--- title: VIDEO: This New Method of Farming Could Change What We Eat description: Aeroponics grows plants four times faster and could mean the best strawberries in the world come from Detroit. canonical: https://time.com/3450670/aeroponics/ author: Michael Lester article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-10-01T11:00:40.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-01T09:01:44.182Z article:section: Health og:title: VIDEO: This New Method of Farming Could Change What We Eat og:description: Aeroponics grows plants four times faster and could mean the best strawberries in the world come from Detroit. og:url: https://time.com/3450670/aeroponics/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb98da3b3ef2fbc1e/6986a66e55a85982c9a82ecf/tout2-640.jpg?branch=production&width=640&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 640 og:image:height: 360 og:image:alt: Aeroponics og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: VIDEO: This New Method of Farming Could Change What We Eat twitter:description: Aeroponics grows plants four times faster and could mean the best strawberries in the world come from Detroit. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb98da3b3ef2fbc1e/6986a66e55a85982c9a82ecf/tout2-640.jpg?branch=production&width=640&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # This New Method of Farming Could Change Where Our Food Comes From > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=1882d990-ee4a-4723-bc5f-9b45c2d74630&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Aeroponics: Revolutionizing City Farming [Watch (HLS stream): Aeroponics: Revolutionizing City Farming](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/8Q24R1rV.m3u8) (3:40)  _Published 2014-09-30. "The best strawberries in the world could come from Detroit."_  by [Michael Lester](https://time.com/author/michael-lester/)  ## Michael Lester Oct 1, 2014 11:00 AM UTC  by [Michael Lester](https://time.com/author/michael-lester/)  ## Michael Lester Oct 1, 2014 11:00 AM UTC Caleb Harper, founder of the CITYFarm Research Project, and his team at MIT’s Media Lab in Cambridge, Mass. appear to have found a way to grow food four times faster than it does in nature, using a new farming method called “Aeroponics.” Unlike regular hydroponics, a growing method that uses water instead of soil, the plants at CITYFarm do not sit in still water, but rather have their roots suspended in a “fog chamber” which sprays a nutrient-rich mist. The CITYFarmers take great care to monitor each aspect of the plants’ growth, to see which conditions work the best, including a technique of limiting light to red and blue. “This is the spectrum of light that the plants need to grow extra plant material,” Harper explains–and the rest of the spectrum besides red and blue only serves to provide heat. Harper believes that Aeoroponics not only grows fuller, more developed plants, but could be a solution to local farmers looking to provide sustenance to booming city populations. “We all know the phrase, ‘the best X comes from X'”, he explains, instead proposing that “the best X comes from the environment that created it.” “There is a new way to think of using fabrication space, especially if you look at a city like Detroit.” By building a similar set up, which requires no soil or great tracts of land, “it could be that the best strawberries in the world come from Detroit.” ### PHOTOS: Check Out These Throwback Images of Organic Farmers  A former artist, Regan gave up painting in 1998 to grow salad greens at Sky Farm outside Millerton, NY. On eleven acres, he raises everything from familiar lettuces to more exotic leaves like borage and micro-amaranth. Unlike most other small farmers, he leases his land, rather than own it, and he sells almost exclusively to restaurants. He has always farmed organically, calling it the “honest’ thing to do. Francesco Mastalia  At his farm in Goshen, New York, Wyatt raises 800 merino sheep for both meat and wool (the richly colored yarn are dyed on the farm). The poetry he posts on his blog reveals a love of language, which helps explain why although he farms organically—he no longer seeks the government’s certification for doing so. “I rescinded my \[organic\] certification two years after the USDA took over,” he says. “I don’t like the word now because it’s branding.” Francesco Mastalia  While running a storefront law office dedicated to progressive causes in the 1970s, Jones worked with labor and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez, which gave him one of his earlier experiences in the field. Now he supplies dozens of New York restaurants, and runs a CSA, with the 300 varieties of herbs and vegetables he grows at Bloominghill Farm. “One of the benefits of organic is that I don’t have to ride a sprayer,” he says. “There’s no farmer in the world that wakes up the morning and says, ‘Oh boy I get to spray today.’ Francesco Mastalia  As a child, Bail swore she would escape the dairy farming life of her German parents. But it was too deep in her blood. After stints in Germany, California, and Canada, she landed in the Hudson Valley, where she and her partner raise cows and fruit on Threshold Farm’s 45 biodynamic acres. “I hope I die like my father died,” she says. “Right up in that barn, throwing hay out. That’s a beautiful way to go, with your animals around you.” Francesco Mastalia  Together with his partner Laura Nywening, Uhler founded Peace and Carrots farm just over a year ago. But its roots go much further back: it fills a tiny corner of a dairy farm that Nywening’s family has owned for now four generations. In its first year, Peace and Carrots remains a tiny operation—just a green house that the two built from a kit, and and acre and a half for the vegetables they sell through a CSA (community supported agriculture). Francesco Mastalia  After growing up on a conventional farm, Bialas switched to organic only because, when it came time to start his own J&A Farm in Goshen, NY, he couldn’t afford to buy chemical pesticides and fertilizers. But he and his wife Adina quickly realized they didn’t need them: the roughly 200 varieties they grow—everything from arugula and tomatillos to collards and popcorn—sell quickly at the farmers’ markets, through CSAs, and to acclaimed restaurants like Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Francesco Mastalia  Another escapee from conventional farming, Bolluyt grew up in Iowa, where she spent summers detassling corn, and helping her uncle with his 1500-acre soybean farm. Now she raises vegetables and livestock organically with her Dutch-born partner Jean-Paul Courtens. “There used to be small farms there,” she says of Iowa. “Then they all closed and we lost a lot of the community that we used to have. After seeing what happened to the landscape, I didn’t really want to go back to the old ways of farming." Francesco Mastalia ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] We all know the phrase, the best X comes from X. We say okay well that place 5000 miles away, that's where I get my strawberries because that's where they're. This is a new way of thinking that says, the best x comes from the environment that created it. So it could be that the best strawberries in the world come from Detroit. Hydroponics is an umbrella term for a lot of things. You have shallow water. Culture hydroponic. Deep water culture. You have nutrient film technology. You have all of these derivations of hydroponics that all do different things for different crops. And then, maybe at the far side of that you have aeroponics. You can be sitting in still water or it can be merely suspended in a chamber where we create fog. Inside of that. [ MUSIC ] And then on top of this, we're supplementing with LED light as well as natural light, when it's available. And you'll see that it's all just red and blue. So that's because, this is the spectrum of light that the plants need to create new plant material. We grow on the [ UNKNOWN ] side, about four times faster than. unconventional. At first you don't really belive that that's possible. Like how could you grow four times faster than, than nature. It's newer technology. it grows faster, it breaks sometimes. It takes specialized intelligence. Where you need the speed, where you need the precision, you apply aeroponics. It's a racecar of farming. We have a level that is purely natural light. These plants were planted about the same time. This plant has been balanced with LEDs. We have a much greener plant. We have more leafy plant mass to eat, so it just results in a healthier, better looking plant. [ MUSIC ] One of the things that we're working on here is developing like the plant [ UNKNOWN ]. You know, the open operating system. For plants. It will take sensor information. It will put that into a database architecture and allow you to make visualizations of it and make changes to the environment. So actuation on the technology. City Farm is a project within the City Science Initiative and what the City Science Initiative is about is future cities. What are our living environments? What are. Data environments. What are our mobility environments, and then what are our food environments. And how can we create and shape that for the future. Eighty percent of us in the next 20 years will live in cities. We wanna get the healthiest food to them as possible in, especially in that category, eat fresh pick fresh. One way that I look at my work is I'm trying to move that point of consumption. [ MUSIC ] Closer to the point of production. We can bring back a hyper- local experience. We can bring back all of the natural variety that's maybe been kind of toned down to fit into our industrial food systems. There is a new way to think of using fabrication [ UNKNOWN ] space especially if you know you look at a city like Detroit. And knowing that cities need jobs and they have a lot of people that need jobs. You know, this is a potential huge market sector for employment that, that doesn't exist right now. People to get back into production inside of their local city. Beyond the talking, beyond the renderings, beyond the vision. We know that there's a problem. And we know that it will take a whole new generation of problem solvers to contribute to this huge issue. It's not the limit of the technology. It's what do you want do to with it? 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