing away from good growing land, but only because they are starved of water. When you put this water back and treat the soil, you are left with the intense brightness of the desert sun growing your crops faster than most other areas around the world can.

These only work if there’s a nearby water source, which in the desert involves tapping into an underground natural spring, or pumping water in from somewhere else. When either of these options is available, circle farming produces certain crops faster due to the desert sun, and has been used in countries across the Middle East, Africa and the United states, particularly the state of Nevada.